I am required to take and pass VB .NET in school. I would not really recommend it as a starter language. Because there is really not a lot of coding that you have to do. You can (drag and drop) everything. and it's just not what programming is about.
It was/is hard to take it seriously, around here anyway. I know that if you wanted to go into pure code it would get somewhat more complicated, but there is always that option of using the GUI side, and that is one thing that would really teach bad techniques.
Of course you have to look at this. If you completely Ignore the GUI side of VB then you work with pure code. And as most of you probably know. Some of the most sophisticated viruses written are in VB's .NET and BASIC languages.
Minor, and now some Major Spy-ware applications are also starting to use the VB route because it has more options for diguising the programs as non-malicious.
No I don't know this because I build the virus. I know this because I clean computers for a living
