| I know a programmer who< horror of horrors, makes a
| decent living using Visual Basic.
|
I've actually been using VB6 since '99. Ironically, along
with VC6, it's probably the most widely supported, and one
of the most suitable, current tools for Windows "desktop"
programming. The runtime has been pre-installed since
Win2000, and it's only about 1.3 MB. So VB6 runs nearly
everywhere without any extra requirements. Of course, it's
no good for WinPhone or RT tablet software. But nothing
really does both. The tool that came after VB was
.Net, which was never meant for writing Windows
software -- it was designed for web services -- and the
current runtime is something like 1/2 GB. The "latest and
greatest", the WinRT runtime, can't produce Windows
desktop software at all. It's only for writing AJAX-style
apps to run on the Metro Tile UI. (One *can* use .Net to write
Windpows software or Metro software, but in the former
case it's poorly suited and in the latter case it's superfluous.)