Ross insists:

Thats Quick Basic - VB 1.x was around 1993

1991, as per Alex' history; of course, that's when it was "introduced", and MS was at the time well known for the long gaps between "introducing" something and that something actually appearing on the market... (a reputation they may have shaken off, somewhat, in the mean time; but now seem set to rapidly regain with the "Longhorn" delays) ...but I remember seeing it in use in Sweden in, uh, fall 1992 IIRC.

(Actually, there *was* also a "VB for DOS" product, but AFAICR that appeared after VB for Windows; ~1992, '93, or thereabouts? It was quietly dropped not long afterwards, AFAICT.)

(Incidentally, this all was long after I'd begun dreaming of an IDE from Borland that would unite their Turbo Pascal with the then recently-bought DBase and the drag-and-drop ease of use I'd read so much about from Microsoft; ca 1991... We all know what happened: They eventually met and surpassed my dreams, with the introduction of Delphi -- but by then, it was too late; MS were already too entrenched, and getting ever more so, on the market with VB and Access. Borland missed the boat by at least two or three years.)

Paradox had a fully developed general purpose Windows programming enviroment with codable widgets as early as 1992 with Paradox 4 and Borland C++ 3 with Object Windows Library (OWL, MFC done right). It was miles beyond MS dev tools.

Sure, sure -- but it was NOT, neither Paradox 4 or Borland C++ 3 / OWL, a RAD IDE, no fucking way.

Just be a man and fucking admit they weren't, willya?!?

Edit: Note that the original VB for Windows did not sport a version number at all, but internally was called 3.x to match Windows 3.x and Windows NT, which was also born as 3.1 - this scam was pulled over and over again by MS. The first release of VB "as we know it" was around the same time as Windows NT 3.1 - so I'd say 1993 Spring. Again, by this time Borland C++ for Windows with OWL was already capable of making 32-bit flat memory model programs to run on Windows NT. There was utterly no comparison in quality of development tools.

Quite right, and I wouldn't dream of disputing this for a second.

But there was also no comparison in ease of use and speed of development, because Borland C++ for Windows wasn't a RAD IDE.

Just be a man and fucking admit that already.

I well remember my astonishment to realize that a year's worth of Paradox visual programming had all been done in a dead idiom, as Visual Basic was being touted as "revolutionary" product in the media - my first inkling at how biased the media were to Microsoft.

Seems to be about the same time I noticed the same thing.

Again and again Microsoft has propped up its monopoly by getting to developers first - it's Windows programmers more than anyone else who have handed them their monopoly. The PHB phase came later, far after the release of Windows 95. In the early to mid 90s competition was possible and sanity was an achieveable goal.

Yep -- just think, how TOTALLY different the world could look today, if Borland hadn't dropped the ball and introduced Delphi too late. Seriously.

Even more: If, instead of killing off Borland C++ for OS/2, they'd have followed up Delphi for Windows, "introduced in late 1991 / early 1992" (in my dream world), with a Delphi for OS/2 the year after, then where would Microsoft be now...? OTOH, it's pretty doubtful IBM would have become the good corporate citizen it seems to be at the moment, if *they* had been the ones with a near-monopoly on PC systems... So, never mind.