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Thread: Breaking News, few guys in China wanna write a new basic language

  1. #241
    Super Moderator Shaggy Hiker's Avatar
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    Re: Breaking News, few guys in China wanna write a new basic language

    That sounds like a different language, though. There are plenty of options if you allow for different languages. Cordova does a pretty fair job of being kinda cross platform, but it's based on JavaScript/HTML, so is quite useless for people who want to port existing VB6 apps, which is usually what people are after.
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  2. #242
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    Re: Breaking News, few guys in China wanna write a new basic language

    Any news of a replacement for the VB6 programming language is always interesting. I hope, one day, to actually see one be made available. The key feature of any replacement, imo, is how easily you can port existing VB6 source code. This is the area where VB.Net and other attempts failed.

    In related news, a new release 7 of NS Basic has just been launched (October 1). NSBasic uses a VB6-like IDE and a VB-like language. NS Basic is targeted at Web and Mobile (Android and iOS) apps. Many VB6 controls have equivalents in NSBasic. You can't directly migrate VB6 to NSBasic, but you can create forms in NSBasic and give them exactly the same name as the VB6 form. Then add controls to the form (again giving them the exact same name as the VB6 controls). You can then copy and paste the VB6 code to the NS Basic form.

    Much VB6 code can be re-used, that which can't is typically because of the differences between desktop and web apps. So, for example, no direct access to a database (except SQLite).

    You can keep your source code in Basic and continue to edit it in the IDE, NSBasic transcompiles to JavaScript/HTML.

    PhoneGap (Cordova) are supported.

    Interestingly version 7 supports Node.js (and also Bootstrap 4).

    I haven't downloaded version 7 yet, so I don't know the detail but I'm particularly interested in using node.js on desktops as well as servers.

    https://www.nsbasic.com/

    https://wiki.nsbasic.com/Version_7

    (Mods, I have no connection with NSBasic Corp. other than as a user. Feel free to delete the links if you wish.)

  3. #243
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    Re: Breaking News, few guys in China wanna write a new basic language

    I think a lot of people went to B4J as an aid in transitioning to Java and they just haven't looked back. Others have retired or expired, maybe the bigger reason why the community has shrunk so much.

    The B4J forum seems as busy or busier than this one. Not bad for a language from a small company.

  4. #244
    Lively Member IndicSoftware's Avatar
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    Re: Breaking News, few guys in China wanna write a new basic language

    Quote Originally Posted by dilettante View Post
    I think a lot of people went to B4J as an aid in transitioning to Java and they just haven't looked back. Others have retired or expired, maybe the bigger reason why the community has shrunk so much.

    The B4J forum seems as busy or busier than this one. Not bad for a language from a small company.
    I would like to add here. For mobile development solutions B4A and B4I are also used very profusely.

    Very few seem to switch to free and opensource FreeBasic (and FireFly IDE) as compare to B4J which is totally free and easier to use!

    Once upon a time when B4J was not that feature rich and powerful I used to use close source but free Jabaco (http://www.jabaco.org). But unfortunately this product has stagnated and there does not seem to be any worthwhile feature updates and it has still not crossed its Beat stage.

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  5. #245
    Super Moderator Shaggy Hiker's Avatar
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    Re: Breaking News, few guys in China wanna write a new basic language

    That's another issue, of course. One of the things that MS brings is weight.

    What people would like is to have something that is well used, widely usable, and will be supported and updated for the rest of our careers, or at least as long as we are interested in it. That last part is out of the question, of course. If we look back over the fairly brief history of programming, the prospects of anything lasting more than two decades is pretty dismal. The hardware we target changes too fast, the OS changes too fast, and languages....change.
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  6. #246
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    Re: Breaking News, few guys in China wanna write a new basic language

    Quote Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker View Post
    That's another issue, of course. One of the things that MS brings is weight.

    What people would like is to have something that is well used, widely usable, and will be supported and updated for the rest of our careers, or at least as long as we are interested in it. That last part is out of the question, of course. If we look back over the fairly brief history of programming, the prospects of anything lasting more than two decades is pretty dismal. The hardware we target changes too fast, the OS changes too fast, and languages....change.
    I would like to distinguish between what happen naturally and what happen "not naturally".

  7. #247
    Super Moderator Shaggy Hiker's Avatar
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    Re: Breaking News, few guys in China wanna write a new basic language

    I can't think of any answer to that which would be appropriate for this forum, so I guess you'd best elaborate.
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  8. #248
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    Re: Breaking News, few guys in China wanna write a new basic language

    Yes, naturally is when something becomes obsolete because something better appears.
    People choose the better thing over the other.

  9. #249
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    Re: Breaking News, few guys in China wanna write a new basic language

    Quote Originally Posted by Eduardo- View Post
    And why don't you come here?
    OK. And what about doing an ice bucket challenge?

  10. #250
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    QB64 - a more realistic option?

    [redacted]
    Last edited by yereverluvinuncleber; Nov 26th, 2018 at 08:08 PM. Reason: [redacted]

  11. #251
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    Re: QB64 - a more realistic option?

    Quote Originally Posted by yereverluvinuncleber View Post
    Why don't you chaps use all that spare brain-power to help the chaps at QB64 who are developing QB64 into a modern BASIC environment?
    QB64 is a novelty, meant to be compatible with classic QuickBasic. This is a terrible code base to use as a potential VB6 replacement. The only thing QuickBasic and VB6 have in common is the language. Literally everything that goes on under the hood is as different as night and day when you compare both environments.

    To give examples of what I'm talking about, QuickBasic has no infrastructure to support COM. No notion of threading. No support for Windows messaging. No support for dynamically linking executable code, which is essential to run any Windows application. No compatibility with Windows virtual memory and other protected mode schemes like protection rings. And a whole lot of other things I can't can't recall right now.

    Some of these things can be fully implemented in the compiler but due to the sheer amount of these kinds of things, little would be gained from using the QB64 compiler as a base. You'd essentially be writing a compiler from scratch.
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  12. #252
    PowerPoster yereverluvinuncleber's Avatar
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    Re: QB64 - a more realistic option?

    [redacted]
    Last edited by yereverluvinuncleber; Nov 26th, 2018 at 08:09 PM. Reason: [redacted]

  13. #253
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    Re: Breaking News, few guys in China wanna write a new basic language

    Wouldn't it make more sense for the QB64 and FreeBasic communities to join forces? After all they both have dark world (command line) programming in common and both try to graft on widget kits to venture into the light.

    VB6 may be in its last days, but I'd bet it still has thousands of times the active programmers of either of those other two. There is a lot of legacy VB6 being supported yet and probably next to no serious commercial use of either of the other two.
    Last edited by dilettante; Oct 27th, 2018 at 08:14 AM.

  14. #254
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    Re: Breaking News, few guys in China wanna write a new basic language

    [redacted]
    Last edited by yereverluvinuncleber; Nov 26th, 2018 at 08:10 PM. Reason: [redacted]

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    Re: Breaking News, few guys in China wanna write a new basic language

    What do you think of this?

    https://vb6x.org/

  16. #256
    PowerPoster yereverluvinuncleber's Avatar
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    Re: Breaking News, few guys in China wanna write a new basic language

    IF it happens, if it is ever finalised and released and I would say, "about bleedin' time" and then I'd jump straight in and give it a go.

    Downloading and trialling to find out if it runs in a 64 bit environment first.

    The current downloads do report a lot of problems using virustotal , probably false positives but do be careful and sandbox your installations.
    Last edited by yereverluvinuncleber; Nov 28th, 2018 at 07:40 AM. Reason: av update

  17. #257
    PowerPoster Elroy's Avatar
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    Re: Breaking News, few guys in China wanna write a new basic language

    Here's the most disappointing and tell-tale line in the whole thing, which says it gives existing VB6 users nothing:


    It will also be able to compile code into native executables or p-code, provided that a licensed copy of Visual Basic 6.0 is installed. (Emphases added.)
    Any software I post in these forums written by me is provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind, expressed or implied, and permission is hereby granted, free of charge and without restriction, to any person obtaining a copy. To all, peace and happiness.

  18. #258
    PowerPoster yereverluvinuncleber's Avatar
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    Re: Breaking News, few guys in China wanna write a new basic language

    Not nothing. Be positive for Gawd's sake! Potentially a supported environment that may develop rather than one that never will.

  19. #259
    PowerPoster Elroy's Avatar
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    Re: Breaking News, few guys in China wanna write a new basic language

    yereverluvinuncleber,

    I'm not opposed to being positive, but there's only one thing that'll truly get me interested/excited regarding VB6 source code.

    And let me set a little groundwork before I even say what that is. Let's say I'm willing to jettison any use of third-party controls; let's say I'm even willing to jettison any use of intrinsic controls and adopt Krool's alternatives; and let's say I'm willing to spend the time to re-work any API calls I've got to make sure they'll work in a 64-bit environment (LongPtr stuff primarily).

    After having done that, I'll get interested ONLY when I can dump my source code into some new IDE (with a new compiler) and compile it into a 64-bit program. Anything short of that is just fluff that I don't need.

    The RubberDuck thread is fun to watch, but it's nothing I really need, and it does nothing to address that fundamental issue. And there have been several other suggestions of third-party VB6 compilers through the years, but none have even come close to fruition. I truly believe most of them are just blowing smoke. I once thought that maybe Olaf Schmidt was going to come up with something, but he's been promising for many years, with no hint of any actual compiler software. Also, with all the RC5 stuff he intends to use, I suspect it'll be farther away from VB6 code than .NET is, so why not just bite the bullet and go to .NET (other than his argument that his will be multi-OS-platform which I don't care about)?

    So, unless I see something that will compile my existing code, with minimal work, into a 64-bit application, I'll maintain the position that they have nothing to offer me.

    Best Regards,
    Elroy

    EDIT1: Heck, truth be told, I'd probably be fine if I had to stick with the MS VB6 IDE, and just had a 64-bit command line compiler. I'd have to write some LongPtr class to serve as a stub for the 64-bit API declarations, but that's no huge deal. And, if a good VB6-syntax compiler ever did emerge, I'm sure that folks would develop an IDE for it in relatively short order. The p-code runtime debugging would be the hardest part. The rest of it isn't much more than a glorified text editor.
    Last edited by Elroy; Nov 28th, 2018 at 09:43 AM.
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  20. #260
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    Re: Breaking News, few guys in China wanna write a new basic language

    Quote Originally Posted by Elroy View Post
    After having done that, I'll get interested ONLY when I can dump my source code into some new IDE (with a new compiler) and compile it into a 64-bit program. Anything short of that is just fluff that I don't need.
    You may be a candidate for Xojo.

    Quote Originally Posted by Elroy View Post
    So, unless I see something that will compile my existing code, with minimal work, into a 64-bit application, I'll maintain the position that they have nothing to offer me.
    Minimal work? You might be asking for too much.

  21. #261
    PowerPoster Elroy's Avatar
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    Re: Breaking News, few guys in China wanna write a new basic language

    Quote Originally Posted by dilettante View Post
    Minimal work? You might be asking for too much.
    I really don't see why. Just as an example, way back in 2000-2001, I wrote a huge chunk of my application in Excel VBA. It's since been pulled into VB6, using Excel only through VB6 automation. However, I've still got that piece as an Excel VBA piece, and some of my users still use it that way. A couple of years ago, I had a user who was all setup with Excel, but she had Office-64-bit, and it wouldn't work. I had some API calls as well as an API based CommonDialog in the code. It took me about half-a-day to get everything running in Office-64-bit VBA. All it really took was changing the Long declarations to LongPtr in the API calls, inserting the PtrSafe keyword, doing some alpha-testing, and I was good to go.

    If Microsoft ever came out with a VB6.5, I'm assuming (hoping) it'd be the same way. And, if someone else ever did develop a true VB6.5 compiler, I'm hoping that would be their objectives as well. I'm assuming they'd also introduce the LongLong VarType, but that's about it. With respect to differences between VBA-32-bit and VBA-64-bit, the LongPtr, PtrSave, and LongLong are about it. Longs should still be 32-bit (even in a 64-bit program).

    So, if done correctly, I don't see why it shouldn't be minimal work on my part.

    All The Best,
    Elroy
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    Re: Breaking News, few guys in China wanna write a new basic language

    Quote Originally Posted by Elroy View Post

    After having done that, I'll get interested ONLY when I can dump my source code into some new IDE (with a new compiler) and compile it into a 64-bit program. Anything short of that is just fluff that I don't need.
    Got to say I agree with you. There seems no point in moving to a language that claims to be better but makes you rewrite much of your software. That's the mistake VB.Net made. There have always been plenty of alternative languages to choose from if you are happy to throw-away your existing source code.

  23. #263
    PowerPoster yereverluvinuncleber's Avatar
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    Re: Breaking News, few guys in China wanna write a new basic language

    Quote Originally Posted by Elroy View Post

    After having done that, I'll get interested ONLY when I can dump my source code into some new IDE (with a new compiler) and compile it into a 64-bit program. Anything short of that is just fluff that I don't need.
    Understood.

  24. #264
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    Re: Breaking News, few guys in China wanna write a new basic language

    In fanciful moments, I've often thought about disassembling the C2.EXE compiler and reworking it to make 64-bit OBJ files. I'm sure I'd eventually get a nasty letter from Microsoft, but I'm not really sure they could do much, having abandoned that software almost 2 decades ago. I'm thinking we could find an existing 64-bit linker that would put things together for us.

    If I got really ambitious, I could disassemble the VB6.EXE and rework it as well to be a 64-bit application that ran 64-bit source code.

    However, those are just fanciful thoughts on my part.

    Take Care,
    Elroy
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  25. #265
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    Re: Breaking News, few guys in China wanna write a new basic language

    When Microsoft saw the corner they painted themselves into with macro scripting languages like Word Basic they backed up and factored out a swath of VB to create VBA. So taking VBA macro script and dumping it into VB is even less of a stretch than doing the same thing with the far less closely related VBScript.

    The compilers developed to be QBasic compatible would be your best bet, and even then you have a lot of work to do. You have all of the stuff in VB they never got plus all of the things from QBasic they chose to re-implement in another way.

    All that really leaves is Xojo and B4J, because others that tried to be VB compatible are pretty raggedy, have tiny communities, and/or are orphaned and abandoned.

  26. #266
    Super Moderator Shaggy Hiker's Avatar
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    Re: Breaking News, few guys in China wanna write a new basic language

    What's the point with 64-bit software...I mean aside from the obvious bloat. In .NET you can compile to 64, 32, or Auto...which doesn't really do what you'd hope it would do. I use some 32 bit components, so I just stick with compiling everything to 32 bit. I don't see the grand advantage of 64 bit unless you are working with needing to address some truly massive collections, and if you did that in VB6 then you've already worked out code to chunk the collections, so what would you really gain from 64-bit?
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  27. #267
    PowerPoster Elroy's Avatar
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    Re: Breaking News, few guys in China wanna write a new basic language

    Quote Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker View Post
    What's the point with 64-bit software...I mean aside from the obvious bloat. In .NET you can compile to 64, 32, or Auto...which doesn't really do what you'd hope it would do. I use some 32 bit components, so I just stick with compiling everything to 32 bit. I don't see the grand advantage of 64 bit unless you are working with needing to address some truly massive collections, and if you did that in VB6 then you've already worked out code to chunk the collections, so what would you really gain from 64-bit?
    And this is really addressed at Dilettante's comment too.

    Truth be told, I'm absolutely fine with my VB6 IDE and compiling to 32-bit executables. A time or two, I have run up against some IDE limits, but that just encouraged me to do some code-house-cleaning, which was probably needed anyway.

    I suppose, it's more of a marketing/perception issue more than anything else. My clients are slowly migrating to Windows 10 64-bit, and just like the warm-fuzzy feeling they get when all the programs on the new boxes are 64-bit. For the most part, they don't care. But I think it is a little bother in the back of their heads that maybe my program isn't written in a cutting-edge language (which, truth be told, it's not).

    As far as capabilities, my 2Gig limit has always been fine. Personally, I do all my testing in the IDE. So, I figure that, if I've got no memory problems with the IDE loaded and running from p-code, then a compiled executable certainly shouldn't have any problems.

    Someday, to get something done, it might be nice to have 16Gig (or more) of address space, but it's really nothing I have any immediate need for. I remember feeling quite cramped on old IBM-XTs, with their 1Meg of address space, but I've never felt cramped with 2Gig.

    Best Regards,
    Elroy
    Any software I post in these forums written by me is provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind, expressed or implied, and permission is hereby granted, free of charge and without restriction, to any person obtaining a copy. To all, peace and happiness.

  28. #268
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    Re: Breaking News, few guys in China wanna write a new basic language

    Quote Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker View Post
    What's the point with 64-bit software...
    It's a question that is asked. Just yesterday a customer's IT department asked me if our software was 32 bit or 64 bit. They are existing users, but are updating from Windows 10 v1709 to v1803 (all 64bit). Why they need to know I don't know. But it is asked.

    As Elroy says "it's more of a marketing/perception issue".

    I'd be happy just to be able to say 'you can have either version, but we recommend 32 bit'.

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    Re: Breaking News, few guys in China wanna write a new basic language

    Quote Originally Posted by VB6 Programming View Post
    Why they need to know I don't know. But it is asked
    They think Windows 64bit can only run 64bit apps. I've had to reassure many, many IT people that the 32 bit apps can run on 64bit windows.

  30. #270
    PowerPoster yereverluvinuncleber's Avatar
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    Re: Breaking News, few guys in China wanna write a new basic language

    Well, its 64 bits of a bus, the more bus-bits you have, the more of the bus you can assemble: seats, tyres, gearbox, wings, fuel tank, body, exhaust, engine, brakes, windows, red paint &c. You can go a lot longer in the assembly when you have 64 bits of a bus.

    Last edited by yereverluvinuncleber; Nov 28th, 2018 at 03:32 PM.

  31. #271
    Super Moderator Shaggy Hiker's Avatar
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    Re: Breaking News, few guys in China wanna write a new basic language

    Ah, that does make sense. You'd certainly want ALL the bits of the bus.
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    Re: Breaking News, few guys in China wanna write a new basic language

    Quote Originally Posted by stuck-n-past View Post
    Hey to anybody that's been reading / following this thread, I have built a VB6 clone a while back!

    Full IDE
    Code Editor
    Spell Checker
    Forms editor
    Run / Debug modes
    Object Browser
    Project Explorer
    Component Manager
    Toolbox Drag-n-Drop
    Intelligence
    Capable of Reading VB6 files VBP, FRM, FRX etc
    Language Enhancements
    IDE Enhancements
    And much more...

    One of my posts here on VBForums has screenshots of my IDE running.

    I have the code mothballed on a disk somewhere, or I'd upload more screenshots.

    EDIT: I dug out the CD and made a couple of screenshots and then cut and pasted a few of the popup menus onto the main picture so you can see some of the options.

    It's been a while since I ran the code and don't know why the ToolBox ICONs are showing up so small, but whatever.

    Attachment 153547




    Here is a shot of the object browser - currently it's not setup as a MDI Child Form

    Attachment 153549


    Here is the Add File Dialog - Title's messed up as it should say Add UserControl

    Attachment 153551



    Here is a shot of the File Menu - It has it quirks, not sure why there are underscores in the menu title

    Attachment 153553

    One of the nice modifications is that when the IDE encounters and error, there's no MsgBox that pops up which needs to be clicked. The bad code statement turns Red along with a warning message and an audible sound, but nothing to slow down typing or any immediate action required by the user.

    You can clear the debug window from the IDE or from code - Debug.Clear. You can also save the immediate window with Debug.Save or you can use Debug.Print and many others.

    You can also 'Hot-Spot' desired properties so that when you add a new control on a Form, you don't have to jump back and forth to the properties pane, the selected properties popup right next to the control being added. Common and popular properties such as Name are automatically added to the Hot-Spot list.
    dose it upload to github?

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