Visual Basic 6: Alive and Kicking - Why did people hate Visual Basic?
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Back in the heyday of Visual Studio 6, you either loved or hated Visual Basic. There was no in between. So strong was this rivalry between different development platforms that one might not consider the line between them as being drawn in the sand, but set in concrete.
The Visual C++ purists HATED the fact that VB only compiled down to bit-code and needed a runtime library to run. Admittedly, it was a small library, but it was still required nonetheless. (I'm not even going to go into the fact that .NET ALSO has a runtime library, for ALL of its languages).
The Java people hated the fact that it was a Windows-only development tool, and refused to touch it because it wouldn't work cross-platform.
But probably the biggest knock that Visual Basic got was that it was considered a “kiddie language.” Programmers, analysts, department managers, all stayed away from VB because it was “BASIC.” Hence, VB got a bad name and was even stereotyped by people who had never even bothered taking a look for themselves. You'd have better luck getting these people to build an application with Legos than with VB.
But while VB was snubbed by the majority, the many who actually tried it for themselves loved what they found.
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