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Some sort of glue language that maybe everyone loves to hate, but felt right at home for you? Are you a closet Access/VBA junkie? Do you secretly love Perl?
For me it would definitely be VB6. As much as I hate to admit it, for Windows UI code that glued my DLLs together, I feel like it was fantastic, even if the language itself was clunky and kind of limited unless you were willing to hack down to win32 from it quite a bit. Still, pretty neat what you could do with it if you were willing to get dirty. I learned a lot of win32 with it.
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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There was very little you couldn't do in VB6 I to learnt a lot of Win32 stuff and was introduced to the wonderful world of Com servers and ActiveX. Exciting times.
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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VB6 was the dogs danglies if you used it well.
Absolute dog's dinner in other cases.
veni bibi saltavi
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In 1993 I started using a version of Basic that was a lot like todays Assembly, it was a brief but important stepping stone in understanding how stuff works in programming, how instructions are executed one after the other, how loops are created with the go to command etc. I quit trying things with the language shortly afterwards for a few reasons.
modified 3-Nov-23 12:27pm.
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Calin Negru wrote: a version of Basic that was a lot like todays Assembly
That seems mighty odd, and purpose defeating for a language called Basic.
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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“a lot” is maybe to much said, like for instance you had no registers but you had no functions to work with either, to establish the execution order you had to mark each line with a number. You could then jump as required from place to place with the go to command. There are a ton more features that make a programming language, I’m only describing the things I knew how to use.
modified 3-Nov-23 13:16pm.
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My first programming class had Basic like that, I couldn't stand it  . I blame my instructor for promoting 'spaghetti' code. If I had more than 20 lines, I was completely lost, goto this, goto that... It wasn't until I had FORTRAN 77 that the structured programming possibilities opened up for me  . Oddly now I do a fair amount of assembler programming for embedded systems.
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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30 years later they still teach that stuff.
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I remember that kind of BASIC (Beginners All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, if I recall correctly).
Mostly I'm grateful that I was introduced to both assembly and Basic within a couple of weeks of each other -- I very quickly understood why the largest line number was 32767, for example. (Unless it was 65535, but I don't think so....) I don't remember using lots of "go to"s. I remember that being discouraged even then. But, hey, this was in the 1980s.
The other advantage of starting back then was that I could follow the concepts, if not every detail, from transistor to gate to register to processor to assembly to compiler. Much harder to follow the details of what's going on in today's processors. And I'm grateful I rarely care -- modern compilers are wonderful tools. I haven't dug into the generated assembly code in a long time.
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You're a true poet
cheers
Chris Maunder
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Having been brought up with Fortran IV, I was ecstatic when I learned Clipper in ths MS-DOS world. Windows made me change to VB6 which I used for many years for numerous projects but there is a time when all good things must go. I switched to VB .Net and now to C# but I am still nostalgic about Clipper and VB6
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Clipper was great (at, say, get). I am not remembering the linker that I used.
I still refer to zap & pack.
Brief was the editor - loved it.
That set me up well for a FoxPro gig, and then on to MS Access.
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I loved Clipper
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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Clipper was really great... I wrote a windowing library in it years ago (DOS type Windows) that I used for contract jobs. I eventually had to move to Clarion though as it was faster to develop in.
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In the 90's, VB was the best language for desktop applications. Folks who used C++ complained about the effort it took to build GUIs, whereas the VB developers were banging out fully functional applications in the time C++ developers were completing 1 or 2 screens.
There was an amazing array of inexpensive third party controls, and there was a group (cannot remember the name) that published a large group of free controls, which I used heavily.
Using the Windows API was a PITA, but there were a lot of folks publishing solutions on the MS Usenet groups. I created DLLs that encapsulated the API calls, making them very easy to use, and still have those projects 25 years later. A DLL for reading/writing INI files worked with C# projects some years back.
Killing VB6 was among the dumbest moves MS made, one in a huge list of dumb moves. I briefly dabbled in VB.NET, then switched to C# as I guessed that VB.NET existed mostly to placate the very large, very unhappy VB6 developer base.
People like to whine about how verbose VB and COBOL are. When debugging someone else's undocumented code, verbose is a benefit, not a drawback. I taught one guy how to program in COBOL, even though I've never written a line nor compiled any. I read existing code, figure out the syntax, and taught him what to do. I couldn't do that in Javascript.
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My first (paid) job was COBOL and I'm still a little nostalgic.
But I agree with you and Pete, my guilty love was VB6. For me it was Interop where I could do all sorts of automation with Office for my users.
// TODO: Insert something here Top ten reasons why I'm lazy
1.
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My first payer was Cobol I only ever used VB6 to create components(ActiveX) I could use in another language which was usually Visual Foxpro ( a good product canned by M$ in favour of Access ) I don't feel guilty or ashamed for using VB6 it was the right tool for the job at the time.
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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Nor I, VB was extremely versatile at the time.
I merely used "guilty" in context with OP.
// TODO: Insert something here Top ten reasons why I'm lazy
1.
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It's always been cool to knock VB - all programmers I know ( a lot ) have used VB at some point.
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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Quote: It's always been cool to knock VB
Agree. People far smarter than me have always bagged VB on this and other forums for various reasons. I just enjoyed what I could do with it.
It was a transition in my career after working with Ingres, Informix etc which led me to C#.
// TODO: Insert something here Top ten reasons why I'm lazy
1.
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I've never been ashamed of any language that I (have to) use to provide the solution that my client wants. I have used VB6 up until a decade ago, and then VB.Net, C# and VBA now. So long as the job gets done, and my bills are paid...  I've never really had a choice in selecting the language as almost all of my work is in maintaining other people's code.
Happiness will never come to those who fail to appreciate what they already have. -Anon
And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music. -Frederick Nietzsche
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I wrote myself a Forth interpreter for PDP-11. I thought I’ve seen the light. Ah, the crazy ‘80-es 
Mircea
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Never be ashamed of Forth
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Latin.
(I'll get my coat)
"In testa che avete, Signor di Ceprano?"
-- Rigoletto
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I don't think I'm ashamed to say I learnt Latin at school.
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