As a windows user, I avoid developing with node on windows machines, because building dependencies caused me trouble many times. pg, socket.io, bcrypt, jsdom, countless others.
If it's just the vc++ compiler, chances are node devs already have it installed anyway if they do in fact work on a windows machine.
Ok, this is just unbelievable. My original post was a complete fiction. I just made it up. I made up jsdom-node, I made up the fact that it was a node.js compatible fork, I made up dom.js, I made it all up as satire to poke fun at the javascript community. I thought these two replies about the C++ compiler were just continuing the joke. Honestly.
Imagine my shock to realize that the fake jsdom-node project I made up actually exists (in the form of node-jsdom) and actually exists for the reason I made up. What. The. Fuck.
If it's just the vc++ compiler, chances are node devs already have it installed anyway if they do in fact work on a windows machine.