> are there any programming kits today that have all three of these attributes?

While not a fully visual development environment, I'd say Delphi. I think they got the design right 21 years ago. They struck the right balance between visual and non-visual development and married that to a language (Object Pascal) which had fast compilation, directness, and simplicity while also offering low-level capability.

Chuck Jazdzewski was one of the original Delphi developers. Last year he wrote a series of articles on the early days of Delphi: http://removingalldoubt.com/

It's a shame Object Pascal isn't more widely used. It's a nice language. Maybe Free Pascal (http://www.freepascal.org) and Lazarus (http://www.lazarus-ide.org/) can spread the Pascal gospel.