It seems that peak native Windows dev tools were Delphi 7 and VB6. It's a tragedy that something at least as good as VB6 is not still developed and supported by Microsoft.

There's nothing as good as VB6 that's developed and supported by *anyone*. It's not a Microsoft only phenomena.

I think programmers started wanting "real" languages (notice the quotes), and henceforth got more complexity and things take longer, although with GenAI, we may be back to the "draw as screen and do this" that we were with VB6. Just now the source generated should be considered the object code, and the prompt is the new source (at least for those types of apps)

I think WinForms with C# or VB is as good, if perhaps not as fun or approachable.