Ha, well it was written in VB.NET, so that alone ought to make me cringe. And I was building on my existing knowledge of VBA, so...
Apparently a few years ago they had a minor panic because they realised they had no idea where the database was actually stored. I'd gotten some MSSQL space from the (outsourced) DB guys- the guy who gave me the space had also, of course, left. Fun times...
i've seen some great software built in vb.net including a real time trading platforms capable of near high frequency execution speeds connected to 10 exchanges simultaneously.
i personally don't care for vb.net because of its notation, but i don't think it's THAT bad. you're making it sound like it was written in vb6
I wrote a manufacturing pull system in VB 6.0 + Access for the application database. That was all they had to work with there ( or more correctly all they wanted to work with.. ) It handled a stupid number of queries per month and was very reliable.
It's important to have good tools, but a robust design beats all imho.