All that wasted time when you could have just learned C.
So what, you took IE and called it from your BASIC program, big deal, I am impressed.
You are the typical stubborne, geeky programmer type that won't change his ways. So nothing I can say will convince you, have fun re-writing the world in a un-supported, ancient 1970's language while we all advance past you with lightning speed.

It's called leaving you in the dust.

C is very close to machine code and thus compiles down nicely. Yes you have to be a real programmer and watch out not to trash memory because the language doesn't handle all that stuff for you, but due to NO overhead you get faster, better code for it.
C is easily portable to other platforms and processors if you want that.
Plus you can do multi threading, go look that up.