I wouldn't call WSL hassle free for the user. Quite the contrary. And compiling stuff on Windows is a nightmare compared to Linux and macOS. It's become marginally better since you don't have to install the entire Visual Studio monstrosity anymore just to get a compiler that plays nice with the system. But it wasn't always like that. On macOS you could always install the necessary parts from Xcode without App store and activate it via command line.