I worked for a year on VB (before .NET that is...)
Then.. i discovered Delphi...
I worked 4 years on Delphi5, and it was very satisfying. Lots of free (as in free beer) libraries, well structured base libraries, great help system, and it was fast!
I don't know how is Delphi those years, but i heard that modern VB is very good
I would certaintly buy a product that does with Ruby or Perl6 something like Delphi did with Object Pascal.