.Net language strategy is to have no long term strategy. They just react to the market, and don't care that much about anything else. VB6 was a great eco-system, had most developers in the late 1990s yet they managed to completely fuck it up. dotNet and it's VB.Net was a bad joke until 2003, and after years of announcing and hot air it was incompatible, and the Wizard to convert was a Lite version from a third party vendor. Many stayed VB6 and changed to the web, or also also looked at Java alternative C#. But the RAD development is a day of the past. Nowadays building a UI app is certainly more effort than in VB6 days. Anyway, nowadays web apps and Android and iOS are in, WinPhone is dead and desktop apps are out.