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Visual Basic was first announced on May 20th, 1991, meaning tomorrow is the 20th anniversary. VB6 itself is already 13 years old and many of its spin-offs and clones are still going strong like VBA in excel, Realbasic on the mac, of course VB.NET, and most recently NS Basic that runs on top of javascript (but it's commercial).

Relevant: You Just Can't Kill Visual Basic http://www.devx.com/vb/Article/16562/1954

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I believe VBA for Excel predated its use within visual studio, if I'm correctly understanding Spolsky's telling of VBA's beginnings.

I cut my teeth on VBA in Excel, and for all of its weaknesses (and the fact that it just. won't. die), it was still a very powerful platform.

What really surprised me is that VB was only really being actively developed for 7 years - introduced in 1991, VB6 released in 1998. That's pretty incredible considering how widely adopted it was.

Service Pack 6 for VB6 was release in 2004. Not exactly active development, but it wasn't abandoned until around then.

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