i loved VB6 (our school intro programming class used it) and i sometimes wonder how much influence that had on my future career choices. It was a programming environment that felt fun, powerful and not scary at all
IMO VB.NET was just disappointing - tried too hard to turn VB into something 'proper' with 'better standards' rather than just being what it was (the YOLO language that you could build scrappy things in fast)