"James Britt" <jamesUNDERBARb / neurogami.com> came back with:
> Dave Burt wrote:
>>
>> VB looks clean because the syntax is very simple and inflexible, and 
>> doesn't allow you to do all that much. 95% of all VB programs are 
>> built-in language constructs and functions.
>
> Wow.  We have very different VB exposure.  Most VB code I've worked with 
> involves numerous custom classes and interfaces, along with assorted calls 
> to the Win32 API.

I've certainly imported chunks of Windows API, and built pages of wrapper 
functions to have them make sense in the VB context... I guess I sometimes 
block those memories - maybe a psychological response. But I never got any 
value whatsoever out of VB clunky classes. Classes made sense when I learned 
Java.

The only VB I code now is behind MS Office, and in ASP (VBScript at least).

> Late binding and the Variant data type are quite handy, too, for dynamic 
> programming.

True, but if you declare Variants you don't get context-menus full of 
applicable properties and methods in the IDE's code editor. I often end up 
declaring a fake variable just to get that list, then deleting it after 
writing the line of code. Anyone?
Dim x as RecordSet
x.<look through list, pick the method, check the params it needs...>

> Writing apps that exposed an OLE automation API (so you can script 
> instances using external scripts), as well has hosting the Windows script 
> control (so your application itself can load scripts), was quite 
> entertaining.

Gee, James, that does sound like fun, but I'll leave it to you!

Back to Ruby on the topic of scripts: I often imported 
"Scripting.Dictionary" and "Scripting.Regexp" into VB/VBA/VBScript, and 
Ruby's syntax sugar around these (hashes and regexps) I found a major 
advantage over VB. Not to mention arrays, and having to ReDim Preserve them 
to append to them. Argh.

Cheers,
Dave