[dangerface]

> I would go so far as to say we've gone backwards in a big way.

I would say you probably just don't remember how bad VB was. As a language its extremely simple and misses most of the modern niceties we take for granted, no iterators, no maps, no anonymous functions, no multidimensional arrays, no objects, the list goes on.

I remember when I moved from Basic to VB the single most impressive thing was that it AUTOMATICALLY KNEW THE LINE NUMBERS! YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE TO WRITE THEM ON EVERY LINE! If you made a mistake IT COULD JUST TELL YOU THE ERROR, no more looking up codes on a table in the back of a book.

Basic was never supposed to be good to use it was only ever supposed to be easy to learn.