I don't believe he said he liked VB, he actually said as a language it isn't great. What he did say is that the way it simplified database access gave us something extremely powerful and influential even though it was not (and isn't) seen as particularly disruptive or new. This seems inline with other statements from Linus w.r.t. the value of C++ and OOP in general. A very pragmatic man. I believe it also aligns with many of the answers to what will be the "next big thing.".