I always loved VB. Super useful for banging together a quick "enter a value in a text box and click a button to do something in the database" utility.

And VBX was a pain, but had some advantages over the COM-based controls. My first job at MSFT in 1994 was to build demonstration apps for interactive TV. When I started there was already a base application in VB3. I needed to add transparently layered images and text with rotation and animated transitions, and a windowless VBX made it easy to build that transparency. IIRC, you could not make windowless OCX controls. I'm not even sure how you'd do independently positioned transparent controls in VB4+.