Do people actually use devtools to write code?
It is true that people don't generally ship code written in devtools, but then most of the programs shipped on the Commodore 64 were not written in basic. (Unless you count hundreds of peeks and pokes as basic.)
I do miss the immediacy of the programming experience, but I also think the correct modern day analog of that is the browser.
The browser is exactly what I had in mind when I said "you have to learn a stack of languages". Sure, okay, console.log() gets you "hello world", but so does "echo" so maybe I placed the bar too low. Still, getting into the modern web experience requires you to learn HTML + CSS + Javascript and how they relate and interop.
Fast forward a little bit from the BASIC days to Visual Basic. Back then you could write a desktop application with a GUI, controls, a window, and needed one language and one environment. I don't see how the browser world is easier or more approachable than that.
Also, if you want, you can write GUI in the browser without html/css, with the canvas element. There are frameworks for that, not sure how mature they are, though.
No you didn't, it was built into the VB editor; you just dragged and dropped elements into a window frame, then edited callback functions. You didn't have to leave VB at all or learn any other language or framework.
We've built an explicitly Visual Basic-like programming environment for the web - it's got one language (Python), drag'n'drop design, built in database, actual working autocompletion - the works: https://anvil.works.
Would love to hear what you think!