There was more to VB than just guis though - one could use it to build COM components far more easily than with C++ - the fact that a string was just String rat

There was more to VB than just guis though - one could use it to build COM components far more easily than with C++ - the fact that a string was just String rather than the miasma of competing flavours that abounded in Visual C++ was worth the price of admittance alone. Delphi was arguably best in breed here, but always suffered from lacking the Microsoft badge.