First of all, if you are curious why we still adhered to release this outdated version, just think that's only for a few guys or use environments that still need it - just want to develop a simple desktop tool for lower versions of Windows platforms quickly, for example. So, if its not for the purpose of learning the Programming Windows, Fifth Edition, you don't need it any more!

For beginners using Windows who are interested in the C/C++ language (anyway, you need to compile your C/C++ programs) or Linux embedded system development, the big headache is switching back and forth between Windows & Linux. Even you have to continuously reboot system in order to achieve the purpose, very troublesome. Cygwin just solved this problem.

As a matter of experience, many people (especially for personal webmasters) have deeply understood the installation of Apache server on localhost is definitely not an easy thing, not to mention adding a MySQL, PHP or Perl component, harder. Nevertheless, luckily there are tools similar to XAMPP integrate frequently-used development environments into one package.