Visual Basic was designed for developing desktop software. If that's what you are building, it's suitable. For the most part, the language you choose is a personal preference and it sounds like your boss wants to use VB because that's what he is familiar with.
That said, IF your boss is suggesting VB6, you have to consider the fact that it is no longer supported by Microsoft. If he is comfortable with VB.NET, that's another option. However, any.NET application requires the.NET runtime to be installed on the user's machine. If the software product you are creating is something that will go outside your company (perhaps it's a product you sell for example), then you have to consider the extra overhead of having to deal with making sure the user has the proper.NET runtime installed.
Another alternative is REALbasic which is very similar to Visual Basic but is completely object-oriented and is cross-platform (Windows, Macintosh and Linux). It also builds self-contained exes so you don't have to worry about DDL hell or having to make sure a particular framework, runtime or virtual machine is installed.
You can find out more about REALbasic here: http://www.realbasic.com/
We have lots of kids that use our product (REALbasic) to learn programming and create their own software. Some have gone on to create their own small software companies. So I can say with certainity that there are kids programming. Are there as many as their were when I was a kid? I don't know and that question may be impossible to answer.
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Visual Basic was designed for developing desktop software. If that's what you are building, it's suitable. For the most part, the language you choose is a personal preference and it sounds like your boss wants to use VB because that's what he is familiar with. That said, IF your boss is suggesting VB6, you have to consider the fact that it is no longer supported by Microsoft. If he is comfortable with VB.NET, that's another option. However, any .NET application requires the .NET runtime to be installed on the user's machine. If the software product you are creating is something that will go outside your company (perhaps it's a product you sell for example), then you have to consider the extra overhead of having to deal with making sure the user has the proper .NET runtime installed.
Another alternative is REALbasic which is very similar to Visual Basic but is completely object-oriented and is cross-platform (Windows, Macintosh and Linux). It also builds self-contained exes so you don't have to worry about DDL hell or having to make sure a particular framework, runtime or virtual machine is installed.
You can find out more about REALbasic here: http://www.realbasic.com/
We have lots of kids that use our product (REALbasic) to learn programming and create their own software. Some have gone on to create their own small software companies. So I can say with certainity that there are kids programming. Are there as many as their were when I was a kid? I don't know and that question may be impossible to answer.