[RESOLVED] This subforum should be renamed the TwinBASIC forum.

[Peter Swinkels]

Dozens upon dozens of TwinBASIC threads... Wasn't one or two enough? While I don't give a damn about TwinBASIC that is not the reason for this post, it's the fact that this entire sub forum has been flooded with nothing TwinBASIC this and that. What was the original purpose of this sub forum again? Personally I used to talk about really old BASIC dialects and to rant about Gambas I believe. In fact, are there any remotely noteworthy "Other BASICS" besides TwinBASIC? I could rattle off several old dialects which however are dead as a doornail except for a few niche cases. Anyone?

[fafalone]

Was one or two threads enough for VB6? Just because you personally don't give a damn about anything that isn't already delivered to you as a late generation, refined over decades by an army of programmers mature corporate product, doesn't mean lots of other people aren't interested in the future of BASIC while it's still under development. That's prime time to get involved and shape the future direction it takes. We just hit 400 users on the Discord channel, this forum is 3rd behind GitHub in activity, but still there's enough posts it matters.

I believe the mods will be open to a dedicated tB forum once it hits 1.0, so this forum can go back to being dead besides the one or two monthly non-tB posts.

There's no other VB6-compatible BASICs of note, but there are other BASIC dialects: B4x is quite popular; a BASIC language for Androids (B4A), iOS (B4i), desktop RAD for Java (B4J), and Arduino (B4R). There's probably around the same number of users of PowerBASIC and FreeBasic as people playing with retro programming in ancient versions. Then TI-BASIC is hugely popular due to being on millions of students' graphic calculators; that was the first programming exposure I ever had besides 'move the turtle' LOGO in.. I don't recall, actually, either K, 1st, or 2nd grade, because it wasn't at the new school I started in 3rd. I spent more time figuring out how to get my TI-89 to give me the answer in middle school than it would have taken to learn the material properly

[Peter Swinkels]

VB6 was a well developed product for its time supported and maintained by a large cooperation and has been immensely popular, to the point of still being in use 26 years after its release. Of course there will be thousands upon thousands threads about it.

Unless you and your team truly give a damn about developing, supporting and maintaining TwinBASIC for at least the next several years those pitiful 400 users are going to abandon your TwinBASIC like rats fleeing from a sinking ship. I personally am not going to muck around too much with yet another project that is likely going to end in failure and abandonment because the people behind ultimately didn't follow through with it for whatever reason. I am small scale programmer who is into it mostly for the fun of it and vb6 or even vb.net work well enough for me.

And you truly care about the future of BASIC? Don't make me laugh, if you really want BASIC to progress you shouldn't be developing something even remotely vb6 compatible. You should be looking at vb.net which is backed up by a large cooperation. One of the reasons it's not really compatible with vb6 is because Microsoft let go of the past.

Well, personally I believe the mods should doing at least something, because I don't think the "Other BASIC" forum was ever meant to be flooded with TwinBASIC threads. Don't you have your own website and forum to use for that kind of thing?

And why would there be VB6-compatible BASICs of note? VB6 still runs in Windows 11 for legacy projects. Most other people long have since moved on.

B4i sounds interesting, I might look into that one some time. From what I can tell there still some retro BASIC programmers out there but not many.

TI-BASIC sounds interest too. :-)

"I spent more time figuring out how to get my TI-89 to give me the answer in middle school than it would have taken to learn the material properly "

Exactly why I am not going to bother with TwinBASIC I doubt it will ever get the bug-ridden only partially compatible with vb6 stage. I have seen projects like this go down in flames before.

[OptionBase1]

Removed.

[Peter Swinkels]

*sarcastic laughter*

[OptionBase1]

Removed.

[OptionBase1]

Removed.

[Peter Swinkels]

Alright, I give up. Yes I did exaggerate in my posts. I am not going to debate every little thing I said. I maintain that regardless of the exact number of posts TwinBASIC topics are surprisingly dominant in this forum which I feel is a shame. Undecided eh? What I thought pretty much all of you had decided I was the forum idiot!

I really am left wondering why I even bother posting here or whether I can contribute anything meaningful. Most questions I might be able to answer are usually already answered by someone else and I am not sure what kind of personal stuff I could contribute. Why? Because nobody seems to have a need or interest for anything I can come up with. I think this forum changed to a point where I longer feel like I can contribute much to be honest.

Yes, someone had some interest in my experience with Wine, which I decided is a hopeless piece of garbage.

[fafalone]

Well if WINE is a hopeless piece of garbage in your book too, at least that puts into context your complaints about tB. I guess because WINE doesn't support 100% of code either right now, it never will be useful for anything (certainly not the thousands of apps it *does* currently run) and it's users will all abandon it. Let me guess, *your* favorite project doesn't work on WINE.

Unless you and your team truly give a damn about developing, supporting and maintaining TwinBASIC for at least the next several years those pitiful 400 users are going to abandon your TwinBASIC like rats fleeing from a sinking ship.

twinBASIC has already developed from a fledgling tech demo to very close to fully compatible and running lots of large, complex VB6 projects over the past 3 years, so why would there be any expectation that it would be swiftly abandoned right after it finally gets to a stable 1.0 state, when there's still major planned features coming, and the project is meeting the developer's expectations for subscribers (Wayne has said it currently is)? Further, *if* Wayne were to abandon it, it would pass to the community. Once tB hits 1.0, the source will be placed in escrow, with release terms for death of or abandonment by its developer.

I personally am not going to muck around too much with yet another project that is likely going to end in failure and abandonment because the people behind ultimately didn't follow through with it for whatever reason. I am small scale programmer who is into it mostly for the fun of it and vb6 or even vb.net work well enough for me.

That's certainly a fear I shared in the early days. But far less of a concern 3 years in with constant progress. You program for fun? Fooled me. I program as a hobby too and couldn't imagine being so upset and cynical over 'failure to achieve perfection during pre-release beta' by the only serious attempt *ever* to make significant progress bringing awesome new features to the language I love.

And you truly care about the future of BASIC? Don't make me laugh, if you really want BASIC to progress you shouldn't be developing something even remotely vb6 compatible. You should be looking at vb.net which is backed up by a large cooperation. One of the reasons it's not really compatible with vb6 is because Microsoft let go of the past.

Microsoft is already deprecating VB.NET. They've stopped updating VBA, have made it increasingly difficult to use, and will almost certainly start pulling it soon. I'd bet good money VB.NET doesn't have anywhere near the staying power of VB6, not the least because of C#-- The overwhelming consensus is nobody should bother with VB.NET. If you're interested in the direction .NET has gone, it makes far more sense to go straight to C#. You yourself *just* acknowledged how popular VB6 still is at this point, and twinBASIC is the only possible future of the classic VB language. Abandoning classic VB for .NET was clearly a mistake; VB.NET and .NET in general has never even approached the market dominance of VB6 in it's prime. If you "let go of the past" but also let go of everything that made your product dominate it's market, it's a bad decision. There's a reason Windows is more or less compatible with 25+ year old programs. No matter how "superior" a non-compatible Windows would be, it's dominance in the desktop OS market would get shredded, because when people have to start over, there's more options on the table.

I'd have to say you don't care about the future of BASIC; since your only thought seems to be 'VB.NET' that barely counts as BASIC at all. The entire point of BASIC was accessibility to non-programmers and beginners. VB.NET is like any other professional programming language with the associated steep learning curve.

Well, personally I believe the mods should doing at least something, because I don't think the "Other BASIC" forum was ever meant to be flooded with TwinBASIC threads. Don't you have your own website and forum to use for that kind of thing?

Indeed, they should make a dedicated tB forum, then you can go back to only seeing the 1 post per month about something else in this subforum.

And why would there be VB6-compatible BASICs of note? VB6 still runs in Windows 11 for legacy projects. Most other people long have since moved on.

VB4 still worked when VB6 came out. People moved on, but not to a language that hasn't changed in 25 years. How many .NET versions have there been? Even C has had new features added, with C11, 17, and 23 all adding loads of things over the last 20 years. Why do you think VB6 users don't want new features just because we haven't moved on to inferior for many uses options like VB.NET? New features already implemented in tB.

Exactly why I am not going to bother with TwinBASIC I doubt it will ever get the bug-ridden only partially compatible with vb6 stage. I have seen projects like this go down in flames before.

I won't lie and say that's not a fear I have, but I can't see why anybody would believe it's the most likely path when it's made such consistent progress for 3 years now. What other projects have you seen that even made it to 0.1% of compatibility tB currently has? Name *one*. Radbasic hasn't technically gone down; it's just progressing at a glacial pace compared to tB. That's the only other project that, as far as I can tell, ever made to the 'can compile something' stage... every other effort I've seen only made an IDE that called VB6's compiler. *That* project would be worthy of the way you speak about tB; 3 years in it doesn't even support classes or API calls.

All signs point to tB reaching it's goal, regardless of how indignant your are that beta software, shockingly, isn't finished and has bugs. It's just not a fair assessment given what tB can currently run, and that most of what it can't is only one or two bugs standing in the way. I know this won't change your mind now, but I hope you'd be willing to take another look when it's out of beta, assuming you're not just going to say 'oh, it doesn't reverse engineer it so undocumented vb6 internals hacks work? garbage!' because you have to replace a subclassing assembly thunk with a SetWindowSubclass call.

[Peter Swinkels]

Wine appears to be a half assed hack job just like so many other failed projects to be found online. Some simple Windows apps kinda-sorta worked with it. It runs thousands of apps? What kind of apps? It didn't even run Notepad reliably for me!

If your statements about vb.net and vba are correct I predict that your twinBASIC will last until people no longer need a patch job for their legacy vb6 apps. I am curious to see how long it takes for the last of classic vb software to be phased out. Perhaps BASIC will be dead in the near future except for some very specific niches.

If the mods move all your twinBASIC spamming to another forum the other users might stand a chance of posting here. I would rather see infrequent posts about anything other than twinBASIC. And yes, I said spamming, most other people doing what you do would be made out to be attention seeking wannabe's. Somehow you get away with it because your twinBASIC looks shiny enough to bait people. I have tried it, and as it stands it is shiny piece of nothing. Who first develops a shiny interface and than tries to make it work? Seems backwards to me. Scratch that, half the interface wasn't there when I tried it. A lot of empty menu's and what not.

Oh, and that feature list for twinBASIC? Congratulations, you just reinvented vb.net in all but name!

If Radbasic is moving at a glacial pace it is effectively dead as a useful product in this day and age. Ever heard of Gambas? Another Linux based piece of garbage vb wannabe.

Alright, I will take another look at TwinBASIC for the sake of fairness. I don't expect much beyond a clunky interface and near instant failure trying to get something to work.

[Peter Swinkels]

Alright, I downloaded TwinBASIC and loaded a vb6 project into it. Nothing special. Guess what? Instant failure. Want a list of issues or are just going to argue some more?

[OptionBase1]

Removed.

[Peter Swinkels]

I am no longer replying here. And I could provide some feedback to twinBASIC but that is probably a waste of my time and energy.

[fafalone]

Alright, I downloaded TwinBASIC and loaded a vb6 project into it. Nothing special. Guess what? Instant failure. Want a list of issues or are just going to argue some more?

Yes, I would like a list of issues, as would the developer, so they can be fixed, like the hundreds of other bugs that have already been fixed. I'd even be glad to help reduce them to minimal examples and file proper bug reports. But to be clear, since you have such a low tolerance for bugs, to the point where even extremely widely used, fairly stable, and extensively compatible projects like WINE are useless garbage on the basis of not being able to run absolutely 100% of everything right off the bat, with no need for bug fixes or implementing unimplemented features, I had recommended you take a look at tB *after* a 1.0 release, as we all know there's a lot of bugs right now. That's the nature of BETA software. Have *you* ever written something substantial that was 100% bug free on the first build? You'd be the first programmer in history to do so.

I take it you're also still refusing to look at how complex all the projects that *do* run are. My repository alone makes it clear that compatibility is far further along then you're willing to see.

Wine appears to be a half assed hack job just like so many other failed projects to be found online. Some simple Windows apps kinda-sorta worked with it. It runs thousands of apps? What kind of apps? It didn't even run Notepad reliably for me!

I'm really starting to think you're just a troll. This isn't a serious comment. Here's a database.

If the mods move all your twinBASIC spamming to another forum the other users might stand a chance of posting here. I would rather see infrequent posts about anything other than twinBASIC. And yes, I said spamming, most other people doing what you do would be made out to be attention seeking wannabe's. Somehow you get away with it because your twinBASIC looks shiny enough to bait people. I have tried it, and as it stands it is shiny piece of nothing. Who first develops a shiny interface and than tries to make it work? Seems backwards to me. Scratch that, half the interface wasn't there when I tried it. A lot of empty menu's and what not.

Yup, definitely trolling at this point. The interface is the opposite of shiny. That's a frequent complaint of literally everyone except you. That the IDE is rudimentary and unpolished. This is a fair assessment, even though it ignores lots of substantial conveniences like code folding and regions VB6's IDE lacks.

And sorry but people talking about things you don't like isn't spamming. There was virtually nothing going on in this subforum before tB. And nobody is being stopped from talking about other stuff because of a few tB threads. What are you bitter because no one shares your wildly narrow view of what's interesting to talk about concerning the handful of programs on this planet you don't consider garbage?

Oh, and that feature list for twinBASIC? Congratulations, you just reinvented vb.net in all but name!

Lol this is just stupid. I find it hard to believe you've ever used VB.NET. Why isn't it reinventing every other modern language with those features in all but name too? Why C and Python must be clones in your view! Sorry tB and WINE don't run your favorite project, but that's not cause to act like an ass.

[fafalone]

I am no longer replying here. And I could provide some feedback to twinBASIC but that is probably a waste of my time and energy.

You clearly have zero interest in providing constructive feedback. I've asked you over and over to contribute feedback and details about what's not working for those issues to be addressed, and you just ignore that and post attacks that misrepresent the current status of the project.

[OptionBase1]

Removed.

[Eduardo-]

I remember that opening different threads for different twinBASIC issues was encouraged by the moderator in the main tB thread.

[yereverluvinuncleber]

People seem to become bitter in their involvement with VisualBasic. I came across a lot of that when I first arrived here. It felt like a lot of near-dead people were working with a near-dead language that everyone was saying was dead. It was hard not to become pessimistic as all the positive, go-ahead types had probably gone ahead, positively, a long time ago.

I was always optimistic that VB6 had a future and I felt I was struggling in that negativity without anything to prove otherwise. Strangely, that long-hoped-for future seems to have arrived and it feels a positive one. TwinBASIC, OlafBasic (20%) or possibly even RADBasic are here (or almost here) and although each are currently incomplete to a different extent, some very alive, clever and positive people are working on each.

IF I feel negative I just think and focus on the fact that these chaps are creating something that appears to be positively useful to us. How lovely is that?

With that thought in mind, I think you can put that bitterness behind you, ascribe it to a temporary grumpiness brought on by old age and/or a mild insanity caused by an injection of alcohol (or something).

Honestly, now is not the time to be grumpy, that was about fifteen/twenty years ago. Things are looking up!

[Shaggy Hiker]

Just to be clear, I was the one encouraging more TB threads, and I still do. I feel that TB has a good chance of supplanting VB6 for the people who have been sticking with VB6. It won't please everybody, but I think it will please a goodly number. Once there are enough threads, I do believe they will be hived off into their own forum. I also think that we should wait till the 1.0 release. If there are plenty of threads by then, that would be a good time to consider it.

One thing to note, though, is that I'm not a fan of TB, myself. I moved on from VB6 a couple decades back, and don't miss it. I have no antipathy towards it. The language was excellent while I was using it, but .NET suited my style better, so I switched once I realized that. I wouldn't say I love either one, though. They're just tools. One fits my hand better than the other, and that's all that matters to me.

Still, I do encourage sufficient threads, including this one, that a TB forum makes sense. There are some moribund forums on here. If one subject looks like it might have legs, I expect we'd be making room for it.

[fafalone]

No language is perfect for everyone... 'suits my style better' is a perfectly fine reason for choosing one tool over another. I just found 'useless garbage because of bugs in the beta stage' to on the other hand *not* be a reasonable argument or constructive criticism, to say nothing of the silly claim anyone is 'spamming'.

I do think there's another substantial market in addition to the few remaining VB6 users: VBA. 64bit Office is the default now, and not being able to make addins and controls in the same language for it is a significant issue, because the alternatives are not just different languages, but different programming paradigms, and I'd argue VB.NET isn't really BASIC in the true spirit of BASIC that makes VB6 and VBA so enduringly popular.. That's a niche tB can fill for a use of the VB language in far more widespread use in companies than VB6. There's a lot of talk about potentially replacing the VBA editor too. If MS becomes even more hostile to VBA, use could expand beyond addins/controls. Imagine if tB came into existence 20 years ago, just after MS announced VB classic was toast? How many companies would have opted for a complete rewrite in a whole new language if an alternative existed that moved into the future while not entirely abandoning the past? Some would, because as you know, . .NET is better suited to some tasks, but nowhere near the same. It's actually kind of surprising no serious effort was made in those first few years, given how uncommon it is for nobody to try to step in to fill a void in the software world, and how widespread and intense opposition to .NET was.

Looking forward to the tB forum once it's 1.0 time! Wonder where it should go... .NET and more isn't really related enough, and it's not really 'Other languages' in the same sense as C++, Java, Assembly, and the others there. It's the Visual Basic *language*, extended, but not a "Visual Basic" product. Oh well, there's still some time to think on it, while I don't have any special knowledge, I don't see it hitting the current 1.0 target a month from now. Certainly worth some more waiting given that Edit and Continue and VBWatchDog support are both now 1.0 features instead of post-1.0 and the need to tackle the long tail of bugs on top of finishing the other 1.0 features; and it's better to delay then release production versions when not ready for production use, but it is hard to see the timeline slipping even when the development pace is as extraordinary as tB.

[yereverluvinuncleber]

Shaggy, come back from the dark side, walk toward the light, it is not too late to repent.

[Shaggy Hiker]

As the saying goes, "you can't teach an old dog to change horses in the middle of the stream."

When it comes to VBA, I'd say it's something of a gateway drug. People who write in VBA are most likely starting that way because they have a very specific and (hopefully) small task that they have to accomplish. They may decide they really like that, at which point they'll be going on to harder stuff, or they may decide it's not for them. In that role, I don't believe VBA will either be replaced or bested. That's not because it is excellent, though it rather is, but because it is so tightly integrated into Office, and especially Excel and Access. Had it been Python that was so tightly integrated, then there may never have been a VB6....or at least it would have looked considerably different. TB may very well benefit from the gateway drug of VBA.

[OptionBase1]

For Pete's sake I removed my posts. I don't think they were particularly out of bounds, but they also weren't generally constructive.

I think a healthy skepticism of moving any sort of major project, commercial or otherwise, from a very, very known quantity of VB6 to anything new - especially a new product with a very small underlying development team - is extremely warranted.

I disagree wholeheartedly that discussions of such a new product in multiple threads in this particular subforum should be curtailed by mods.

[yereverluvinuncleber]

I didn't think your posts were particularly combative. I find that when a VB6er wants a fight it is best to use "excessive politeness".

[fafalone]

Healthy skepticism, sure. Nothing wrong with that. I'm not without doubts despite thinking it still can (and absolutely should) succeed. But that's not what he was offering.

When he first tried it out, his Connect4 app didn't work right off the bat. It was due to a single bug that was fixed within 48 hours of it being reported (by me, because I went out of my way to test his app and get bug reports to Wayne. A genuine edge case involving accessing form properties before form load.). His next comment about it was this thread, where he claims virtually nothing runs in it, and that because there's still bugs in it's 'beta, underdevelopment' phase, it will never be useful, and runs virtually nothing, despite my repo full of some very complex apps and games it's running right now. Then starts ranting about how talking about tB here is spamming and we're " attention seeking wannabe's" and tB is a "shiny piece of nothing", claims WINE is "useless garbage" too, and comes to the twinBASIC Discord with an extremely hostile post including a personal attack on me, for which he was immediately kicked and banned by Wayne (1 of only 2 people to ever earn that distinction in 3 years, not like it's an oppressive channel; the other guy was a psycho so notorious we got a thank you from someone who recognized him for terrorizing another server, LOL), and has now made a "Delete my account I'm leaving!" post in Forum Feedback. So don't feel too bad, he's clearly having some issues right now and behaving way out of line, not offering healthy skepticism or constructive criticism, both of which you can find freely expressed all over tB discussions, even by myself, probably tB's biggest cheerleader.

That said, I don't want him gone or anything, and told him as much, there's plenty we could agree on and talk about together, if he doesn't like tB he can just ignore the threads, there's really not that many of them.

[vbrad]

I think that communication could be a bit better, supporters need a bit of acknowledgement/encouragement too when roadmap dates slip.

[wqweto]

I think that communication could be a bit better, supporters need a bit of acknowledgement/encouragement too when roadmap dates slip.

You mean Wayne is not fulfilling enough on his part of the deal for anyone paying or gifting funds to the project by not communicating exact dates features are going to be delivered and explaining in full detail when some of these are not met?

Do you think "supporters" fund the project in any meaningful way and it is not Wayne who is investing most of his (not spare) time for a risky cause that is also extremely unpredictable and with hard to measure execution time as it's mostly research?

cheers,
</wqw>

[fafalone]

Well I know I'd like to think the money is meaningful, otherwise why are we paying it? I'm sure it's no substitute for a full time career that wouldn't leave room to tB, but even a couple dozen subscribers isn't a meaningless amount of money, even if it's nowhere near enough to live on on it's own.


--

Are you on the tB Discord server, vbrad? That's where most of the communication is happening. Wayne's there every day. If you want more insight into what's happening, definitely recommend you join if you haven't (I don't see your handle, but don't know if you've used a different one). But of course, every programmer knows it's impossible to predict timelines for large tasks with any accuracy and without adjustments. I think the constant flow of beta releases demonstrates that progress is going along at a decent pace, even without perfect projections of completion times-- personally, I think E&C support for 1.0 will be well worth the most recent delay. It's a monumental task creating a language+IDE as feature rich as VBx/tB; there's a reason why all the other attempts have failed or made incredibly little progress.

[vbrad]

You mean Wayne is not fulfilling enough on his part of the deal for anyone paying or gifting funds to the project by not communicating exact dates features are going to be delivered and explaining in full detail when some of these are not met?

No, I don't mean that.

Do you think "supporters" fund the project in any meaningful way and it is not Wayne who is investing most of his (not spare) time for a risky cause that is also extremely unpredictable and with hard to measure execution time as it's mostly research?

No, I don't think that.

[vbrad]

Well I know I'd like to think the money is meaningful, otherwise why are we paying it? I'm sure it's no substitute for a full time career that wouldn't leave room to tB, but even a couple dozen subscribers isn't a meaningless amount of money, even if it's nowhere near enough to live on on it's own.


--

Are you on the tB Discord server, vbrad? That's where most of the communication is happening. Wayne's there every day. If you want more insight into what's happening, definitely recommend you join if you haven't (I don't see your handle, but don't know if you've used a different one). But of course, every programmer knows it's impossible to predict timelines for large tasks with any accuracy and without adjustments. I think the constant flow of beta releases demonstrates that progress is going along at a decent pace, even without perfect projections of completion times-- personally, I think E&C support for 1.0 will be well worth the most recent delay. It's a monumental task creating a language+IDE as feature rich as VBx/tB; there's a reason why all the other attempts have failed or made incredibly little progress.

It would be nice to have a big picture view of where everything's at.
I certainly have no idea any more of when to expect v1 (I think I was expecting it in 2022 at one time), the roadmap doesn't seem to mean much.
E&C would be terrific but not at the expense of v1 being pushed further back if it was up to me.

[fafalone]

Should really make a new thread or continue this in the general tB thread... but yeah, the frustration is certainly understandable. The slippage of timelines has indeed stretched to years, and we're heading into the holidays where few people get much done. But it's not like there hasn't been huge progress; I'm more interested in that than the fairly arbitrary line for '1.0'. E&C has long been one of the biggest things people love about VB6... it's not unreasonable to avoid answering the question of how much of a dealbreaker not having it would be. But after this I'd have to very much agree it's time to finish V1, especially the VB6 compatibility components and arduous slog through the lengthy compat-breaking bug list. It's very worrisome for perception if we're still here this spring wondering when key features like MDI forms and Printer will be supported and many apps have show-stopper bugs when imported. I'm not worried about getting there; I know Wayne can and will deliver and am not in any particular rush; but for the wider audience, it's a precarious position to be so close that tB is useful and being recommended to people (not just by me), but then there's major holes that don't seem to be getting filled in before attention fades.

With how far tB has come, it will get there, and it will be worth the wait

[2kaud]

Always remember Cargill's computer programming rule:

The first 90 percent of the code accounts for the first 90 percent of the development time. The remaining 10 percent of the code accounts for the other 90 percent of the development time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninety...%93ninety_rule

[yereverluvinuncleber]

Honestly, if anyone here expected a VB6 replacement to be a one or two year job then they had another think coming...

I have always thought that the combination of a VB6 alternative for a language replacement, compiler, IDE with forms designer and an edit and continue interpreter/JIT compiler is just TOO much for just one man to guide to success.

If it was going to hit time targets then to my mind it should have been a new compiler first and then possibly language improvements via some sort of conditional compilation flag, extending the compiler a bit at a time. After all, we have the VB6 IDE already to do forms design and the editor is half decent.

The language improvements could have come after the first stab at a new 32bit compiler. Then 64bit and the language changes to support it.
Then a new forms designer, followed by an editor in time. Each component being delivered discretely.

I know how a project balloons when it is found that the scope has to continually extend to encompass something you desperately need. However, it should have been possible to compartmentalise deliveries. Programmers are good at wanting to deliver everything and in that over-reach deliver potentially nothing. Sometimes it is better to deliver a product with a predetermined flaw or missing functionality and just be honest about it.

I worry still that TwinBasic will suffer a burn-out due to taking on too much.

[2kaud]

Sometimes it is better to deliver a product with a predetermined flaw or missing functionality and just be honest about it.

IMO
Yes - for missing functionality
No - for known flaws unless these are such obscure edge cases that they would be unlikely to come across in real usage. In which case they need good documentation - including any possible work-around etc

[fafalone]

There's already a list of features that are currently announced as not being included in 1.0. For example VBG support, and some of the common controls (from comctl32.ocx/mscomctl.ocx; some more will be added but not all of them). Partially mitigated by multiple windows, command line compilation/ [ RunAfterBuild ] and possibly addins for the vbgs, and Krool's VBCCR and FlexGrid have working 64bit compatible tB versions for the comctls.

[Episcopal]

this forum is 3rd behind GitHub in activity

May I know who is first?

[OptionBase1]

That said, I don't want him gone or anything, and told him as much, there's plenty we could agree on and talk about together, if he doesn't like tB he can just ignore the threads, there's really not that many of them.

Exactly. He's made comments in other threads where he seems to think that others here think he's an idiot or something, and I have no idea where that perception comes from. I know he doesn't post all that much, but the programming/technical related posts of his that I've read over the past years have always been on point as far as I can recall.

If he wants to stop posting here of his own volition, so be it, but I don't want him to think that anyone here is wanting him to leave.

[fafalone]

May I know who is first?

The twinBASIC Discord channel. Every day there's some chat and Wayne is there. Also a separate bugs channel I like to use for bugs which I anticipate will require some discussion and some back and forth, which happens often, talking in real time is usually better than making GitHub posts where everyone doesn't check replies for hours for some things. And a number of feature channels that get updates.

Link to join (if you have the app):

https://discord.gg/UaW9GgKKuE

If you've never used Discord (home page) before, it's a very popular chat room host app with 150 million monthly active users, so not at all sketchy, mostly used among gamers but it's spread out quite a bit. (Wikipedia entry for it). There's client apps for all major desktop and mobile platforms and it can also be used via browser.

[yereverluvinuncleber]

so not at all sketchy,

Just checking something. What do you mean by 'sketchy'? Over here, that word sketchy has always meant vague or perhaps just an outline/incomplete, are you using to imply that it isn't, something else?

[fafalone]

A random app by someone nobody has heard of, or someone/some company with a bad reputation, would be untrustworthy, or 'sketchy'.