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This is so sad.

NSIS installers used to get flagged as malware occasionally, too. Was very frustrating for distributing software.

Delphi produced (produces?) quite small executables, which was very desirable for malware writers.

I'd add small stand-alone executables. IIRC it was also quite popular in Europe in general, due to Pascal or Delphi being used at universities etc.

In recent times your average Delphi application has gotten rather bloated, but that's mainly due to RTTI, generics and certain standard library stuff. It's still quite possible to make small executables.

What about pre-.NET VB?

Those required prerequisites in the form of the VB runtime, so AFAIK not so popular. Also more limited or difficult to use in terms of writing malware.