I see your point to a degree. The tools made it easy for folks to get apps up and running quickly, RAD being a popular buzzword at the time. I don't think it's fair to say the culture was that of people who didn't care about the code.
I've certianly seen lot's of terrible VB6 code, but also lots of Vb6 apps that were better designed than some WinForms C# apps I've seen. I know this is all subjective.
My experience tells me that any company whose business isn't selling software, doesn't care about the code.
I have learned the hard way that they don't care one single second about quality, only that it works the way required to support business, anything else is secondary.
In some sense it's true, but what's your point? Still in those companies, a better language/framework can go a long way in conducing better code quality, even if the boss gives zero shit about it.
The boss giving zero shit about it means not getting the approval IT requires to support anything you might want to do.
In such environments even root access is time limited to a few hours and requires a ticket asking for it with a reason that should be validated by the boss.
I've certianly seen lot's of terrible VB6 code, but also lots of Vb6 apps that were better designed than some WinForms C# apps I've seen. I know this is all subjective.