Indeed, VB6 was essentially BASIC with OLE Automation object model bolted on. (Which itself was designed to a large extent to match what VB was doing before, s

Indeed, VB6 was essentially BASIC with OLE Automation object model bolted on. (Which itself was designed to a large extent to match what VB was doing before, so it's a bit circular). And let's not forget that .NET grew out of the "COM 2.0" project. Which started in 1998, at the same time VB6 was released.