I'm using VB Express 2008 and oh my God, It's really make very easy for me to code lots of thing very easily. VBE2008 and better than VB6 and I'm making a new software for webmasters regarding contents i.e. article related. I'll publish it at DP for my buddies before going to leave on my website.
VB.NET is by far thee most robust and easiest developing language available. I develop in VB.NET full-time at work and to me has been thee best language out of (yes I have experience coding with these): Perl, Python, C (awful for speedy development, but superb for processing speed!), C++ (nothing special!!), C# (similar to VB but more confusing), VB6, Java, FORTRAN. But in all honesty, there is no programming language that's better than the other, each language has properties about it that tailors for the problem requirements My opinion on VB.NET is that yes it seems noobie because its so easy, but whats the point in making it hard!? It's just as powerful, if not more, than most other languages out there. These range of C coders call it noobie because it makes learning programming easier, afraid they'll lose their jobs in a few years to come probably?
VBN is bloated software. Easy for learning but some day you have to jump to .NET or C or whatever is more professional.
Visual Basic and Delphi are great for building simple applications with lots of user interface items.