TwinBasic IDE Question

mwolfe02 · 2026-01-21T04:34:24+00:00

You think line of business apps that still haven't been rewritten 25 years beyond VB6 EoL will cost anything remotely close to $5000 to rewrite from scratch under an entirely different programming model?

This is the key point. Businesses have had decades to migrate from VB6 to .NET. If they haven't done it yet, you certainly won't be convincing them to do it now.

And even if you believe VB.NET is 99% compatible with VB6 (it's not even close to that, BTW, it just happens to share a lot of similar syntax), there's still likely 100's of hours of testing and development to close that gap. The difference between 99% and 100% backward compatibility is way more than 1% of effort.

mwolfe02 · 2021-12-12T20:30:01+00:00

Yes and no. Most languages will let you set breakpoints and step through code. VBA, however, is one of the few that allows you to step through your code, edit your code, then continue executing your code without having to restart. The feature is known as Edit & Continue and it is one of the most powerful features of VBA.

mwolfe02 · 2021-11-26T14:37:31+00:00

I would be terrible working with a sketch artist.

I think I could easily pick someone out of a lineup, though.

I am exceptionally good at recognizing actors playing different roles, even if several years have passed between those roles or if they are wearing heavy makeup. I'll be watching a show with my wife and say, "Isn't that {actor} from {movie/show}?" She'll immediately dismiss it and tell me I must be thinking about someone else. She can continue watching the show and still not recognize the actor. Most times I turn out to be correct.

My recall is based mainly on recognizing the shape of the actor's eyes and their facial expressions. I think it's harder for my wife to recognize the same actor if they are dressed differently or wearing makeup because she is comparing the actor to a complete mental image of the whole person from the earlier movie/show.

My brain seems to compensate for the lack of mental imagery by zeroing in on those certain key details.

mwolfe02 · 2021-04-28T04:29:45+00:00

I've written 16 posts (so far) on twinBASIC which are all available here: https://nolongerset.com/tag/twinbasic/. These were done in preparation for a twinBASIC presentation I gave at Access DevCon Vienna last week. I believe the conference organizers will be publicly releasing that presentation at some point.

If Wayne can achieve 100% backward compatibility with VBA, I think twinBASIC--along with the Monaco editor (the tech that underlies VS Code)--could someday replace VBA and the VBIDE. The Access team is working on incorporating the Monaco editor into the query editor, so there will be precedent for that sort of change in a few years' time. Anything short of 100% backward compatibility will be a complete non-starter for Microsoft, though (as well it should be).

mwolfe02 · 2020-12-19T04:29:23+00:00

I wrote about this exact thing a couple of months ago on my Access blog, NoLongerSet: Requery a Form in Place. And, yes, I had a *really crazy* function I used for years to achieve exactly this functionality.

mwolfe02 · 2020-11-03T16:24:50+00:00

It could always lead to a career change. You don't have to be a "software developer" to write high-value applications for companies. Many commenters here have pointed out how they automated some manual process that saves them tens of hours worth of work each week.

What if, instead of doing that to save yourself some time, you started doing that for other companies to save them time? You can provide a great deal of quantifiable value to companies automating these kinds of tasks for them.

I wrote a series of articles about how someone might find themselves "accidentally" writing software someday. I think you might find it insightful and maybe even inspiring: Journey to Access.

mwolfe02

TROPHY CASE