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TwinBASIC is a modern BASIC compiler

twinbasic.com

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Re: TwinBASIC is a modern BASIC compiler

#41

Post by fafalone »

stormdennis wrote: post #40

The whole point of TwinBasic is that it's to be 100% compatible with VB6 and with VBA. From that standpoint there's no point comparing it with BBC Basic, Powerbasic, Freebasic, vb.net, purebasic, Xojo or gambas because none of those are in that space. I'd like to hear more about who twinbasic expects to appeal to and why those people would want it?

Well there's a small but significant community of hobbyists still using it for... we're enthusiastic about it to be subscribing already well it's still in beta to support it.

Lots of businesses still have critical line-of-business VB6 code and can't afford or have other issues with the total rewrite required to move anywhere else.

And one thing almost every commenter who thinks there's no market is overlooking: VBA. VBA is still huge in the business world. 64bit Office has become the default, but if you want to create active-x controls for it? Your options are... nothing without using a whole different language, usually C++. tB already has initial support for creating 64bit controls that can be used in Office VBA (and any other COM host including .NET, on top of being able to compile to 32bit for VB6 if so desired). There's a number of bugs to work out, but I've gotten some of my very complex controls running. Then you can also make VBE addins. All with the same VBAx64 syntax and language features you're used to with dozens of new ones.

Re: TwinBASIC is a modern BASIC compiler

#43

Post by penteract »

jaclaz wrote: post #9
npongratz wrote: post #2

Interesting justification for their subscription model [0]: > Naturally, developers benefit from the subscription model by having a more regular income, but customers also benefit because they hold more power over the developer to fix bugs and provide regular updates in mind of you keeping your repeat subscription active. I'd love to learn of cases for subscription software where subscribed customers were able to suc…

>We appreciate that some customers would much prefer a perpetual licence, but to ensure the longevity of this project we ask you to kindly accept the subscription model that we've designed to accommodate our current and future needs. Shouldn't that be "we kindly ask" ? (a customer should be free to - say - "grudgingly accept").

I think it makes sense as written. They're saying you are being kind if you accept it (even if you accept it grudgingly). "We kindly ask" would imply they are being kind by asking (they may want to try to be kind while asking, but I don't think that's achieved just by saying so).

Re: TwinBASIC is a modern BASIC compiler

#44

Post by antod »

indigodaddy wrote: post #17
LeoPanthera wrote: post #8

BBC BASIC is still available and maintained by one of its original developers, an astonishing record. https://www.bbcbasic.co.uk/index.html The Windows version is a £25 purchase, but the SDL and command-line versions are gratis. It's a great language for hacking around on a Raspberry Pi.

Is there anything quite tied/geared to the internals of the system for rasp pi in the same manner as say C64 Basic was? Or does that sort of concern not really matter for today’s CPUs/hardware/aarch? I’m not really a programmer. The reason I ask is for my 11 yr old to hack around, should I find/use a modern (or if not modern, updated, as you indicated BBC is) Basic like the one you linked, or should I have the kid ju…

It's not exactly what you're asking, but a few years ago I revisited the Spectrum programming of my youth in an emulator using modern editors and assemblers etc outside the emulated hardware. The emulator could pause and trace all the memory locations live which made debugging great.

It was a way easier, more fun and productive experience than doing it for real on an 8bit machine was back in the day.

Re: TwinBASIC is a modern BASIC compiler

#45

Post by eb0la »

jmmv wrote: post #23
eb0la wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It reminds me Amstrad basic. Could it be because of the "Ready" prompt? ;-)

Well, Amstrad was precisely the inspiration ;-) Take a look at the About page for the history!

I have great memories of that machine. Somehow I've got the "Ready" prompt from Locomotive basic etched in my brain. I even tried to code in Z80 assembler (took an ethernity to load from tape, and hanged the computer if you did it wrong - which was usual).

It's great to see someome doing side projects just because they want, not as a way to make some business on the side.

Re: TwinBASIC is a modern BASIC compiler

#46

Post by stevekemp »

andai wrote: post #7

This caught my eye, since I'm doing the Teeny Tiny Compiler tutorial [0] (transpiles a tiny BASIC-inspired language to C). So, I thought I'd take a look and see how a modern BASIC compiler does it! Alas! This appears to be proprietary. (There is a GitHub but only for bug tracking.) [0] https://austinhenley.com/blog/teenytinycompiler1.html

There are a bunch of BASIC interpreters out there, my own isn't so complex or thorough, but I definitely had fun writing it:

https://github.com/skx/gobasic/

My own vision was to reproduce something akin to the ZX Spectrum, rather than the more advanced Microsoft BASIC.

Re: TwinBASIC is a modern BASIC compiler

#47

Post by jaclaz »

zem wrote: post #30
jaclaz wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We appreciate that some customers would much prefer a perpetual licence, but to ensure the longevity of this project we ask you to kindly accept the subscription model that we've designed to accommodate our current and future needs. Shouldn't that be "we kindly ask" ? (a customer should be free to - say - "grudgingly accept").

"kindly accept" is a very standard idiom, at least in indian english. don't know about other dialects.

I don't know, I am dubious as - AFAICT - "kindly accept" is used (and makes sense) for something that is given to the person, like apologies, a present, an application.

In the context of asking to accept a (imposed as there are no alternatives) licensing model and a fee it sounds to me "strange".

Re: TwinBASIC is a modern BASIC compiler

#48

Post by lproven »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #39
indigodaddy wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there anything quite tied/geared to the internals of the system for rasp pi in the same manner as say C64 Basic was? Or does that sort of concern not really matter for today’s CPUs/hardware/aarch? I’m not really a programmer. The reason I ask is for my 11 yr old to hack around, should I find/use a modern (or if not modern, updated, as you indicated BBC is) Basic like the one you linked, or should I have the kid ju…

> Is there anything quite tied/geared to the internals of the system for rasp pi in the same manner as say C64 Basic was? Or does that sort of concern not really matter for today’s CPUs/hardware/aarch? The "Lite" version of RpiOS is probably the closest you'll get. It just boots to the command line. Of course you could use any version of RpiOS and disable boot to GUI in raspi-config to get a similar effect.

If you want a BASIC that's close to the metal, forget Linux. Nothing on Linux is close to the metal.

RISC OS is what you want. It includes BBC BASIC V built in and it's probably the fastest interpreted BASIC of all time.

No SMP support but no BASIC ever had that. No wifi either. Ethernet works great, though.

https://www.riscosdev.com/direct/

Re: TwinBASIC is a modern BASIC compiler

#49

Post by zem »

jaclaz wrote: post #47
zem wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"kindly accept" is a very standard idiom, at least in indian english. don't know about other dialects.

I don't know, I am dubious as - AFAICT - "kindly accept" is used (and makes sense) for something that is given to the person, like apologies, a present, an application. In the context of asking to accept a (imposed as there are no alternatives) licensing model and a fee it sounds to me "strange".

no, "kindly accept" basically means "be so kind as to accept". even disregarding the idiomatic nature of the phrase and just looking at "kindly" as an adverb, grammatically when you say "we ask you to kindly accept" the person being asked is the source of the kindness, and the person doing the asking is the recipient. "kindly ask" does not make much sense, since you are not being kind by asking for something.

Re: TwinBASIC is a modern BASIC compiler

#50

Post by specialist »

qbasic_forever wrote: post #18
badsectoracula wrote: post #6

As i mentioned in the other thread about VB6, this is not the only attempt and there have been several at the past, going back to when Microsoft was still working on classic VB (the oldest i know of is a VB4 clone) - and all of them had something common: they were not open source and because of that they died. IMO it is the biggest of follies to consider a proprietary classic VB clone considering that the only reason…

I remember VB was also a bit of a casualty of the move to the .NET framework. Yeah they had later versions of VB with .NET support but it still never really embraced or thrived in the new ecosystem. In general RAD tooling kind of fell out of favor in the 2000s and never really recovered.

Yes and:

Visual Basic (and others) were unintentional victims of ODBC, the transition from workgroup-based to client-server.

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