I still prefer visual basic 6 as a tool for learning programming. It is simply easier to Get Stuff Done(TM) on that language than any other. You don't have to worry about things like OOB etc. when you are just learning to program. I always fail to understand why people would gladly accept non-oob languages such as Go but yet condemn vb6 for being a terrible language because it is event-driven, too simple, no OOB etc. GUI creation is so easy, you don't have to worry about gtk bindings etc. No need to bother to print out a single line as a first program when you can skip directly to building a calculator app with a few seconds of drag and dropping. Can't afford VS? Just fire up a Microsoft office's macro editor and you are good to go.