I’m fairly certain that the only way to originally purchase VB 1.0 was an 800 number posted in Dvorak’s weekly PC Info magazine column. It was $99 and I borrowed it from my manager. I still have the original manuals and 3.5” disks.
It was almost like Microsoft was sheepishly waving it and saying, “maybe you’ll think this is cool,” while not directly challenging their C++ audience.
I just want to add that as popular/cool as Visual Basic became, the first few years it was derided by most “real” developers as a crappy shortcut. PowerBuilder was king for awhile and even Delphi was ahead until VB 6.0 crushed all the competition.
It was almost like Microsoft was sheepishly waving it and saying, “maybe you’ll think this is cool,” while not directly challenging their C++ audience.