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Component-based "architecture" was about reuse; not "COM" or "OLE" in particular.
VB was popular because of drag and drop (components).
The "RecordSet" (a component) was fundamental to sane client-server development.
"Before entering on an understanding, I have meditated for a long time, and have foreseen what might happen. It is not genius which reveals to me suddenly, secretly, what I have to say or to do in a circumstance unexpected by other people; it is reflection, it is meditation." - Napoleon I
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I used DragNDrop in a Windows Forms project using VB.Net (which will also work using C#). It's definitely a nice feature.
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Quite a few folks don't know that MarshalByReferrence has been around for decades all the wat back to the Win 9X days... And everyone has forgotten the real roots in COM!
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VB is among the walking dead of programming languages. Ruby is its sidekick. There's undoubtedly more.
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Sometimes I feel like I am beating a dead Horse. 
First, Haters are going to hate.
Second, programmers, for the most part, like and defend the language they know best, and disparage almost every other.
Third, VB isn't "cool" anymore.
Fourth, the main problem with VB is the word "Basic" in the name. Particularly the "B" which stands for "Beginners".
For Sander. No, it is not dead. See steveb's post above about MSIL.
For Griff I sincerely, greatly appreciate your knowledge, wisdom, and the fact you help a whole lot of people in this site, myself included.
However, if you don't like "OnError Resume Next", or "OnError GoTo" (which is also found in C#), then DON'T USE THEM.
Saying that VB should be dropped because of those statements, is like saying all tigers, extremely beautiful animals, should be killed because they might bite your head off when you try to pet them. Or saying that most women should be killed because they are a PITA.
IMO this is not only foolish, but ridiculous.
Finally, I am pretty sure that quite a lot of businesses are still using VB6 and VB.net to run their business, if not the majority. And I apologize for not being one of the "cool kids" and being subject to my second observation above myself.
Sometimes one man's trash is just trash, but not in the case of VB.
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I think Sanders point was that the tooling for VB.Net is lagging behind the more main stream c#. And yeah lots of people like to kick the old VB dog but there are also a lot of us that cut our teeth on it.
I got a hell of a shock a few years ago when I tried to show a newbie (school kid) how vb worked, I could it even connect to the database it had changed so much.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity -
RAH
I'm old. I know stuff - JSOP
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Yeah, I agree with you on all points.
Slow Eddie wrote: For Sander. No, it is not dead. See steveb's post above about MSIL.
See my reply though.
The tooling seems to lag behind and Microsoft seems to not update VB anymore, making the gap with C# even bigger in the future.
Sure it's not "dead" because many people and companies still use it, but it doesn't seem like a good alternative for new development anymore.
In the end, VB.NET can do everything C# can (or it could a few years ago) and you can write good and bad code in both languages, but how long will this be true?
So by "dead" I mean Microsoft isn't actively developing it anymore, making it a no-go for new development.
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I agree that that is no good reason to hate a language.
I remember having to do some changes in a VB6 project many many years ago, there was a dynamic form, which means that when the user chooses a value from a combobox than some controls could be created at runtim (depending on the choice)
I don't remember if it gave a compile error or a runtime error, what I do remember is that it did not worked as we expected, so we called for microsoft support which the company paid for.
Their answer was that this is by design, VB did not allow creating controls in the closeup event of a combobox...
I did not liked the language before this, but at that time I did became a real hater.
There are so many examples of stuff in this language that was unbelievable, there are so many reasons not to like it.
But agreed, the reasons you mention are not reasons to hate it.
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I believe the largest "railroad" in North America runs COBOL and IMS for it's backend and VB for it's front end (because I worked on that project and can't see the effort required to change).
"Before entering on an understanding, I have meditated for a long time, and have foreseen what might happen. It is not genius which reveals to me suddenly, secretly, what I have to say or to do in a circumstance unexpected by other people; it is reflection, it is meditation." - Napoleon I
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Eddy, well said!
I recall creating Windows applications prior to VB3 ... GAWD! That was ugly. The rise of VB brought about far quicker development times as we didn't have to re-create the wheel by inventing new atoms each time.
I also recall other vendors playing catch-up, trying to emulate VB's drag-n-drop. Other vendors saw some success, but VB set the stage for modern development.
After MS terminated VB6, I stuck with it for several years, then tried VB.NET for a year. I saw the handwriting on the wall, jumped to C#, and that's been my primary language since then. VB.NET is not dead, but support for it is less and less each year -- at this point I'd not bother with it. But I also have a consultant's POV, so anything that doesn't increase my marketability loses my interest.
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And RemObjects "Mercury": VB for all platforms ... for a bunch of $$$ but it exists!
I cannot remember: What did I before google?
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Darwin's Theory: Humans are a product of evolution and what is produced by them falls under these rules, that means programming languages too.
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was it ever really alive then ?
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We started using C# many years ago (10 years or so). Although we've had to continually adjust/tweak our dependencies, mainly due to interactions with SQL Server and backup functions, it has done the job for us. I learned VB in college, but we are strictly C# now. We moved away from WinForms due to some inherent functionality restrictions that were cramping our style.
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What were the functionality issues that were the problem? I use Windows Forms!
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VB.NET and VB, probably are dead-ish as everyone above has discussed. VBA, which is VB for Office apps, is most definitely not.
Bond
Keep all things as simple as possible, but no simpler. -said someone, somewhere
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Wherever VB.Net is currently used it will continue to be available. But when MS comes up with something new, then probably only C# will be available.
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When I attended Microsoft Ignite in 2019, I won a t-shirt that said "Kill VB, before it kills you!"
Sounds like someone at MS saved my life 
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They meant Visual Basic 6 - at that time. MS's goal was to replace VB6 as a stand-alone application with VB.Net as part of what's now Visual Studio.
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This was in 2019, and Ignite was purely about .NET technologies, so no, it had absolutely nothing to do with VB6.
Microsoft has lamented having to keep VB in .NET for YEARS. They want it gone.
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It's just pinin' for the fjords. 
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I have a complete collection of MS Visual Basic 6.0 with Library and Visual Studio 6.0
and More books than I care to admit to all this was purchased before I had the internet.
Never was able to load it on New Windows 7 32 bit Machine even with great suggestions from Slow Eddie
Make you a great deal like FREE just pay shipping
I still write with VS 2019 and VB.Net WinForms apps with SQLite it is fun because I know a lot from what
I learned using VB 6. Basic taught a lot of us coding in the beginning of your coding careers
So it deserves some respect. But as progress moves forward and New Projects require more workable languages
professional programmers embrace new languages. Clients do not always understand the need for a rewrite in
a more workable language. Perhaps I will take some time this Winter to learn C#
For now I am trying to build a Desk and looking at Track Saws and building a MFT style cutting station
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I don't believe most of the people making comments especially the most negative have ever written anything in VB much less VB.NET. I understand why people might prefer C# if they are coming from C programming background. Moving to VB.NET was a big change from VB6 as I needed to learn about OOP. I wonder how many replying even know that VB.NET is OOP. I have been using visual basic since about 1992 VB3 thru VB6 and Visual Studio 2017 VB.Net. I write code to test hardware that I design. Over the years it has been radios for the military and Aviation. I like VB and currently VB.Net because anyone with some programming exposure can read my code like a test procedure.
pmarshall
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Yeah, I never got the hate either.
Although I currently don't like the VB.NET syntax, I can write the same code in VB as I'd write in C#.
It uses the same framework, the same OOP concepts, the same language constructs...
The only thing I hate, and which causes a lot of headache later on, is that Option Strict is Off by default, effectively making VB.NET a weakly typed language.
As you said, anyone with some programming exposure can read it and will at some time try their hand at it.
So the language has lots of weakly typed programs written by beginners.
Not really the language's fault, but I think that's what most people have against it.
Personally, I've never seen a well written VB.NET application.
On the other hand, I've seen very few well written C# applications either 
Most programmers just aren't that good 
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