I've wanted to write a rich history of Microsoft's Visual Basic for a long time. VB pioneered visual programming and had 3.5M developers(!) at its peak, but was lost to the sands of time. A short 18 months and 5,000 words later, it's finally finished👉

This was a labor-of-love project for me that started with a chance to interview @MrAlanCooper, a software design luminary and the "Father of Visual Basic".

From there, the road lead through patchwork existing histories, old computing magazines, cringy Microsoft promo videos, and chopping it up with Michael Geary, an original engineer on Cooper's team who also helped transition the product to Microsoft.

Like most great products, VB was both loved and hated. It helped Windows 3.1 become the dominant desktop OS and dev platform. It was the initial taste of the power and joy of coding for many. It was also derided as being a toy language and a lesser form of programming.

I won't spoil the ending, but I think we lost something when we lost Visual Basic. In many ways, we've spent the last 25 years chasing the ideas that it got pretty right.

Putting this piece together was a group effort with some superstar collaborators. @YirenLu and @mollyfmielke helped me with research and early drafts. @VoiceofIvana was essential to getting the idea off the ground and serving as the initial editor.

Pals and colleagues like @lynaghk @j_l_kelly @TaylorTheSavage @supercgeek and @krithix provided feedback and discussion along the way.

Supa fresh page design was provided by @camronsackett @justinpervorse and Parker Hutchison on the crack Retool creative team, with a special assist from @ZachSaucier.

And, of course, many thanks to @MrAlanCooper and @geary for bringing Ruby... er, Tripod... er, Visual Basic into the world—and sharing their time with me to tell the story of a fascinating piece of programming history. Give it a read and let me know what you think. 🧐

Hey @ryanlucas thanks for writing this. I got warm fuzzies reading it!

Thanks for spending time with me, Alan! Hope I did it justice.