>I personally think that vb's popularity stems directly from microsoft's push behind windows itself - Bill Gates knew that no one would buy an OS if there were no apps for it, so it was just in his own best interest to make sure that as many programmers as possible would develop for his OS.

Hi Alex. This was mentioned in the history of VB. VB was pushed quickly out the door as a easy and quick and temporary way to make apps for Windows. VB was meant for prototyping (remember all the ads?) and then you were supposed to rewrite the apps into a "real" language like VC++.