[ksk]

Historically Visual C++ has never been the goto compiler for anyone interested in the latest feature set. They have always had an amazing optimizer since they've had to build NT with it. I doubt they're ever going to catch up to GCC/Clang. msvc has to remain ABI compatible with other MS C++ libs like MFC/ATL/etc, and so ABI breaking changes have to wait for the next major version of VC. I think some stuff like COM has work across multiple VC versions without ever breaking.

[buildops]

True. In addition, builds can sometimes be slow on MSBuild. Of course, if you're interested in cross platform development Visual Studio 2015 provides some great new features. Additionally, coupled with IncrediBuild (https://www.incredibuild.com/cross-platform.html) you can get some blazing fast builds