[bkmartin]

I also have a small pile of vb6 code that I must support. And while it usually behaves OK there are some instances where putting it on a Windows 7 machine to run will cause some headaches.

I got my first serious code written in VB6. It is the first IDE that I bought with my own hard earned money as a kid and it was great. I still dream of a day when there is a language/framework that makes development that easy again.

[WorldMaker]

I think Small Basic is interesting for that. [1]

I also find it interesting now how much of the professional IDE features that Visual Studio Community Edition opens up for free to students and non-profits and open source enthusiasts.

It's easy to look back with nostalgia at our own paths (mine was QBASIC, [saved up for] VB3, with dalliances into things like DJGPP, then a lot of HTML, PHP, and very early era JS), but let's not overlook that we live in an interesting era with interesting new paths (Small Basic, Squeak, Python, modern JS, etc).

[1] http://smallbasic.com/

[dotancohen]

You might want to look at PyCharm (Has free community edition, $99 year for pro) and Python. My eight year old writes Python!

[bkmartin]

I loved Python when I learned it back in college. That was around Python 2.3/2.4. I said back then (while doing mostly C++) that Python should be the base language for CS101 at the University level. It was much easier to work with as opposed to the nuances of C++ compilers at the time.

My biggest dream is the ability to have a cross platform Mobile App/Web App ecosystem. Something that you can use from any device with a virtually equal experience. Not so easy at the moment, especially for things that need to be charged for... app store fees are way to big in my opinion. /rant