Jabaco is still somewhat interesting to me. I don't have a use for rooting through the Java ecosystem to accomplish important things though, and would prefer a native Windows alternative to VB6 someday.

Concern over ADO is misplaced in my opinion. It will be around as long as a VB6 program can still run. Eschewing COM strikes me as odd as well. COM is native to Windows, unlike .Net which is as foreign to Windows as Java is.

The quality shown in the Jabaco beta versions makes it obvious Microsoft had no excuse for dropping the classic VB line of development tools. I've read lots of excuses from that quarter about how difficult the existing IDE and compiler were to support and carry forward into the future. Clearly that is sheer FUD from the forces holding Microsoft's development tools group in thrall today. They're still trying hard to shoehorn .Net into Office programs as a VBA replacement.