Move over VB6, there’s a new BASIC in town.
twinBASIC is a modern programming language, built from the ground up with 100% backwards compatibility for your existing VB6 and VBA codebases. It’s a complete development environment that brings new features and improvements while staying true to the roots of VB6.We’ve put an incredible amount of time and effort into building a reliable, thoroughly tested compiler, standard library, and debugger. Our mission is simple: to replicate every quirk and feature of VB6/VBA, while also pushing the language forward.
Since twinBASIC’s public BETA debut on April 9th, 2021, we’ve rolled out a host of exciting features and squashed more bugs than we can count. And we’re just getting started. Our new dedicated IDE is designed to make your development experience smoother, faster, and more productive.
Only one thing is constant: twinBASIC is always pushing forward.
Please come and join us on the twinBASIC journey and help shape the future of classic BASIC.To keep up-to-date with twinBASIC developments:
WARNING: twinBASIC is under heavy development!
Daily updates are the norm around here!
DOWNLOAD: The new dedicated twinBASIC IDE
Follow @WaynePhillipsEA
twinBASIC DISCORD server
twinBASIC GitHub Issue Tracking
IDE features
- Semantic highlighting
- Real-time full project error and diagnostics panel
- Intellisense, code completion and signature help
- Goto definition
- Code folding
- Tabbed document editing
- Custom add-ins support
- Uses the modern standard LSP protocol
Debugger features
- Multi-thread debugging capability
- Callstack window
- Variables window
- Watch window
- Debug console (aka 'Immediate Window')
- Uses the modern standard DAP protocol
Compiler features
- Designed to be 100% compatible with existing VB6 and VBA code, simulating all known quirks
- Compiles to Win32 and Win64 architectures, with Mac, Linux, and Android support planned
- Supports many VB6 project types such as 'Standard EXE', 'ActiveX Control', and 'ActiveX DLL'
- Adds support for new project types, including 'Standard DLL' (non-ActiveX)
- Fully based on COM technologies, like the classic versions of Visual Basic
- Generates small executables that do not require runtime libraries or redistributable components
- Full Unicode support throughout (IDE -> parser -> compiler -> standard library)
- Supports parameterized class constructors (for non-exposed classes)
- Generics support, similar to VB.NET but more flexible
- Supports overloading, with rules consistent with VB.NET
- Multi-threading support, with a fully thread-safe standard library
- New built-in controls: WebView2 and QRCode
- New datatypes: LongLong (for both Win32 and Win64), LongPtr, Decimal
- New operators: AndAlso, OrElse, <<, >>
- New assignment operators: +=, -=, *=, \=, /=, ^=, &=, <<=, >>=
- New statements: Continue For, Continue While, Continue Do, Exit While
- Supports Return syntax, similar to VB.NET
- Per-procedure Handles/Implements event syntax, as seen in VB.NET
- DeclareWide support for using Strings in Unicode DLL calls (disables implicit ANSI conversions)
- Entire compilation process is multi-threaded for excellent performance
- Allows multiple components per source file (within Class/Module blocks)
- Brand new custom parser (written in C++), built for flexibility and high performance
- Removes many legacy limitations, such as the size of procedures and number of line continuations
- Designed for LLVM, paving the way for full optimized compilation and superior runtime performance
Built-in extension libraries
- (COMING SOON) vbWatchdog: a native implementation of vbWatchdog (ErrEx) for fantastic error handling possibilities
Visual Basic (VB) is a trademark of the Microsoft Corporation
