I was one of the original developers of the "visual" side of Visual Basic.
It was called Ruby at the time (no relation to the programming language) and was going to be a customizable shell for Windows 3.0. The idea was that individual Windows users would create their own personal desktop using our visual editor and "gizmos" (later called by the much more boring name "controls") to make their own personal environment.
Microsoft, probably wisely, realized that this was more suited as a developer tool rather than an end user tool. They combined Ruby with Basic to create Visual Basic.
If anyone here ever created VBX custom controls, you can blame me for that terrible API!
And if anyone wonders where the phrase "fire an event" came from, you can find the answer in Retool's article about VB:
https://retool.com/visual-basic
(Content warning: drug reference)
As they say, "AMA".
If I may indulge in a bit of shameless self-promotion, I am looking for work. My team at IBM was hit pretty hard in their recent round of layoffs, as we lost our one exclusive customer, McDonald's.
I know a lot about a lot of languages and frameworks, but I don't know everything. Does anyone?
I love working with customers to understand their needs. Like every programmer, I enjoy coding, but it is just a way to make my customers happy.
If anyone is curious, you can find me here: