What do you mean by "Not much networking support" .. You must have more than a working knowledge to develop such programs .
VB is not adopted by companies maybe .. But its power and efficiency definitely races Java .. Becoz
Vb only needs runtime files and nothing else.. It is also platform independent ..
VB is meant for app developers and Java mostly for the Web that's why threading is not here
I think it can be done with .Net and
Vb