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i see the points against vb, but it would be nice to implement a language that is very similar to vb although output os independant code, then again, i like the easy way out

GreenDepth wrote: i see the points against vb, but it would be nice to implement a language that is very similar to vb although output os independant code, then again, i like the easy way out

Ah, now this is a diffferent story, IMAO. While it would still be an enormous undertaking - designing and implementing a new language always is - it is far more practical than porting something as large and complex as VB. You could certainly write a systems language with a syntax similar to that of VB, but far smaller and more suitable to OS work, given the necessary knowledge of compiler design, syntax construction, and x86 assembly language...

However, I would first suggest review the other languages that exist already, rather than commiting yourself to a new one; if nothing else, it would be a Good Idea to learn about the other styles of programming that exist. The polyglot example pages (Hello World!, 99 Bottles of Beer, Rot13) are a good place to start an overview of this sort, as are the Catalog of Free Compilers and Interpreters and the Retrocomputing Museum (you may also want to look in at the Turing Tarpit, home of such oddities as BrainF*** and UnLambda, for a few good laughs). The sheer number of different programming languages that have been used over time is overwhelming, to be sure, but nothing to be intimidated by.

I usually suggest to take a look at the following: Scheme, Smalltalk, APL, Forth, Pascal (or relatives such as Modula-2 or Ada), Python, Perl, C, and Java. Anyone who can get a good feeling for at least five of those languages should have developed a suitable breadth of understanding about different programming paradigms that they can be reasonably considered to be a true programmer, and not just a coder. Note that for practical purposes, C and Perl are and will probably remain the most important of these languages, and I would advise any programmer who can to get a solid understand of them (even if they don't like them). I would not, however, recommend either one as a beginner's language (despite the large numbers of excellent tutorials like this one that are around).

At this point, I have wandered far off the original track, but I hope that my ramblings have illuminated the original goal of designing a Basic dialect for systems programming.

It's interesting that the idea of a new language has been bought up as me and whyme_t are currently setting out to do exactly this. We are currently in the process of laying out the language specification for are langugage whihc we have named Pegasus for the time being.

Keep your eyes peeled for more information on pegasus and with any luck a compiler and VM within the next few months fingers crossed or next 2 years if everything goes slowly.

Pegasus at the moment is hoping to offer the following things

1. Data storage and manipulation seperation, this is what we think is going to be one of the most powerful features of Pegasus.

2. Ability to write low level code easily

3. Platform independence through a virtual machine and speed comparable to C though the transpiler (more on this later you'll have to wait and see)

4. Some other things that are still in the works at the moment

Peter

P.S. any ideas of things that people would like to see in a language please post them as this causes floods of ideas that we can debate and eventually come up with other useful abilities.

Peter