Whoa. VB6 was totally what got me into software development as a kid. A blast from the past I needed today, thanks.
C++ and MFC was worse for different reasons, but then I discovered Linux and the rest is history.
Still, haven't found anything as powerful as VB6's RAD. These days we lay out UIs by hand or by writing XML, like absolute cavemen.
We could easily do this now if companies would accept standard UI component styles instead of everyone inventing their own.
Even on the web, the set of controls we use are mostly the same we did in the 90s, except everyone styles them differently.
exactly how i did it as well! But it was a pirated copy of visual studio (6?) and it came in 6 CDs. I had no idea what it actually was, and just installed it and played around.
I'm so glad that i bought those pirated CDs off the street - it was a huge stack of disks for like $50 bucks, and it included a bunch of pirated games, pirated encyclopedia (brittanica at the time iirc), various music software (cakewalk pro, not that i ever used it).
There would not have been a chance in hell i'd discover these things by myself.
But later they switched to new format of MSDN and old IDEs can't use them. And there was some add-on that allow to old IDEs to use new MSDN format.