I picked-up a copy of VB1 (student priced, so... $140 CAD, IIRC) - and built a few simple apps (Character creator/manager for original Cyberpunk RPG, dice roller, bowling league management) while I was in school.
Once I left school, I built a couple 'bespoke' commercial applications; 'WinReal' (AFAIK, the first Windows-based real-estate appraisal software - in Canada at least), 'WireStrand Estimator' (would calculate multi-strand wire/cable material requirements accounting for "twist-over-time" and number of individual strands with or without a core strand) - and a retail POS/accounting system used by a small local chain of 'CD' stores.
But - my real transition from 'glue together controls with some simple logic' was when I was working on that retail/POS software and suffered a project corruption and lost all the code...
... to prevent this from ever happening to me again, I reverse-engineered the .MAK format, and then wrote a simple version control application that would use that to make copies of all the contained files... (I guess I could have just pulled from a directory folder, but - yeah, hindsight is 20/20 - I learned alot and became a better code)...
Around the time of VB3, transitioning to VB4 - my corporate job was having a devil of a time doing that, because they purchased EVERY single VBX control on the market - but had no design standards/governance around which could be used - so, we had an application with about 90 different forms, and there were at least 20-30 different 'textboxes/buttons' from different VBX vendors spread throughout that (based on developer preference for pretty icon in the control panel) - transitioning to VB4/OCX was a nightmare, because not every vendor was also upgrading in a timely fashion.
Myself, I had started outgrowing the constraints with VB3 for personal/hobby/side-hustle projects - and ended-up using Delphi. I could create and sell a standalone, single-file multi-media screensaver - with not VB runtime dependencies. It was faster, more powerful - but never caught-on for my commercial/corporate clients. (In 20 years, I have only found 2 organizations that used Delphi internally)
Ah... memories... Now no one lets me code anymore (well - in compiled fashion - I do alot of DevOps/automation scripting)
Once I left school, I built a couple 'bespoke' commercial applications; 'WinReal' (AFAIK, the first Windows-based real-estate appraisal software - in Canada at least), 'WireStrand Estimator' (would calculate multi-strand wire/cable material requirements accounting for "twist-over-time" and number of individual strands with or without a core strand) - and a retail POS/accounting system used by a small local chain of 'CD' stores.
But - my real transition from 'glue together controls with some simple logic' was when I was working on that retail/POS software and suffered a project corruption and lost all the code...
... to prevent this from ever happening to me again, I reverse-engineered the .MAK format, and then wrote a simple version control application that would use that to make copies of all the contained files... (I guess I could have just pulled from a directory folder, but - yeah, hindsight is 20/20 - I learned alot and became a better code)...
Around the time of VB3, transitioning to VB4 - my corporate job was having a devil of a time doing that, because they purchased EVERY single VBX control on the market - but had no design standards/governance around which could be used - so, we had an application with about 90 different forms, and there were at least 20-30 different 'textboxes/buttons' from different VBX vendors spread throughout that (based on developer preference for pretty icon in the control panel) - transitioning to VB4/OCX was a nightmare, because not every vendor was also upgrading in a timely fashion.
Myself, I had started outgrowing the constraints with VB3 for personal/hobby/side-hustle projects - and ended-up using Delphi. I could create and sell a standalone, single-file multi-media screensaver - with not VB runtime dependencies. It was faster, more powerful - but never caught-on for my commercial/corporate clients. (In 20 years, I have only found 2 organizations that used Delphi internally)
Ah... memories... Now no one lets me code anymore (well - in compiled fashion - I do alot of DevOps/automation scripting)