MSVC is >300MB, and is an extremely complicated environment. I find
that MS tools generally make simple things really simple, but if you
try to do anything outside the norm, you suffer.
My preferred C++ development environment is still emacs, gcc, make,
and all the other Unix tools. I guess this is one way of agreeing
with your sense of woe...
Java promises to make life a lot easier, but isn't quite there yet.