Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Visual Basic (classic)" in English language version.
Summary of positive issues: Visual Basic is easy to learn and widely available.
Cooper ... gained industry recognition as the "Father of Visual Basic." (Microsoft's lawyers once sent Cooper a cease-and-desist order, demanding that he stop using that title. But after Cooper complained, Gates patched things up and even lauded him as a "Windows Pioneer" at an industry conference.)
RAD Basic is not the only game in town. Alternatives in varying stages of development include twinBASIC, which also aims to be backwards compatible with VB6 and VBA; and FreeBASIC, which implements much of what lurked in Microsoft QuickBASIC (and has a nifty IDE in the form of VisualFBEditor).
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