Why I Dislike VisualBASIC

Why I dislike VisualBASIC 6

Note that some of these statements may or may not apply to VisualBASIC.net:

Bad Things

The editor forces capitalization rules onto the programmer, which can be considered as a good thing (regarding consistency), unless it forces initial capitals onto the programmer which make reserved words indistinguishable from other words in the code when viewed in a editor without highlighting capabilities.
The editor seems to insert the End Sub and End Function text for me, I got used to it, but these things should never ever be forced upon anybody without making the feature (erhm) optional?
The editor also seems adamant on having a single space between the assignment operator (and it's left-, right- values), which makes the following impossible, and impedes source code readability quite massively:

Public Const MyStupidConst = 1
Public Const MySecondStupidConst = 2
Public Const MyEvenMoreStupidConst = 4

The source code for the forms is stored in the '.frm' file, which unnecessarily mixes form and functionality (i.e., interface design and code).
Modules in VisualBASIC can access each others public subs, functions and variables without any clear notion of hierarchy or dependancy.
The use of a keyword As to assign datatypes to variables. The more common equal sign '=', presents a visual que, which is now missing, and thus decreases source code readability.
It doesn't use ';' characters as end-of-line identifiers. For short lines it's no problem, but using a continue-line character like '_' just looks butt ugly.
Array declaration by using a '*' multiplication characters looks very confusing. (Weird: They do use a '&' for string concatenation to remove confusion, then intentionally confuse people with this, a designer with multiple personality syndrome?)
The language is limited in datatypes, it seems to be incapable of handling unsigned numbers, which can be a show stopper when doing system level programming.
It allows untyped variables, well actually Variants (but it's more or less the same thing). Beside bad practice, Variants also use gobbs of unnecessary memory.
Old school console screen IO seems impossible (at least without making direct Win32 API calls), apparently some wanker probably decided it wasn't necessary anymore. (Oh well 640K should be enough for everybody, right?)
Still uses labels and 'On Error GoTo' constructs. This is really pityfull in modern day and age. For crying out loud, this was considered bad practice even three decades ago! There was a time in which people were lynched for using 'GoTo' statements. And they still should be... The concept of exceptions was introduced into Ada back in 1983, so lack of better options is no excuse at all.
Calling Subs of Function is not the same, with Subs I can use MySub MyParam, and with functions it's like this MyVar = MyFunction(MyParam), I don't see the point.
It's the least portable language in existance because there only is one full implementation of it, even if other vendors would want to implement it, there is no (internationally) accepted (ISO, ANSI, ECMA) standards document about VisualBASIC.
It allows programmers to declare variables wherever they need them, fueling bad programming practices amongst novice programmers.
It has no clear object hierarchy, which basically means it's a mess.

Good Things

It uses a '&' character to differentiate between string concatenation and mathematical addition. It's a bit awkward at first though.
The debugger is very easy and smooth, though implementation must have been easy in VisualBASIC 6, since the language still is interpreted in development mode.
the 'if .. end if' construction shows clearly which end statement belongs to which previous statement, which improves code readability.

-- Pascal de Bruijn (11 Jun 2005)

"Let’s say the adoption of programming languages has very often been somewhat accidental, and the emphasis has very often been on how easy it is to implement the programming language rather than on its actual merits and features. For instance, Basic would never have surfaced because there was always a language better than Basic for that purpose."

-- Alan Kay (ACM Queue vol. 2, no. 9 - Dec/Jan 2004-2005)