I starting to use WinRT with Qt today and now after long time with MinGW, I’m switching to MSVC in Windows. Here is why

1. MinGW is opensource but deep down if you are in Win32, MSVC compiler always offers better API compatibility
2. WinRT is available only on MSVC
3. MSVC is better with memory control access management using SEH which MinGW doesn’t offer
4. MSVC offers pdb files That can help you if your program crashes. Then you can generate the core dump and debug using WinDbg
5. If you ever get around to some dll that simply doesn’t work with your project, it’s because MinGW and MSVC ABI are not the same. and probably that DLL was compiled by MSVC not MinGW. Same OS and still a different ABI, sounds too Windowsy to me
6. Because you are on Windows, show some support to the closed-source community!