"For all the criticisms I have of Microsoft and even of VB, the actual graphical development environment of VB is the easiest I've seen."

How does it compare to Delphi and C++ Builder?

I've never really got into VB as BCB seems to do it all very easily.
It could be an unfair comparison, as I've only got an old version of MSVC, but I certainly found that BCB was far superior to MSVC on the "Visual" front.