stdout -- Why is it so hard?

So I am trying to pass a value back to stdout after executing a VB application
with command switches from command line. Although it appears to get a valid
handle, nothing is returned to the shell session.

Here is what I am doing.....

Option Explicit

Public Const STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE = -11&

Public Declare Function w32_stdout Lib "kernel32" Alias "GetStdHandle" _
(Optional ByVal Handletype As Long = STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE) As Long

Public Declare Function WriteFile Lib "kernel32" _
(ByVal hFile As Long, ByVal lpBuffer As Any, ByVal nNumberOfBytesToWrite
As Long, _
lpNumberOfBytesWritten As Long, Optional ByVal lpOverlapped As Long = 0&)
As Long

Public Function stdout()

Dim sWriteBuffer As String
Dim lBytesWritten As Long
Dim hStdOut As Long


'Send something to stdout
sWriteBuffer = "This really sucks!" & vbCrLf
hStdOut = w32_stdout()
WriteFile hStdOut, sWriteBuffer, Len(sWriteBuffer) + 1, lBytesWritten



End Function

Any suggestions on how to return a value to the command line via stdout or
another method? I hate to say it but in C this is cake. Why does it have
to be so hard in VB.

Thanks!