I have to agree that Basics look pretty ugly, and lack the algorithmic grace that makes the C family look like a collection of mathematical formulae. I really liked Java, but unfortunately Sun torpedoed its widespread adoption by imposing restrictions on it designed only to make it a weapon against Microsoft. Any language can produce binary, but that was ideologically abhorrent to Sun, so they nuked Microsoft's J++ in the courts. Microsoft's new C# looks very interesting, kind of a "Java++".

I generally don't take language wars seriously, because I think that what you can accomplish with a given language depends a lot more on the skill and experience of the programmer wielding it than the inherent capabilities of the language. For example, you said that you can't do system-level work with VB, but that's actually incorrect (no criticism intended--it's the difference between immersion in a language and using it occasionally). You make system calls to Windows DLLs the same way I make calls to the simple C++ DLLs I write, by declaring the module and entry points. Later editions of VB added a family of "AddressOf" operators to convert VB function and variable pointers (with all their internal dereferencing and vtable complexities) into simple 32-bit pointers. And if you're willing to drop into C++ in a DLL for the really tough jobs, you get all that C++ can offer with the ease of VB where each one is appropriate.

Just for fun, here are my bragging rights: Assembly (4004, 4040, 8080, 8085, 80x86, RCA1802 [PDP-8 instruction set]). Forth and derivatives like PostScript. Pascal. C/C++. VB. VBScript. Java. JavaScript. Perl. More cheesy little "macro" and "scripting" languages than I can count. No doubt I'll remember a couple more after I click Send.

One unique claim: Where you have to describe software you've written, I can demonstrate, because we're using it now. Somewhere north of 100,000 messages posted with only minor glitches.

[Click]

--Robert