>You said it well. But some neophytes in the programming world seems confused as to what full OOP means and what are the tools fall into that category. I've never seen MS putting VB into that category but some outside guys do. Some seminars do the same putting in the word "Oriented" which to me attaching such a word in Objects, it should have four ingredients: Inheritance, Polymorphism, Encapsulation, and Subclassing.

The MS presentation at the TechNet briefing last year that covered Visual Studio, and VB in particular, was very up-front about VB and OO, but that might have been a matter of the guy making the presentation at the session I attended, who has a strong Java background (if they're available in your area, take advantage of them and attend; they're either free or very inexpensive, cover MS's strategies and products from several different POV, and you can meet local vendors and normally grab a few useful eval or product update CDs while you're there.)

Theory and personal bias aside, it is possible to implement good OOD without inheritance; in many cases composition can be used, or you can work harder and have a bigger headache in maintaining and enhancing the implementation over the life of the system.

I'd rather work on a well-designed system implemented in a language that had only incomplete OOP capabilities than a poorly-designed and analysed system implemented with a great OOP tool.