Yep, Visual Basic was very much under-appreciated. That, combined with a great IDE, Visual Forms, and a very decent compiler. Then .Net came and ruined a good thing.
These days, when I want to build cross platform desktop apps quickly, Lazarus is #1 choice.
P.S: I don't write desktop apps profesionally anymore, used to write a few in Java Swing and FX.
AOT compilation, with managed languages on top of COM, in a sense bringing back VB 6, and an approximation of C++ Builder.
Then management messed it all up.