Choose the correct tool for the job (Score 2, Informative)

VB has taken a lot of slack, because it's a language which gives a lot of slack. You are free to write really bad code, and VB won't complain about compiling or running it. ActiveX provides a really useable interface for components (libraries and widgets) which makes deployment quite easy, and coding in parts easily attainable. That being said, it comes at a performance cost, which I wouldn't want to incur if I didn't have to (for instance, using the ActiveX ADO controls penalises you by as much as 1500%, over writing code that talks to the ADO libraries directly).

VB6 is, and, in my opinion, for a long time will be, a very good platform for building database-driven applications for the win32 environment. Also, WINE has no problems with VB6 stuff, so a deployment method for "alternate" clients is the WINE route, though I don't personally offer that as an enterprise solution -- it's a work-around. But there are a lot of software houses that are quite happy providing solutions only for the win32 environment. .NET has a lot to offer -- and I don't think you will lose on the performance side, because, as someone earlier forgot to mention, although .NET is compiled to an intermediatary language which is interpreted, so, to an extent, is VB. Which is why the IDE provides such an easy-to-use debugger with relative ease. Trust me, the VB6 ide beats the Delphi6 one hands down, especially with respect to real-time debugging (you can actually change your code and carry on debugging without a recompile, for example).

The move from VB6 to .NET isn't minor, as someone else would suggest. For one thing, .NET kind of forces you to go OO, where VB hid that from you if you didn't want to know about it. VB.NET isn't a simple hop from VB6 -- yes, the syntax is nearly exactly the same, but you have to learn the underlying libraries and code structure as well. There is a curve there, but it may well be worth it because of the compile-once-run-anywhere concept of .NET.

All of this doesn't really make that much difference when I don't know your exact target. But I'm assuming that it's not a 3D fps, since that would be just nasty to code in VB (: . If it's database-driven, then VB isn't really your enemy -- but it would be worth the "free cross-platform power" to learn the VB.NET route. I think your boss probably wants to keep in on the action, and moving to a totally foreign language and library base may be a very diffcult move. I faced something similar at a pervious job, where I tried to show the merits of PHP versus regular old ASP (not .NET). I originally met with postivity, and showed a migration route, even taking the time to put together and lecture notes on what one needed to know to migrate from ASP to PHP. I even built a mechanism for sharing the session between ASP and PHP pages with relative ease, so that a hybrid environment could exist. And after some time, because my boss didn't take it on, my fellow workers didn't bother. I know that today, they are even looking at re-writing a system I wrote in ASP, now that they have more clearly defined the requirements of the system, and realised that I built something far too complex for them. The point is, they weren't willing to move because it was too new and foreign, and they didn't have a driving force (ie. a boss with determination) to enforce the change.

Whatever you run with, you have to get your boss to take it on first. Selling it to your team mates may be a waste of time. I would also urge you to choose something cross-platform, just because the way of the world is tending more towards open platforms. I could push any of the seven languages that I use on a (fairly) regular basis, but I don't think this is the place to start a sales pitch. If you would like to discuss this further, feel free to contact me. I think I've seen a lot of what you're talking about before, and I may be able to give you a more objective approach.