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I wanted to do some Windows CE development as a hobbyist a few years ago (my car stereo runs Windows CE, was hoping to make some apps to monitor OBD parameters) and it was a complete nightmare to try developing against. Maybe things have changed, but it was almost impossible to find tools, resources, or any clear documentation on how to get a development environment setup--this was with a full MSDN subscription too. I think there's a very good reason Windows CE was chucked out in favor of a new OS for their big phone push.

I'm still doing Windows CE 6.0 development on Motorola Business Handhelds. Sadly MS abandoned Windows CE (.net CF) from their IDEs since VS 2008.

WP7 was CE based and was fine to dev with. It's not really the same as the CE you would know though. WP8 is based on NT/Windows 8.

Yeah my comment was a sarcastic rhetorical one :)

But you've done a good job of highlighting why I was being sarcastic.

The licensing?

If you've got an MSDN ultimate it's very easy to get going. If you don't, then it's quite hard, compared to say using the TinyCLR on the .Net Fez things [1] which are easy and by comparison designed to be fun.

[1] https://www.ghielectronics.com/catalog/product/297

Since NT runs on ARM these days I would guess this is not Windows CE.