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Clipper was really great... I wrote a windowing library in it years ago (DOS type Windows) that I used for contract jobs. I eventually had to move to Clarion though as it was faster to develop in.
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In the 90's, VB was the best language for desktop applications. Folks who used C++ complained about the effort it took to build GUIs, whereas the VB developers were banging out fully functional applications in the time C++ developers were completing 1 or 2 screens.
There was an amazing array of inexpensive third party controls, and there was a group (cannot remember the name) that published a large group of free controls, which I used heavily.
Using the Windows API was a PITA, but there were a lot of folks publishing solutions on the MS Usenet groups. I created DLLs that encapsulated the API calls, making them very easy to use, and still have those projects 25 years later. A DLL for reading/writing INI files worked with C# projects some years back.
Killing VB6 was among the dumbest moves MS made, one in a huge list of dumb moves. I briefly dabbled in VB.NET, then switched to C# as I guessed that VB.NET existed mostly to placate the very large, very unhappy VB6 developer base.
People like to whine about how verbose VB and COBOL are. When debugging someone else's undocumented code, verbose is a benefit, not a drawback. I taught one guy how to program in COBOL, even though I've never written a line nor compiled any. I read existing code, figure out the syntax, and taught him what to do. I couldn't do that in Javascript.
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My first (paid) job was COBOL and I'm still a little nostalgic.
But I agree with you and Pete, my guilty love was VB6. For me it was Interop where I could do all sorts of automation with Office for my users.
// TODO: Insert something here Top ten reasons why I'm lazy
1.
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My first payer was Cobol I only ever used VB6 to create components(ActiveX) I could use in another language which was usually Visual Foxpro ( a good product canned by M$ in favour of Access ) I don't feel guilty or ashamed for using VB6 it was the right tool for the job at the time.
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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Nor I, VB was extremely versatile at the time.
I merely used "guilty" in context with OP.
// TODO: Insert something here Top ten reasons why I'm lazy
1.
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It's always been cool to knock VB - all programmers I know ( a lot ) have used VB at some point.
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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Quote: It's always been cool to knock VB
Agree. People far smarter than me have always bagged VB on this and other forums for various reasons. I just enjoyed what I could do with it.
It was a transition in my career after working with Ingres, Informix etc which led me to C#.
// TODO: Insert something here Top ten reasons why I'm lazy
1.
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I've never been ashamed of any language that I (have to) use to provide the solution that my client wants. I have used VB6 up until a decade ago, and then VB.Net, C# and VBA now. So long as the job gets done, and my bills are paid...  I've never really had a choice in selecting the language as almost all of my work is in maintaining other people's code.
Happiness will never come to those who fail to appreciate what they already have. -Anon
And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music. -Frederick Nietzsche
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I wrote myself a Forth interpreter for PDP-11. I thought I’ve seen the light. Ah, the crazy ‘80-es 
Mircea
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Never be ashamed of Forth
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Latin.
(I'll get my coat)
"In testa che avete, Signor di Ceprano?"
-- Rigoletto
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I don't think I'm ashamed to say I learnt Latin at school.
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If you know just a smattering of Latin you can get by in most western languages
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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Watch Barbarians on Amazon streaming. Lots of Latin dialogue from the Roman army.
They tend to use a cadence that sounds very Italian to my ear.
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Nothing I'm ashamed of. Access/Office automation with VBA is so seriously powerful how could I be ashamed? People have bitched about the price of Office for years, but understanding the power available in it, it is underpriced.
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Not quite ashamed, but I started in Cold Fusion 4.5
Hogan
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I know nothing about CF, so please rest assured I am not dissing it, nevertheless, the way you phrased it:
snorkie wrote: Not quite ashamed, but I started in Cold Fusion 4.5
This is like the quip "I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy it"
Cheers,
Vikram.
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i am only ashamed that i never used basic, vb or otherwise for applications
PLI/I, Fortran (lots), Cobol(lots), C(lots and lots)
I actually learned Algol and used it for short time.
I was in the faster is better application area (computer graphics, numerical anal., simulation)
"A little time, a little trouble, your better day"
Badfinger
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FORTRAN in itself isn't terrible. Millions of lines of FORTRAN written by scientists who never did any formal computing and just let their systems grow and metastasise...that was torture.
Hopefully never again.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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agree
"A little time, a little trouble, your better day"
Badfinger
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I haven't heard that name in many a long year.
(Wow I feel old now)
cheers
Chris Maunder
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Delphi 6.
I used it for 2 different jobs. One job was Delphi only from 2004 to 2013. When that job played out (gov't contract not renewed) I reluctantly listed Delphi on my resume. Within the same month my old job ended I was hired as contract to hire at my current job specifically because of Delphi 6 on my resume. I have since transitioned to Java.
I do love the colon equals operator for assignment, no if (a = b) instead of if (a == b) mistakes there.
I started my career in a similar way, got first job because I knew dBase III+, soon move to Microsoft C 5.1.
Yes, that was a long time ago.
I’ve given up trying to be calm. However, I am open to feeling slightly less agitated.
I’m begging you for the benefit of everyone, don’t be STUPID.
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Ah I remember Delphi, we built a solution that worked for about 2 hours before the memory leaks crippled it, took the code to Borland and they could not fix it, Delphi died that day along with 3 months of work.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity -
RAH
I'm old. I know stuff - JSOP
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The first (real) language I learned was Pascal and I still respect the walrus operator. It just always seemed more imperative than plain '='.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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I used Delphi at my previous job, 2001-2012. The team lead had written a lot of projects in Turbo Pascal. They converted nicely to Delphi. Unfortunatly the bad habbits that were needed in DOS came along free for the ride.
The biggest was string handling. Trying to move from Delphi 7/Delphi 2006 to Delphi XE was a killer because the default definition of 'string' being an AnsiString changed to a UnicodeString breaking a lot of our libraries as they treated the strings as arrays.
They other issue was that the code was written as giant loop that ran in the idle time of Windows. This had the side effect of showing our application using 100% of the CPU time.
I do miss the Borland days though.
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