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    Bill Gates demonstrates Visual Basic (1991)

    Crapkai

    4 HN mentions · mentioned in 4 months, 2020–2025

    YouTube

    3:00 · 2.1M views · May 23, 2016

    A short clip of Bill Gates demonstrating Visual Basic in 1991, showing drag-and-drop building of a Windows GUI.

    HN cites it as an example of rapid GUI development that modern tooling hasn't matched, and as precedent for promises of coding without developers.

    Computing History & CultureTech pioneers & interviewsGUI, HCI & interface historyHistory of computing
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    4 comments from Hacker News

    1. @spwa4Nov 2025· in “Vibe coding: What is it good for? Absolutely nothing”

      Pfffft. People have been making solutions for "now we need no more developers" since at least Bill Gates 1991 introduction of Visual Basic. And frankly, Bill Gates showed easily 10x the charisma of Sam Altman and Sundar Pichai combined back then. this video I mean, I know, we all used Delphi after trying it for a little bit, but still.

      CitesView on HN
    2. @jbandela1Jun 2022· in “Ask HN: Best dev tool pitches of all time?”

      Another is Bill Gates Visual Basic 1.0 demo It was revolutionary. Before that, making a Windows GUI was pretty low level with calls to C APIs and callbacks and registrations. Visual Basic changed all that with point and drag and drop and you could make a GUI in a matter of minutes. this video

      CitesView on HN
    3. @dvfjsdhgfvOct 2020· in “Bill Gates introducing Windows 3.1 (video 60s)”

      What I find funny is that in the next video recommended to me [0] Gates demonstrates something we used to do daily in the 90s but the indistry still hasn't figured out how to do it properly with web technologies. [0] this video

      CitesView on HN
    4. @alberthDec 2023· in “IDEs we had 30 years ago”

      VB6 was the only “low code / no code” tool that actually delivered on its promise. Bill Gates demoing it from 32-years ago. this video

      CitesView on HN