The answer here is pretty clear to me: use both VB and Perl.

VB is an unbeatable windowing system. It's got IDEs and plug ins and oh my goodness everything that looks good on windows. It's also a nightmare if you want to do anything more than display windows.

Now Perl, on the other hand, is a fantastic glue application. Visual Basic may never get a module with the power and ease of Net::Telnet. It doesn't have to, Perl already has it. But untill someone ports Glade to windows Perl's interface will be 'clunky' at best.

Write you saccharine-laden interface in VB, and make it look good, so you look good. Write your backend in Perl, so you don't waste time or effort, and so you know it works.

Then shell out of your VB app to your perl app.

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Jeremy
I didn't believe in evil until I dated it.