- A complete IDE
- A relational database with multi-user access and transactions
- A visual form editor
- Drag-and-droppable Components
- A debugger that lets you mutate code and even the instruction pointer, while running.
- A compiler that generates distributable EXEs in a single click
- All of this inside 2mb.
vb3.exe, released in 1993, 22 whole years ago. We're still playing catch up.
- asynchronous/event-based programming
- importing C/native code from a DLL is trivial
- fantastic documentation (so good you don't need the Internet)
If you want a button that does something, you literally draw the button on your form, double click it, and write the code for that event. I agree - one day we'll catch up.
Also VB6 autocomplete rocked.
I'm sure there are many other great things that existed to do the same thing but VB was the tool that brought this type of capability to the masses on plain old PC hardware.
However some of it is inevitable, owing to what it lets you do: run the same site across platforms and devices, built from the ground-up to enable communication and collaboration, seamless updates, infrastructure support for caching etc.