Visual basic for applications (VBA) was really useful for making very basic stuff, like putting code into spreadsheets. Unfortunately you couldn't write a standalone program from it that has an independent ui. But as a high school student, it was good enough as a tool to by pass the security put on the school labs,e.g, you can launch programs on a CD ROM. I remember the fun times where bunch of friends were able to play age of empires LAN games, even though the computers were locked down.