I'd actually counter this with Lotus Notes 6.5; On top of what VB offered it had a built-in locally replicated, fully encryptable and access manageable DBMS for

I'd actually counter this with Lotus Notes 6.5; On top of what VB offered it had a built-in locally replicated, fully encryptable and access manageable DBMS for every application you developed. Plus, it had a formula expression language that could take many tasks without needing to drop into the basic derived scripting language. To create simple CRUD apps that you could still work on in airplanes & trains it was really powerful. One of my favourite moments was when I sat in a corporate meeting with 12 or so different stakeholders for a project management software, and while they were discussing things to change, I just took the projector and implemented it live.