The question on the quiz was most likely tongue-in-cheek–as in, which language will not be used by a “real” programmer. The correct answer is “BASIC,” because many geeks view it as language for wimps. Thus, my explanation about why geeks dislike it, followed by my analysis and defense of the language. (In defending it, I’ve just proved I’m not a geek.)

You are right that OOP is about using classes, methods, and properties. I should have clarified that VB does have some support for OOP, but it is limited. For example, forms are objects, and you can declare class modules. In VBA (and presumably in VB 6), all classes must be in separate modules. This is enough to discourage programmers from using a lot of classes. Also, advanced OOP functionality like inheritance is not available in VBA and VB 6.

Second, that isn’t the question I wanted discussion on… I was talking about which of the languages in the quiz isn’t a real programming language. The options were:
BASIC
C++
PASCAL
Assembly
FORTRAN
COBOL

I think I have it figured out now, but I’m curious what you think and why.

Some programmers do not consider Visual Basic a real programming language because they think it is used solely by amateurs to cobble together poorly designed programs and because the syntax is so different from their favorite languages, C++ and Java.

On the contrary, Visual Basic is certainly a real programming language. It is lacking in some areas, but that is hardly surprising. Every programming language works well in a certain domain, and each has its own advantages and disadvantages. Visual Basic has nice tools for user interfaces and excellent support for COM. Its disadvantages include the lack of object-oriented programming. (Visual Basic .Net does finally support objected oriented programming, at the expense of support for legacy code.) The lack of support for object-oriented programming does not pose a problem for small projects, but for large projects it can be a detriment. When deciding which language is best for a specific program, you have to weigh the advantages. For example, is it more important to be able to build a nice user interface easily, or is it more important to be able to write objected-oriented code?

Ultimately, the language that you use is less important than how well your program works. Writing a good program should make you prouder than learning a particular language.