Why VB ?

Evaluating programming languages is very "subjective". Each person wants them for a different reason and so different languages suit different purposes.

If you were doing something at a system level requiring absolutely NO Gui interface at all then VB wouldn't be a good choice so someone will tell you "the product isn't good" while someone who does simple forms that get/maintain data will say "the product is good" because it suits what they need.

So here is how I see VB which of course is based on it meeting MY needs :

Good Points
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1. Rapid Development
To get something up and running from absolutely nothing can be very quick. You can construct a form in minutes and add a simple level of functionality in under an hour. If you want something you can develop quickly then VB allows you to do this

2. Support
VB is widely used and being a microsoft product means they use similar methods with all their existing tools. This means if you know how to use VB you are one tiny step away from using VBA which is the language behind MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access... Secondly you are only a conceptual step away from VBScript which allows you to write Active Server Pages on the internet.

3. Database Connectivity
It has connection for all major databases via DAO, ADO, OLEDB, ODBC or anything else you may wish. This gives you the ability to get into everything from Access, to SQL Server, to Oracle and even old things like SQLAnywhere etc

4. Kknowledge Base
Because so many people use it there is a large quantity of information on it, problems and solutions. MSDN, TechNet, VB-world and many more sites contain solutions to things other people ahve done before.

Bad Points
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1. Runtime Files
People have complained about this for ages. Visual Basic applications require the existance of several runtime files on the machine you install them on... If they already exist you are fine but if they don't it can be a headache making sure it has everything it needs to run. The VB6 runtime file is over 2MB in size meaning it is impossible to distribute a COMPLETE application on a floppy disk. I can write a small application in C++ and it will only be 400k in size and have everything it needs to run. If I did exactly the same thing in VB then it would require the MSVB60VM.dll which is 2MB+ as well as a handful of additional dll's that may/may not be standard on a given machine

2. API interface
As much as it is a god-send to have these functions there is little to no resources about API calls for lesser known dll's like the rnaui.dll for Win95 and everything else. MS has kept these under wraps and refuses to allow people into them. You do get access to many functions but they are very difficult to read and can be a nightmare to work out.

Simply getting a value out of a registry entry is a series of 3 API calls with code surrounding it to make it work... Why they couldn't put this into a single DLL and call it "GetRegSetting" or something like that I don't know

3. BAD Object-Orientation
I believe VB7 will solve this problem but currently VB "says" that it is an Object-Oriented language... and yet it fails many of the OO principles such as inheritance and encapsulation. You can get "into" areas you shouldn't be able to but VB happily allows you to do it because of how it is programmed. This usually doesn't mean much but can cause problems at times.

4. Its Microsoft
I know... people will complain about me saying this but basically the problem is that MS will only into the product what they feel they need to in order to keep selling it. If someone asks for a feature that would cost them money and they "think" they will get little return they will ignore it. They don't have a "customer" oriented focus and don't really want the product to be the best it is because they OWN a lot of the alternatives (MC++, MSFoxPro, etc, etc)

Well, that is my appraisal anyway... I am sure others will have different ideas but that is how I see it based on how I use it for what I use it :)