GUI interfaces were going to be a massive productivity goldmine compared to green screens and TUI interfaces. Now here we are back to those again in various forms and web browsers won in the end anyway.
Was a wild ride in the 1990s when it was happening in earnest.
The tools lacked the visual GUI builder of VB, but really, that's just a detail. The rest of the framework was really quite powerful, and a GUI builder could have been added. But in true IBM fashion, they had no idea how to market something that wasn't mainframe targeted, and they killed the project. There was a fair amount of acrimony on internal forums about this at the time.
Otherwise, the other links point to the game, the movie and the cyberespionage malware attack.
It's also worth mentioning Sharpdevelop.net which also gave you the choice of VB.Net or C# and another language, can't recall what it was.
There were so many options available. So many books were written, sold and then became obsolete. I know because I bought tons of them at the now defunct Fry's Electronics and later donated them to the local public library.
But with AI advancing, focusing on programming and earning a CS degree as a future investment does not hold the same appeal that it once did. Of course, this is just my opinion.
Sol Roth: The Downvoted Man :)
VB was practical and useful at the time, especially as a learning tool in school. I enjoyed testing the competitors that arose to emulate its abilities, including RapidQ Basic, Envelope Basic (a.k.a Phoenix Object Basic), some of which are documented here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC
I think it would be cool to see a Documentary on programming languages, e.g. their history, rivalries, successes and downfalls, of the 80s, 90s and 2000s. If it is made correctly, with humor, it could be entertaining, perhaps even profitable.