[goldfire]

Are you suggesting those as counterexamples? Neither one is an example of an "all-encompassing environment."

"Visual C++" no longer exists, it's just part of Visual Studio now. When it did exist, it was merely an IDE for regular C++, not any kind of separate environment.

Visual Basic was a package including a GUI toolkit, a programming language, and an IDE for developing ordinary Windows applications. These tools were deployed and used as ordinary Windows applications. There was no separate computing environment with its own windowing system, data storage mechanisms, UI conventions, etc. And the current Visual Basic .NET isn't even that anymore; it's just another .NET language now, where you can swap out the IDE or GUI framework for whatever is available (including none at all if you like, you don't need either one to have a useful VB.NET program).