[squarefoot]

"It's somewhat amusing to realize that in 2017 this is pretty much the easiest way to do a desktop app (besides RealBasic/Xojo which I've yet to try"

If you're interested in Basic programming then Gambas might interest you. Although not a clone of VB, it can be roughly considered being to VB what Lazarus is to Delphi: a 100% Open Source implementation. I would prefer Lazarus anyway, but it's indeed nice to see different alternatives to proprietary dev systems.

http://gambas.sourceforge.net/en/main.html

[anfractuosity]

I remember one BASIC, called RapidQ, which I really enjoyed playing with a long time ago (which was freeware, but unfortunately I think it stopped being maintained as the source was sold to another company).

It had a rather cool graphical interface to create GUIs, kind of like VisualBasic I think.

It even had APIs to interface with DirectX.

Pic of what the IDE looked like: http://basic.mindteq.com/Screenshots/RapidQ.jpg

[bigtunacan]

That project looks pretty cool actually. It is unfortunate that it is not cross platform.