I do most of my development in Delphi (which means Pascal, not C/C++), and I don't have many problems. Not that I don't have to use third party packages, SDKs and the like, but I suppose I'm just used to the paradigm. Also, generally some extra work has to be done to make anything that isn’t totally mainstream Win32 work in Delphi, but either I can find someone who’s already done it and done it well, or I can do it myself (which I prefer being a code-control freak and all). Either way, though, I’ve never felt inhibited by external libraries, as the only time I ever need them (in Delphi) is when I’m trying to solve a very specific problem.

I don’t have much experience with the M$ environment, so I couldn’t possibly comment on that.