[HN Gopher] TwinBASIC is a modern BASIC compiler
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TwinBASIC is a modern BASIC compiler
Author : bombcar
Score : 56 points
Date : 2023-05-10 05:50 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twinbasic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twinbasic.com)
| badsectoracula wrote:
| 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 VB6 died was
| exactly because its developer decided to stop working on it - it
| wasn't due to lack of money (Microsoft wasn't broke) or
| popularity (AFAIK TIOBE had it at #1 at the time and for a long
| time after that), it was plainly because the only one in control
| was Microsoft and since it was a deeply proprietary product
| nobody else could do anything about it (aside from making useless
| polls that were obviously ignored).
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| 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.
| qingcharles wrote:
| Over the last 40 years I have programmed in practically every
| major language, yet VB.Net remains my all-time favorite for
| ease of development and code readability.
|
| I would still be writing in it today but there is really zero
| support now. A real shame.
| npongratz wrote:
| 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 successfully pressure a
| developer to fix bugs by threatening to not resubscribe. Wouldn't
| bug and feature bounties be a better solution, if indeed
| empowering customers is the true reason for subcriptions?
|
| I can see how subscriptions might be good for the subset of
| customers for whom it is easier to use opex funds to subscribe,
| rather than capex funds for perpetual licenses. It can be the
| difference between simply submitting a expense report versus
| going through a months-long series of committee meetings.
|
| [0] https://twinbasic.com/preorder.html
| jaclaz wrote:
| >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").
| zem wrote:
| "kindly accept" is a very standard idiom, at least in indian
| english. don't know about other dialects.
| [deleted]
| nicenewtemp84 wrote:
| I'm a nonnative speakers of English although I moved to the
| US just in time for Kindergarten. Never spoke English at home
| though.
|
| I still commonly invert word orders like this at 38 years
| old. Around 25 years old I realized I did it, and am more
| conscious of it. But I almost do it on purpose now to get
| people to pay attention more. My justification is "it makes
| them think a bit!" And I believe that's good for both
| parties.
| andai wrote:
| 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
| haunter wrote:
| There is also PowerBASIC https://www.powerbasic.com/
|
| https://help.powerbasic.com/PBWIN10/PBWIN.htm
|
| The Wikipedia page is actually has more info than the official
| site lol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerBASIC
| penguinc0der wrote:
| EndBASIC is a free implementation that is written in Rust. It's
| more focused on the DOS based BASICs than VB-styled ones.
|
| https://www.endbasic.dev/
| jmmv wrote:
| Thanks for bringing this up!
|
| I (author of EndBASIC) have been busy with other stuff since
| this made the front page last time and have not had a chance to
| touch the project for the last few months, but I do still have
| plans to grow it.
|
| Just earlier today, and out of coincidence, I added "email
| subscriptions" to the front page of the project -- just in case
| any of you want to get notified when a new release comes out :)
| If you /do/ subscribe, you may get... 2-3 emails a year, and
| help me gather how many people actually care about this.
| lockhouse wrote:
| Wow, this is great!
|
| It's very cool, although my first BASIC was QBasic from DOS
| 5.0, so this is more "primitive" than what I remember BASIC
| being. Keep up the awesome work.
| eb0la wrote:
| It reminds me Amstrad basic. Could it be because of the
| "Ready" prompt? ;-)
| jmmv wrote:
| Well, Amstrad was precisely the inspiration ;-) Take a look
| at the About page for the history!
| randombits0 wrote:
| Non-starter. BASIC fans are hobbyists and won't pay $35 a month.
| Professional devs already have better tools and won't touch it.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| Powerbasic is $175/year for everything I think.
|
| Purebasic is like $79 for life.
| zem wrote:
| hobbyists would likely use something like gambas, where they
| don't need the 100% vb6 compatibility. this seems more targeted
| to businesses who want actual vb6 code to run.
| lockhouse wrote:
| Looks like there's a free community edition that is mostly
| feature complete other than only supporting unoptimized 32-bit
| Windows builds. That should be plenty for a hobbyist to get
| started. I haven't tested it, but I wouldn't be surprised if
| the output binaries worked under Wine as well.
|
| https://twinbasic.com/preorder.html
| anta40 wrote:
| FreeBASIC is excellent and in general your good old QB codes
| should run on modern OSes.
|
| No official MacOS support, though. Only Windows, Linux, and
| DOS.
| sigzero wrote:
| Xojo would be want you want then "probably".
| Frenchgeek wrote:
| There's also Gambas for the almost VB needs.
| renewedrebecca wrote:
| $35 a month for _BASIC_ ? Seriously? Subscriptions have gotten
| completely out of hand.
| [deleted]
| themerone wrote:
| I hate it when proprietary apps freeload off of Github's issue
| tracker.
| lockhouse wrote:
| How do you know they're freeloading? GitHub offers paid
| accounts.
| [deleted]
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| 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 PS25 purchase, but the SDL and command-
| line versions are gratis. It's a great language for hacking
| around on a Raspberry Pi.
| major505 wrote:
| Not going to lie. This is awesome. You can even run on android.
| indigodaddy wrote:
| 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 just do cool stuff and
| basic stuff inside a C64 emulator on the Pi such as Combian64
| etc?
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| > 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.
| chasil wrote:
| I understand that "ARM BASIC V" was embedded in the
| Archimedes in ROM.
|
| If an ARM processor still supports the original 32-bit
| instruction set, then (I understand) that this version should
| run on it, to the point of this being an important
| compatibility test for alternate implementations of the
| instruction set.
|
| Here is some discussion on ARM BASIC V:
|
| https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=61365
|
| This basic version would have been embedded in the original
| "Arthur OS" that shipped on the Archimedes, and later
| versions of (modern) RISC OS.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISC_OS
| jmmv wrote:
| Somebody else brought it up in a separate comment, but
| because you specifically ask about the Raspberry, I'll
| mention EndBASIC (https://www.endbasic.dev/) here again :)
|
| Supporting this platform is an ideal goal of the project, and
| in fact, one of the features (GPIO) only works on the
| Raspberry Pi today :) But there is a long road ahead to
| fulfill the promise. My vision is to create a minimal Linux
| image that boots straight into EndBASIC, and extend EndBASIC
| to give you more control of the Pi's hardware. The idea is to
| truly mimic the old C64 experience, but leveraging the power
| of modern hardware / infrastructure.
| indigodaddy wrote:
| Sounds awesome, that would be super cool! I'll check out
| endbasic as it is currently which should suffice quite
| nicely as is for the environment I'm looking for..
| bombcar wrote:
| It's a really hard question. The program is not anywhere as
| close to the hardware as the original would have been, but is
| it the right place to start? I think you may want to offer a
| variety of things and see which is the most interesting.
|
| Personally I'd love to have a nice 386 with some hardware to
| play around with, but then again, that's what I learned on.
| stormdennis wrote:
| 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?
| fafalone wrote:
| 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.
| jeroen79 wrote:
| why?, .net vb is free
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| VB.net is a second class citizen in the new .Net ecosystem
| (.Net Core/5/6/7)
|
| "Microsoft: 'We Do Not Plan to Evolve Visual Basic as a
| Language'"
| https://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2020/03/12/vb-in-n...
|
| MS is actively trying to get people to switch to C# for .Net
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| .net vb is a completely different language with a completely
| different set of capabilities. It can't compile VB6 code. There
| is a lot of legacy VB6 code out there.
| baudaux wrote:
| I put bwbasic inside https://extendedmachine.com, my new
| operating system running in a web browser. Some basic games are
| in /usr/games/basic
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(page generated 2023-05-10 23:01 UTC)