twinBASIC Update: April 6, 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 I boldly predicted that twinBASIC (along with the Monaco editor) would replace VBA and its outdated development environment by 2025.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 in Academia ... Maybe?

This was a relatively quiet week in twinBASIC world, with the exception of one unusual interaction in the twinBASIC Discord server. A new user posted a technical question about twinBASIC and revealed that they needed the information for a university professor as part of a final project.

The poster claimed to be a university student at TU Darmstadt, a German university. Several Discord users noted that this would be a first for twinBASIC (if it were confirmed true).

The actual veracity of the claim will be hard to ascertain unless Wayne himself is able to speak with the aforementioned professor (as Wayne requested later in the chat).

Here's an excerpt of the exchange:

Discord Chat Summary

^{* Auto-generated via Claude-Sonnet-4.5}

Overview

This week's general channel featured a spirited community debate on whether AI could reconstruct VB6, practical guidance from waynephillipsea on IDE add-in development, and an exciting milestone: what appears to be twinBASIC's first known use in university coursework. A detailed migration report from a new community member also generated useful discussion around remaining VB6 compatibility gaps.

AI and Language Reconstruction

• Community debate emerged around whether modern LLMs could reconstruct VB6. deletedewd argued the task is effectively impossible due to the sheer volume of undocumented, low-level quirks — and that the pool of people who still possess that knowledge is shrinking fast.
• mansellan described twinBASIC's compatibility approach as analogous to Rubberduck's methodology: take ambiguous or unusual VB syntax, verify whether the original compiler accepts it, replicate the behavior (bugs included), and repeat thousands of times. He noted this process depends heavily on private, hard-won knowledge that AI cannot easily acquire.
• mansellan paid tribute to a former Rubberduck contributor known as Thunderframe, who specialized in finding edge-case VB syntax that the compiler accepted against all expectation — a body of work that became the foundation of Rubberduck's parser robustness, and has since been ingested by LLMs.

IDE Add-in Development

• loquat_2025 asked about using native Windows controls in IDE add-ins rather than the web-based UI. waynephillipsea clarified that normal Forms can be used by calling SetParent to attach them to the main IDE window handle — noting this is the same approach used in sokinkeso's add-ins.
• waynephillipsea confirmed that docking support is exclusive to the HTML/JS-based add-in system and is not available to regular Windows Forms. A simple modal form is the recommended starting point for add-in UI.
• When asked about WebView2 availability in IDE plugins, waynephillipsea noted it can be used just as it would be on a regular form, but will not integrate with the IDE's docking system.

twinBASIC in Academia

• A university student from TU Darmstadt revealed that their professor is requiring twinBASIC for a final project involving database connectivity — believed to be the first confirmed academic adoption of tB.
• fafalone noted the student's difficulty stemmed from a current platform limitation: the built-in Data control supports DAO only, with ADO not yet implemented.
• waynephillipsea responded enthusiastically: "Would love to hear more about this. If your professor is interested, I'd be keen to have a chat."

New User Migration Experience

• New community member alpha555_55796 successfully migrated a large VB6 project to twinBASIC and praised compiler warnings as a standout feature. They identified several items not yet fully implemented: Clipboard.SetData, App.StartMode, UserControl.MaskColor, UserControl.MaskPicture, PopupMenu on UserControls, and ActiveX EXE support.
• fafalone clarified that PopupMenu is implemented on Forms but not yet on UserControls, and confirmed ActiveX EXE support is on the roadmap.
• alpha555_55796 also noted some minor IDE friction, including a scrollbar sticking to the mouse cursor and a desire for dedicated breakpoint and bookmark toolbar buttons.

IDE Roadmap and Community Perspective

• mansellan confirmed the longer-term plan: the IDE is intended to eventually become open source, communicating with the compiler over LSP and DAP protocols — with the compiler itself remaining the core proprietary component.
• yereverluvinunclebert_49972 offered a candid perspective on current workflow, noting they still code 85–90% of the time in the VB6 IDE (augmented with commercial add-ins), while using twinBASIC primarily for code analysis, 64-bit compilation, and beta testing.
• The general community consensus is that Wayne's current focus remains on critical VB6 compatibility gaps and new language features, with IDE polish expected to follow in due course.

Conclusion

This week underscored twinBASIC's expanding reach, with academic adoption at TU Darmstadt representing a meaningful milestone for the project's legitimacy and visibility. The AI reconstruction debate reinforced just how much specialized, undocumented knowledge underpins VB6 compatibility — and why twinBASIC's methodical, behavior-first approach is so difficult to replicate. With ActiveX EXE on the roadmap, ongoing compatibility work, and Wayne's direct engagement with both newcomers and educators, the project continues to build momentum toward a robust, production-ready VB6 migration path.

Around the Web

twinBASIC Returns to Annual DevCon Vienna Conference

Once again, I will be presenting my annual update on the state of twinBASIC to the online Access DevCon Vienna conference. My talk this year will focus on practical uses of twinBASIC for Microsoft Access developers.

There's still time to register for the conference, which takes place online via Microsoft Teams on April 16-17, 2026.

Here's the teaser for my talk:

Practical twinBASIC:
      Use Cases for Access Developers

This presentation will cover different ways that Access developers can leverage twinBASIC in 2026, including details on one or more of the following:

• Creating a front-end Access launcher
• Building a drop-in replacement for the Outlook library
• As a replacement for existing VBScript files (VBScript is being deprecated)
• Creating small utility .exe's that can be embedded in and called from Access front-ends

+ Current technical and organizational status of the tB project

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.