10 ms·

TwinBASIC: A modern BASIC aiming for 100% compatibility with VB6/VBA

78 points by ptx 4y ago

h2odragon 4y ago
Reminds me of Mosiac "Twin" spreadsheet: https://winworldpc.com/product/the-twin/1x https://winworldpc.com/product/the-twin/1x But surely Microsoft wouldn't indulge in malicious prosecutions over a market they already killed, right?
- PaulHoule 4y ago
  VB 6 is a scripting language for COM objects so 100% compatibility means having a 100% compatible Windows environment to run those COM objects in.
ptx 4y ago
A recent talk with some good demos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4DRAcdH9tg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4DRAcdH9tg
RodgerTheGreat 4y ago
At last, we can replace the aging proprietary, commercial implementation of VBA with... another proprietary, commercial implementation.
- rnd0 4y ago
  sums up my feelings exactly!
ocdtrekkie 4y ago
I'm not sure a BASIC compiler at twice the monthly cost of Photoshop is going to fly with anyone, but I'm definitely curious if there's a market out there for it.
- keithnz 4y ago
  I'm curious also, looking at their issue tracking (discord server invite looks like its gone stale... ) it seems like not a lot of interest at the moment. But it is weird how much old VB stuff is out there and because so few people put any effort into the old VB world, I think people would pay a premium for something that's useful. Having said that, their community edition probably would suit nearly everyone. I'm guessing a few people might want cross platform... So not sure how they make money, it seems like they'd need 1000ish customers to make it viable for 2 people. At the moment most of the things that have user counts related to the project (youtube etc) is much much less than that... but, maybe once they have a solid release a lot more people will come out of the woodwork. Anyways, interesting to see how they go.
- themerone 4y ago
  The target market is companies that can't afford to migrate away from legacy VB6 applications. This is a very captive audience.
- Someone 4y ago
  I couldn’t find the exact license on their site, but it seems the subscription is per developer, not per user of the built executables. In companies that deploy software for hundreds of users, that makes a huge difference.
newuser94303 4y ago
If this had been release 20 yrs ago, it would have been amazing. I left Windows when VB6 died.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  So missed on VB.NET and what was the replacement to beat VB productivity outside Windows?
- wlindley 4y ago
  In 1981 I (mostly) happily paid full price for Microsoft BASIC for Heathkit HDOS. In 1995 I was one of those fools lining up at midnight for Windows95. In 1996 I had just about finished porting my primary consulting project from VB3 to VB4... when VB5 came out and changed everything again. That's when I realized I had been taken for a ride; I cancelled my MSDN membership and began exiting the Microsoft ecosystem for Linux. Haven't touched a Microsoft or Apple product for over twenty years now and life is good.
  - rwallace 4y ago
    Wasn't VB5 backward-compatible? I thought VB.net was the first version that wasn't; what am I missing?
datpuz 4y ago
I had to write a little VB to maintain a legacy codebase at my first job. VB is long before my time, but at least from my perspective at that time, it was just a gross language to me. Who on Earth would rather have to end a function block by typing out "End Sub" instead of a curly brace? And case insensitive naming? I don't remember much else about VB, other than the immediate and visceral reaction that I needed to find a better gig.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
  > Who on Earth would rather have to end a function block by typing out "End Sub" instead of a curly brace It’s called BASIC because it’s more approachable to beginners. End Sub is not as strange to someone new to programming as a curly brace because it is almost English and less abstract.
  - rbanffy 4y ago
    When I first used C I wondered who in their right mind would start and end blocks with a curly brace when Pascal used BEGIN/END and other languages had other nicer and more easily glanceable structure markers.
- wantoncl 4y ago
  There's COBOL code at least twice, and possibly three times as old, that still runs billion dollar businesses every day, and likely will until you retire. VB has its quirks but during its heyday, it was substantially more productive and easier to use than pretty much anything else.
  - tinus_hn 4y ago
    No it won’t because Cobol programmers are basically impossible to come by today; when I retire they will all be dead. So unless you can somehow convince young talented programmers to abolish 50 years of advancements and go program in an antiquated language again, in a short while there will simply be no option but to finally migrate away.
- 4y ago
self_awareness 4y ago
That feeling when a VB6 application is more lightweight than most of today's "native" applications.
- Jaruzel 4y ago
  Until Windows drops 32-bit compatibility, VB6 apps will continue to run fine even if they do look f'ugly against todays UI design. In fact there's probably still a significant amount of industrial/heavy-commercial in-house applications written in VB still in use. I can see a use case for TwinBASIC in maintaining these legacy apps, as the VB6 IDE no longer behaves itself under Windows 10/11. If it offers compilation to 64-bit (pseudo)code, then these apps will gain an extension on their usable life.
  - int_19h 4y ago
    Given than VB6 mostly used native widgets, you can make apps written in it look modern simply by adding a manifest with the appropriate incantations.
    - Jaruzel 4y ago
      True, but I think you also have to add a VisualStyles API call as well to the Form_Load() Sub ? It's been a long time since I've done it though.
      - orra 4y ago
        Looks like you need to call InitCommonControls(Ex), in addtion to the manifest. https://jeffpar.github.io/kbarchive/kb/309/Q309366/ https://jeffpar.github.io/kbarchive/kb/309/Q309366/ I'll forgive your slight misremembering, because it's probably been 20 years.
        VB6-Programming 4y ago
        >Looks like you need to call InitCommonControls(Ex), in addtion to the manifest. Often all you need is the manifest. If the app won't run at all after you have added the manifest, then add a call to InitCommonControls(Ex)
badsectoracula 4y ago
Nice project though as someone else said it basically replaces one proprietary commercial VBA with another proprietary commercial VBA. There have been at least a couple of those who ended up being abandoned. Also the cost is both very high (after a handful of months you'd have paid more than what VB3 standard was sold for and the IDE certainly looks way less functional than VB3) and lacks any perpetual license. Also it isn't mentioned anywhere in the preorder page, but since it requires a subscription, that means that it most likely uses some form of online checking DRM, which in turn means that when the company shuts down and/or abandons the project, all that money would be lost forever. That said i tried the demo version a bit and seemed to be ok, at least unlike other VB-clone attempts this one seems to have a visual designer (though very primitive). The IDE was a bit buggy and very sluggish and the theme felt very alien and not that well made. Why not use native controls like the applications themselves? The way it looks and feels now is like those early WPF demos, full with sluggish motion and blurry text.
- stormdennis 4y ago
  There is a free community edition, no?
  - rst 4y ago
    With significant restrictions (most notably a nag screen at application startup).
  - rbanffy 4y ago
    It's still proprietary. It's just free as in beer.
- orra 4y ago
  > as someone else said it basically replaces one proprietary commercial VBA with another proprietary commercial VBA. Yeah, that's definitely a downside. I appreciate the author believes they can commercialise this more successfully if it's proprietary, but /personally/ I'd prefer something open source. One day I'll finish my own open source VB6 clone. > There have been at least a couple of those who ended up being abandoned. You're right. History is littered with abandoned VB6 replacements. Anybody remember GNOME Basic? Nonetheless, credit where credit is due. Technologically, it looks like TwinBASIC has good foundations. It had a language server, although the VSCode extension is on hold for now. It imports VB6 project files, unlike looser VB6 alternatives like Gambas. And a combined Dim / Let (=) statement is long overdue.
laurensr 4y ago
It seems this is a competitor to RADbasic: https://www.radbasic.dev/ https://www.radbasic.dev/
- orra 4y ago
  As a VB6 fan I'm excited to have a couple credible looking alternatives finally crop up. Of course, there's the 80-20 rule, and history is littered with similar attempts.
- pcdoodle 4y ago
  There's also Xojo which has quite a large community behind it.
Hublium 4y ago
I am more of a Delphi/Lazarus guy myself, but can anybody who is actually considering using this compare it against Gambas, RAD Basic, Xojo, ...?
- tluyben2 4y ago
  Apparently it is fully compatible with vb6 (as also radbasic says they are). I never tried but long time ago I ported a slew of vb6 apps to Xojo (realbasic at the time) and that was not hard but it was definitely work and not fully compatible. I would use Xojo still though as it’s very mature and I trust them being around in a while.
  - stormdennis 4y ago
    How long since you've used Xojo?
    - tluyben2 4y ago
      Over 15 years ago for sure.
  - pcdoodle 4y ago
    Xojo works and has a full time team working on it. It's not perfect but does the trick for me.
wernsey 4y ago
Just last week I had a requirement where a user at our company needs to run some commands on an embedded system to configure it before it is sent out to customers. 20 years ago I would've opened up VB6 and knocked out a quick GUI for that kind of work, but I never got on to the VB.NET train. So I spent some time that evening looking at modern VB6 alternatives, but nothing satisfied me: Lazarus might be something I'd look to in the future, but I'm not too keen on Pascal, Gambas is not really suitable for Windows, then there is this and RADBasic that are incomplete. In the end, I found a nice Tkinter tutorial [1] and managed to get the GUI I envisioned up in an hour. I've played with Tkinter many years ago, but I basically had to learn from scratch. The speed at which I was able to get up and running led me to conclude that this is how I'll approach these types of requirements from now on. The GUI didn't even look as bad as I remember Tkinter looking. [1] https://tkdocs.com/ https://tkdocs.com/
- Elv13 4y ago
  Qt (the legacy Qt::Widget variant) is quite productive for quick and dirty GUIs. You can do 95% of basic dialogs in QtDesigner and then connect the signals to your code and vice versa. The code can be Python or C++. It can also be mapped 1:1 into SQLite tables without any external libraries, which is handy for basic forms or data apps. QML also has GUI design tools, but it takes much longer to learn and isn't very good at simple GUIs. However it's better when you need to deploy on Android (iOS requires the paid version). One thing to keep in mind if the LGPL3 license. If the app isn't distributed, then it's fine, but if distributed, it has to be dynamically linked with some ways of swapping the .so/.dylib/.dll
  - simonh 4y ago
    Qt is fantastic, I've used it with Python using the semi-commercial PyQT and open source PySide which are largely mutually compatible. The example projects that come with it are a great way to get started and the documentation is world class. I found it much easier to work with than the native Windows options 10 years ago, but haven't really looked at anything from MS since.
    - 4y ago
rkagerer 4y ago
I'd love to see the equivalent of VB6 for WASM.
- mansellan 4y ago
  It's been suggested: https://github.com/twinbasic/twinbasic/issues/570 https://github.com/twinbasic/twinbasic/issues/570
VB6-Programming 4y ago
I've been using/evaluating twinBASIC for a few months now (other than that I have no connection with the twinBASIC developers). I've been very impressed with everything about twinBASIC so far. There is a free (including commercial use and royalty free distribution) community edition (Windows only, 32bit and 64bit - though the 64bit has a nag screen). The paid editions add optimised compilation, and (planned) support for Linux, Mac and Android (and possibly Web). Compared against other products such as Gambas, Xojo (realbasic) or VB.Net it has the advantage of being able to import existing VB6 apps and run them as Windows 32bit apps (much of this is available now, but there is still some way to go for 100% compatibility). RAD Basic may offer compatibility too, but it seems difficult to find an up to date evaluation download. twinBASIC also goes beyond what VB6 offered - 64bit compilation, multithreading, creating DLLs etc. (some of which could be done with hacks in VB6). As for a potential market, that is difficult to say. There are still huge numbers of VB6 applications in use, having the ability to move easily to a new language may be attractive for whoever still supports those applications. There is certainly interest, a thread about twinBASIC on VBForums has had almost 400,000 views.
- orra 4y ago
  > RAD Basic may offer compatibility too It's an interesting question. It looks like TwinBASIC embraces the OLE/COM/ActiveX model as its native model. VARIANTS and BSTRs. This means advanced patterns like ObjPtr and StrPtr can work, assuming other compatibility is high. I'm unsure about RAD Basic here, but a contentious thread of VBForums suggests it differs here. Now, arguably ObjPtr and StrPtr aren't part of the semantics of VB6. Nonetheless, if you want compatibility with some real world code, it needs to work. (I too have no connection with twinBASIC, except I'm a VB6 fan who is technologically impressed by it.)
  - pcdoodle 4y ago
    This would be huge. Last time I was out field deploying a camera system, customer wanted a custom PVM (Public Viewing Monitor) with a few tweaks, I spun up VB, added the VLC component that gets installed anytime you put VLC on windows. Wrote a few lines of code and cleaned up my tools and left.
rbanffy 4y ago
This is a very niche tool. They may recover the investment made on it, but I don't see it as a growth market.
bluedino 4y ago
You'll also need a 100% compatible MS Access as well - in most cases they are used together. The other key is being able to use all the custom controls etc. Hopefully, your legacy VB codebase had a fear of NIH and you don't have to worry about this. I've seen a lot of clever systems made in VB, a combination of the developer not knowing any better, and having the perseverance to keep going until they got something that 'worked'.
- MisterTea 4y ago
  Access was huge. About 6 years ago I had to fix up a predecessors custom data logging program written in VB6 that used an access database. I had to patch a few things to eliminate hard coded paths and a fix for windows 7. First and only time I used VB6 and it was easy to dive into and figure out.
albertzeyer 4y ago
I want something like VB6 but with Python instead of Basic, cross-platform and open source. Lazarus comes close but it uses Free Pascal and (maybe because of that) is somewhat niche. There are many GUI frameworks for Python, but I would like to have such a straightforward-to-use IDE. My current IDE is PyCharm, maybe there are some extensions? Maybe they are buggy?
smishra12345 4y ago
Take a look at PureBasic . It is a mature product with a great developer and user community. It generates fast native code for Windows, Mac, Linux and RPi. I have used it for 15+ years. It also has a sister product SpiderBasic that can convert most of PureBasic code to HTML, JavaScript for web deployment https://www.purebasic.com/ https://www.purebasic.com/ I highly recommend it.
mansellan 4y ago
twinBASIC backer here. It's been many years since I wrote any VB6, or even VBA, but I got my start in software engineering that through classic VB and still hold deep affection for it. I'm happy to support it even if I never end up using it. Please bear in mind that twinBASIC is still pre-release / v0.x, and has not been widely publicized yet. The IDE, and in particular the forms designer, is very recent. Originally an extension to VS Code was envisioned (it's currently paused), but VSC was not extensible enough. It's under active and rapid development right now, please judge accordingly.

78 points by ptx 4y ago

Reminds me of Mosiac "Twin" spreadsheet: https://winworldpc.com/product/the-twin/1x https://winworldpc.com/product/the-twin/1x But surely Microsoft wouldn't indulge in malicious prosecutions over a market they already killed, right?

PaulHoule 4y ago
VB 6 is a scripting language for COM objects so 100% compatibility means having a 100% compatible Windows environment to run those COM objects in.

ptx 4y ago

A recent talk with some good demos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4DRAcdH9tg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4DRAcdH9tg

RodgerTheGreat 4y ago

At last, we can replace the aging proprietary, commercial implementation of VBA with... another proprietary, commercial implementation.

rnd0 4y ago
sums up my feelings exactly!

ocdtrekkie 4y ago

I'm not sure a BASIC compiler at twice the monthly cost of Photoshop is going to fly with anyone, but I'm definitely curious if there's a market out there for it.

keithnz 4y ago
I'm curious also, looking at their issue tracking (discord server invite looks like its gone stale... ) it seems like not a lot of interest at the moment. But it is weird how much old VB stuff is out there and because so few people put any effort into the old VB world, I think people would pay a premium for something that's useful. Having said that, their community edition probably would suit nearly everyone. I'm guessing a few people might want cross platform... So not sure how they make money, it seems like they'd need 1000ish customers to make it viable for 2 people. At the moment most of the things that have user counts related to the project (youtube etc) is much much less than that... but, maybe once they have a solid release a lot more people will come out of the woodwork. Anyways, interesting to see how they go.
themerone 4y ago
The target market is companies that can't afford to migrate away from legacy VB6 applications. This is a very captive audience.
Someone 4y ago
I couldn’t find the exact license on their site, but it seems the subscription is per developer, not per user of the built executables. In companies that deploy software for hundreds of users, that makes a huge difference.

newuser94303 4y ago

If this had been release 20 yrs ago, it would have been amazing. I left Windows when VB6 died.

pjmlp 4y ago
So missed on VB.NET and what was the replacement to beat VB productivity outside Windows?
wlindley 4y ago
In 1981 I (mostly) happily paid full price for Microsoft BASIC for Heathkit HDOS. In 1995 I was one of those fools lining up at midnight for Windows95. In 1996 I had just about finished porting my primary consulting project from VB3 to VB4... when VB5 came out and changed everything again. That's when I realized I had been taken for a ride; I cancelled my MSDN membership and began exiting the Microsoft ecosystem for Linux. Haven't touched a Microsoft or Apple product for over twenty years now and life is good.
- rwallace 4y ago
  Wasn't VB5 backward-compatible? I thought VB.net was the first version that wasn't; what am I missing?

datpuz 4y ago

I had to write a little VB to maintain a legacy codebase at my first job. VB is long before my time, but at least from my perspective at that time, it was just a gross language to me. Who on Earth would rather have to end a function block by typing out "End Sub" instead of a curly brace? And case insensitive naming? I don't remember much else about VB, other than the immediate and visceral reaction that I needed to find a better gig.

TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
> Who on Earth would rather have to end a function block by typing out "End Sub" instead of a curly brace It’s called BASIC because it’s more approachable to beginners. End Sub is not as strange to someone new to programming as a curly brace because it is almost English and less abstract.
- rbanffy 4y ago
  When I first used C I wondered who in their right mind would start and end blocks with a curly brace when Pascal used BEGIN/END and other languages had other nicer and more easily glanceable structure markers.
wantoncl 4y ago
There's COBOL code at least twice, and possibly three times as old, that still runs billion dollar businesses every day, and likely will until you retire. VB has its quirks but during its heyday, it was substantially more productive and easier to use than pretty much anything else.
- tinus_hn 4y ago
  No it won’t because Cobol programmers are basically impossible to come by today; when I retire they will all be dead. So unless you can somehow convince young talented programmers to abolish 50 years of advancements and go program in an antiquated language again, in a short while there will simply be no option but to finally migrate away.
4y ago

self_awareness 4y ago

That feeling when a VB6 application is more lightweight than most of today's "native" applications.

Jaruzel 4y ago
Until Windows drops 32-bit compatibility, VB6 apps will continue to run fine even if they do look f'ugly against todays UI design. In fact there's probably still a significant amount of industrial/heavy-commercial in-house applications written in VB still in use. I can see a use case for TwinBASIC in maintaining these legacy apps, as the VB6 IDE no longer behaves itself under Windows 10/11. If it offers compilation to 64-bit (pseudo)code, then these apps will gain an extension on their usable life.
- int_19h 4y ago
  Given than VB6 mostly used native widgets, you can make apps written in it look modern simply by adding a manifest with the appropriate incantations.
  - Jaruzel 4y ago
    True, but I think you also have to add a VisualStyles API call as well to the Form_Load() Sub ? It's been a long time since I've done it though.
    - orra 4y ago
      Looks like you need to call InitCommonControls(Ex), in addtion to the manifest. https://jeffpar.github.io/kbarchive/kb/309/Q309366/ https://jeffpar.github.io/kbarchive/kb/309/Q309366/ I'll forgive your slight misremembering, because it's probably been 20 years.
      - VB6-Programming 4y ago
        >Looks like you need to call InitCommonControls(Ex), in addtion to the manifest. Often all you need is the manifest. If the app won't run at all after you have added the manifest, then add a call to InitCommonControls(Ex)

badsectoracula 4y ago

Nice project though as someone else said it basically replaces one proprietary commercial VBA with another proprietary commercial VBA. There have been at least a couple of those who ended up being abandoned. Also the cost is both very high (after a handful of months you'd have paid more than what VB3 standard was sold for and the IDE certainly looks way less functional than VB3) and lacks any perpetual license. Also it isn't mentioned anywhere in the preorder page, but since it requires a subscription, that means that it most likely uses some form of online checking DRM, which in turn means that when the company shuts down and/or abandons the project, all that money would be lost forever. That said i tried the demo version a bit and seemed to be ok, at least unlike other VB-clone attempts this one seems to have a visual designer (though very primitive). The IDE was a bit buggy and very sluggish and the theme felt very alien and not that well made. Why not use native controls like the applications themselves? The way it looks and feels now is like those early WPF demos, full with sluggish motion and blurry text.

stormdennis 4y ago
There is a free community edition, no?
- rst 4y ago
  With significant restrictions (most notably a nag screen at application startup).
- rbanffy 4y ago
  It's still proprietary. It's just free as in beer.
orra 4y ago
> as someone else said it basically replaces one proprietary commercial VBA with another proprietary commercial VBA. Yeah, that's definitely a downside. I appreciate the author believes they can commercialise this more successfully if it's proprietary, but /personally/ I'd prefer something open source. One day I'll finish my own open source VB6 clone. > There have been at least a couple of those who ended up being abandoned. You're right. History is littered with abandoned VB6 replacements. Anybody remember GNOME Basic? Nonetheless, credit where credit is due. Technologically, it looks like TwinBASIC has good foundations. It had a language server, although the VSCode extension is on hold for now. It imports VB6 project files, unlike looser VB6 alternatives like Gambas. And a combined Dim / Let (=) statement is long overdue.

laurensr 4y ago

It seems this is a competitor to RADbasic: https://www.radbasic.dev/ https://www.radbasic.dev/

orra 4y ago
As a VB6 fan I'm excited to have a couple credible looking alternatives finally crop up. Of course, there's the 80-20 rule, and history is littered with similar attempts.
pcdoodle 4y ago
There's also Xojo which has quite a large community behind it.

Hublium 4y ago

I am more of a Delphi/Lazarus guy myself, but can anybody who is actually considering using this compare it against Gambas, RAD Basic, Xojo, ...?

tluyben2 4y ago
Apparently it is fully compatible with vb6 (as also radbasic says they are). I never tried but long time ago I ported a slew of vb6 apps to Xojo (realbasic at the time) and that was not hard but it was definitely work and not fully compatible. I would use Xojo still though as it’s very mature and I trust them being around in a while.
- stormdennis 4y ago
  How long since you've used Xojo?
  - tluyben2 4y ago
    Over 15 years ago for sure.
- pcdoodle 4y ago
  Xojo works and has a full time team working on it. It's not perfect but does the trick for me.

wernsey 4y ago

Just last week I had a requirement where a user at our company needs to run some commands on an embedded system to configure it before it is sent out to customers. 20 years ago I would've opened up VB6 and knocked out a quick GUI for that kind of work, but I never got on to the VB.NET train. So I spent some time that evening looking at modern VB6 alternatives, but nothing satisfied me: Lazarus might be something I'd look to in the future, but I'm not too keen on Pascal, Gambas is not really suitable for Windows, then there is this and RADBasic that are incomplete. In the end, I found a nice Tkinter tutorial [1] and managed to get the GUI I envisioned up in an hour. I've played with Tkinter many years ago, but I basically had to learn from scratch. The speed at which I was able to get up and running led me to conclude that this is how I'll approach these types of requirements from now on. The GUI didn't even look as bad as I remember Tkinter looking. [1] https://tkdocs.com/ https://tkdocs.com/

Elv13 4y ago
Qt (the legacy Qt::Widget variant) is quite productive for quick and dirty GUIs. You can do 95% of basic dialogs in QtDesigner and then connect the signals to your code and vice versa. The code can be Python or C++. It can also be mapped 1:1 into SQLite tables without any external libraries, which is handy for basic forms or data apps. QML also has GUI design tools, but it takes much longer to learn and isn't very good at simple GUIs. However it's better when you need to deploy on Android (iOS requires the paid version). One thing to keep in mind if the LGPL3 license. If the app isn't distributed, then it's fine, but if distributed, it has to be dynamically linked with some ways of swapping the .so/.dylib/.dll
- simonh 4y ago
  Qt is fantastic, I've used it with Python using the semi-commercial PyQT and open source PySide which are largely mutually compatible. The example projects that come with it are a great way to get started and the documentation is world class. I found it much easier to work with than the native Windows options 10 years ago, but haven't really looked at anything from MS since.
  - 4y ago

rkagerer 4y ago

I'd love to see the equivalent of VB6 for WASM.

mansellan 4y ago
It's been suggested: https://github.com/twinbasic/twinbasic/issues/570 https://github.com/twinbasic/twinbasic/issues/570

VB6-Programming 4y ago

I've been using/evaluating twinBASIC for a few months now (other than that I have no connection with the twinBASIC developers). I've been very impressed with everything about twinBASIC so far. There is a free (including commercial use and royalty free distribution) community edition (Windows only, 32bit and 64bit - though the 64bit has a nag screen). The paid editions add optimised compilation, and (planned) support for Linux, Mac and Android (and possibly Web). Compared against other products such as Gambas, Xojo (realbasic) or VB.Net it has the advantage of being able to import existing VB6 apps and run them as Windows 32bit apps (much of this is available now, but there is still some way to go for 100% compatibility). RAD Basic may offer compatibility too, but it seems difficult to find an up to date evaluation download. twinBASIC also goes beyond what VB6 offered - 64bit compilation, multithreading, creating DLLs etc. (some of which could be done with hacks in VB6). As for a potential market, that is difficult to say. There are still huge numbers of VB6 applications in use, having the ability to move easily to a new language may be attractive for whoever still supports those applications. There is certainly interest, a thread about twinBASIC on VBForums has had almost 400,000 views.

orra 4y ago
> RAD Basic may offer compatibility too It's an interesting question. It looks like TwinBASIC embraces the OLE/COM/ActiveX model as its native model. VARIANTS and BSTRs. This means advanced patterns like ObjPtr and StrPtr can work, assuming other compatibility is high. I'm unsure about RAD Basic here, but a contentious thread of VBForums suggests it differs here. Now, arguably ObjPtr and StrPtr aren't part of the semantics of VB6. Nonetheless, if you want compatibility with some real world code, it needs to work. (I too have no connection with twinBASIC, except I'm a VB6 fan who is technologically impressed by it.)
- pcdoodle 4y ago
  This would be huge. Last time I was out field deploying a camera system, customer wanted a custom PVM (Public Viewing Monitor) with a few tweaks, I spun up VB, added the VLC component that gets installed anytime you put VLC on windows. Wrote a few lines of code and cleaned up my tools and left.

rbanffy 4y ago

This is a very niche tool. They may recover the investment made on it, but I don't see it as a growth market.

bluedino 4y ago

You'll also need a 100% compatible MS Access as well - in most cases they are used together. The other key is being able to use all the custom controls etc. Hopefully, your legacy VB codebase had a fear of NIH and you don't have to worry about this. I've seen a lot of clever systems made in VB, a combination of the developer not knowing any better, and having the perseverance to keep going until they got something that 'worked'.

MisterTea 4y ago
Access was huge. About 6 years ago I had to fix up a predecessors custom data logging program written in VB6 that used an access database. I had to patch a few things to eliminate hard coded paths and a fix for windows 7. First and only time I used VB6 and it was easy to dive into and figure out.

albertzeyer 4y ago

I want something like VB6 but with Python instead of Basic, cross-platform and open source. Lazarus comes close but it uses Free Pascal and (maybe because of that) is somewhat niche. There are many GUI frameworks for Python, but I would like to have such a straightforward-to-use IDE. My current IDE is PyCharm, maybe there are some extensions? Maybe they are buggy?

smishra12345 4y ago

Take a look at PureBasic . It is a mature product with a great developer and user community. It generates fast native code for Windows, Mac, Linux and RPi. I have used it for 15+ years. It also has a sister product SpiderBasic that can convert most of PureBasic code to HTML, JavaScript for web deployment https://www.purebasic.com/ https://www.purebasic.com/ I highly recommend it.

mansellan 4y ago

twinBASIC backer here. It's been many years since I wrote any VB6, or even VBA, but I got my start in software engineering that through classic VB and still hold deep affection for it. I'm happy to support it even if I never end up using it. Please bear in mind that twinBASIC is still pre-release / v0.x, and has not been widely publicized yet. The IDE, and in particular the forms designer, is very recent. Originally an extension to VS Code was envisioned (it's currently paused), but VSC was not extensible enough. It's under active and rapid development right now, please judge accordingly.