[wvenable]

VB6's concept of OOP was simple enough it could have been translated into .NET and .NET is broadly compatible with COM. I'm certain Microsoft could have made it work. They really needed to consider VB6 as a backwards compatibility target instead of building VB.NET as a modern replacement. VB.NET really has no reason to exist; it's not compatible enough with VB6 but then also includes a bunch of VB6's weirdness.

[gabereiser]

Yeah, I agree. They didn't know it at the time but .Net and C# (their answer to java) would take over everything they did.