twinBASIC Update: April 21, 2026

On April 23, 2021, I helped Wayne Phillips introduce the world to twinBASIC at the Access DevCon Vienna conference. I boldly predicted that twinBASIC (along with the Monaco editor) would replace VBA and its outdated development environment by 2025. With that goal in mind, this weekly update is my attempt to keep the project fresh in the minds of the VBA development community.

Every Sunday Monday week, I will be providing updates on the status of the project, linking to new articles discussing twinBASIC, and generally trying to increase engagement with the project. If you come across items that should be included here, please leave a comment below.

Here are some links to get involved with the project:

• Custom twinBASIC IDE Installation Guide
• twinBASIC Discord Server (chat about the project)
• twinBASIC Wiki (list of new features not in VBx)
• GitHub Issue Tracker (report bugs)
• twinBASIC/VBx LinkedIn Group

Highlights

twinBASIC at DevCon Vienna 2026

Last Friday, I presented my 6th annual twinBASIC update at the 2026 Access DevCon Vienna conference, the largest global Microsoft Access conference. As a paid conference, most of these talks are not released to the public, although a small number do get released each year. I have been fortunate in the past to have my recordings posted to YouTube, and I am hoping that is the case again this year.

In the meantime, you can check out the accompanying article that I posted for the conference, which includes:

• a copy of my slide deck
• a link to the source code
• links to my most relevant twinBASIC articles
• links to twinBASIC weekly update posts that included key new functionality released over the past year

Discord Chat Summary

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Overview

This week's general channel was dominated by extended community discussion around version control strategies for twinBASIC's .twinproj file format, a persistent pain point for developers considering a full transition from VB6. The week was also marked by nolongerset's twinBASIC presentation at DevCon 2026, and a notable authoritative clarification on the status of generic collections. Community engagement was moderate and conversational in tone.

Version Control & The .twinproj Problem

• The single-file .twinproj format continues to be a barrier to mainstream source control adoption. Several members noted they maintain VB6 as their canonical codebase and sync to twinBASIC manually, using #If twinbasic Then blocks to isolate tB-specific changes.
• Workarounds discussed included using git with guidance from nolongerset's published tutorial, copy/paste workflows with Notepad++ Compare, and manual VMS-inspired file versioning conventions (e.g., appending version numbers to filenames).
• External file support was noted as forthcoming. wqweto observed that while git works adequately today, the .twinproj format presents a more fundamental problem than even VB6's binary .frx/.ctx files did.

DevCon 2026 Presentation

• nolongerset presented twinBASIC to approximately 90 attendees at the DevCon 2026 online conference, an audience composed primarily of Microsoft Access developers. Source code from the session — a folder watcher application — was shared publicly on GitHub.
• nolongerset described the talk as "polarizing" at an Access conference, with some attendees questioning the relevance of another language while others attend the multi-day event specifically for this session.
• deletedewd noted that the folder-watching functionality demonstrated in the talk can be replicated in just two WinRT steps using StorageFolderQueryOperations.CreateFileQueryOverloadDefault and its ContentsChanged event, and that this approach works directly in VBA without a separate tB process.

Language Features: Generic Collections Not Yet Supported

• waynephillipsea confirmed that the twinBASIC Collection type does not yet support generics. A community member had attempted Collection(Of tQueue) syntax after being directed to it by an LLM, only to find it non-functional.
• The episode prompted a broader moment of humor and caution around using LLMs for twinBASIC code advice, as the language is still evolving and AI training data may reflect outdated or hallucinated capabilities.
• Using classes instead of UDTs as collection items was identified as a viable workaround in the interim.

WinRT as a Modern Alternative

• Community discussion touched on WinRT as a capable but underappreciated API surface. deletedewd recommended the WinRT NavigationView control as a robust alternative to the tab controls currently available in the package registry.
• Community sentiment toward WinRT ranged from enthusiasm to lingering suspicion, with some members noting that WinRT's historical association with the ill-fated Windows RT tablet platform has given it an unfair reputation.

Community Resources & Package Discoverability

• nolongerset's blog at nolongerset.com was clarified as a legitimate and high-quality resource maintained by Microsoft MVP Mike Wolfe, featuring over 39 twinBASIC articles along with AI-assisted weekly Discord recaps clearly labeled as such.
• fafalone noted that packages such as WinDevLib include readme and changelog files accessible directly within the Project Explorer's Packages folder after installation — a discoverability feature that some community members had overlooked entirely.

Conclusion

The recurring theme this week was friction at the boundary between twinBASIC and established developer workflows — whether source control, package documentation, or LLM-generated code suggestions that don't yet reflect twinBASIC's actual feature set. The confirmation from waynephillipsea that generic collections remain unimplemented is a useful data point for developers migrating complex data structures. The DevCon 2026 presentation continues a multi-year pattern of nolongerset bringing twinBASIC visibility to the Access developer community, suggesting the project's profile is steadily growing beyond its VB6 roots.

Around the Web

FolderWatcher: Proof of Concept for Embedding twinBASIC Utilities in Microsoft Access Front-Ends

As part of my DevCon Vienna presentation last week, I showcased a simple command-line utility that I created with twinBASIC. The source code is available on GitHub:

The utility itself was mildly interesting. It solved the common problem of notifying Access and launching a routine when a new file appears in a watched folder.

Personally, I think the more valuable programming pattern is the technique of embedding a small command-line utility directly in a local Access table, extracting it to a local folder at runtime, and calling the utility from within Access VBA. This allows you to deploy the utility within the single Access front-end file and avoids the complication of managing multiple files for an Access deployment. This is especially useful for developers who have a front-end updater that does not support external files.

Folder Watcher (WinRT Edition)

Posted by VanGoghGaming in the show-and-tell Discord channel:

This project demonstrates how you can monitor a folder for file changes and receive events when such changes occur. Monitored changes include:
• file created (or copied into the folder)
• file deleted
• file renamed (reported as creation + deletion)
• file size changed (like editing a text file)
• file date changed (usually happens during editing as well)
• file attributes changed

Changelog

Here are the updates from the past week. You can also find this information by visiting the GitHub twinBASIC Releases page.

• No new releases this week.