twinBASIC Weekly Update

twinBASIC Update: August 11, 2025

Highlights include a Discord community user count milestone, discussion around the experimental tab control, and interest in a standardized logging framework.

Mike Wolfe

Aug 11, 2025 • 4 min read

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 I boldly predicted that twinBASIC (along with the Monaco editor) would replace VBA and its outdated development environment by 2025.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:

Highlights

twinBASIC Discord Server Reaches 1,000

Wayne Phillips commemorated the event with the following post:

We've reached 1000 members! Just, amazing. Big thank you to everyone for following the progress of twinBASIC, and for all of your help, encouragement and feedback. This community rocks!
Here's to the next 1000 🥂🍾

Discord Chat Summary

^{* Auto-generated via Gemini-2.5-Pro}

Overview

This week was marked by a significant community achievement, with the Discord server reaching 1000 members. Technical discussions were vibrant, focusing heavily on UI development challenges, particularly concerning tab controls and custom drawing. The community also engaged in forward-looking conversations about potential new features like a standardized logging framework, while continuing to refine VB6/VBA compatibility.

Community Milestone

1000 Members Reached: Official developer waynephillipsea announced that the twinBASIC Discord community has grown to over 1000 members, thanking everyone for their support and feedback.
Server Rules Update: waynephillipsea also posted an update to the server rules, explicitly prohibiting the use of foul language.

UI Development & Controls

Experimental Tab Control: A user's attempt to use the NewTab control package led to IDE instability. waynephillipsea clarified that this control is considered "highly experimental" and may cause issues in both the IDE and compiled executables. [1]
Alternative Tab Implementation: As a more stable alternative to NewTab, fafalone suggested using the tab control from the VBCCR package combined with manually managed Frame or PictureBox controls to serve as pages.
Custom Buttons and Shapes: For creating buttons with rounded corners, fafalone recommended his ChameleonButton64 project. It was also clarified that the Shape control not having a Click event is by design, matching VB6's behavior.
Drawing and Transparency: A discussion about PaintPicture having issues with transparency led fafalone to suggest using API calls like BitBlt or AlphaBlend as a workaround. [2]

Bug Reports & Compatibility

PictureBox AutoSize Property: A user reported that the PictureBox.AutoSize property, when migrated from VB6, can cause the control not to display graphics. fafalone acknowledged that some bugs related to AutoSize have been reported. [3][4]
API Declaration Anomaly: fafalone noted a potential compiler issue where declaring SHGetDesktopFolder locally resulted in an "incompatible matches" error, while the identical declaration within a package worked correctly.
IDE Code Formatter: fafalone questioned if the code prettifier adding a space in Emit (&Hxx) would affect compilation. waynephillipsea confirmed that it should not cause any problems.

Language & Feature Discussions

Standardized Logging: mansellan initiated a conversation about the potential for a built-in, standardized logging framework in twinBASIC, similar to .NET's ILogger but with a simpler implementation.
Debug Output Redirection: greedquest supported the logging idea, adding that it would be useful to redirect Debug.Print output to stderr or a log file depending on the application type.
AI on twinBASIC: A member shared a surprisingly accurate and positive description of twinBASIC generated by a hypothetical GPT-5, highlighting features like 64-bit support and backward compatibility. [5]

Conclusion

The week was a blend of celebrating community growth and collaborative, in-depth technical problem-solving. The extensive discussions around UI controls demonstrate a strong user focus on building modern, functional applications. Forward-looking ideas, such as a native logging framework, show the community is actively thinking about the long-term evolution of the language, reinforcing the project's positive momentum.

Learn more:

Around the Web

Nothing noteworthy this week.

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.