You can use notepad to write programs in VB, why not... But... You will need very, very, VERY good knowledge of VB, and the structure of other file formats VB uses...
What you need is Microsoft Visual Basic, any version, though I would recommend going with version 6.0. It has everything you need, built in compiler, linker, everything... Even resource file manager
To make one program, you start VB IDE (Integrated Development Environment) where you have two views: Form view, and Code view...
Form view shows your programs window(s), and there, you draw controls, buttons, text boxes, and other... That's the WYSIWYG part (well, not exactly, but I won't bother you with that now)
Other is Code view, where you edit the actual code that makes up your program.
I believe there is a VB versio called Learning Edition, that is free, but again, you can't make EXE's DLL's or OCX's with it. Good for starting out though...
Hope I helped some
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