I agree. VB6 was actively executed by Microsoft. VB6 didn't have to die.

I'm still surprised to this day that nobody stepped into that vacuum and created a VB6 clone. There should have been a ton of money for doing so--I wonder what prevented it.

I still have clients who are struggling to upgrade millions of lines of VB6 code base into something more modern (generally Python). GUI construction sucks in every single language since VB6.

The nice part is that they are unanimous in not choosing a Microsoft language ever again.