Scott Swigart: Also, yes, VB existed before .NET, but I don't see what's muddled about the language. If you want to see a kludge, look at what happened to C when it turned into C++.

How about the way that VB uses () for both array syntax and calling constructors so that when I type New MyObject(3) I have to add braces to indicate that I meant an array not passing 3 to a constructor?

All languages have their foibles, but after using VB.NET more during the last few weeks, it does seem to suffer from more arbitrary grammar decisions than most.