Thread moved here as suggested.
Nice work Kristian,
This is my understanding of what you are doing.
So far what you have on GitHub looks like a reworking in C# of most of the standard objects (effectiively SmallBasicLibrary.dll written without reference to Primitive types). You also suggest you are mid way through writing a syntax converter between a Small Basic (like) syntax and C#.
I would suggest that it would be a good idea to make the language converter 100% compatible with standard Small Basic if possible - there is just such a large backlog of Small Basic programs and it would be fantastic to progress users to C# using this resource. For example I feel this is one unfortunate issue that sVB has - it is similar but not compatible with original Small Basic syntax - it would have been great to extend the language (not change it); this also applies to the various other online SB variants.
One big hurdle I see with migration to C# from SB is the daunting complexity of Visual Studio (and to a slightly lesser extent SharpDevelop) - some way to ease this pain would be good. What kind of interface to envisage for your program - it could even be a plugin for VS, VS Code, SB-Prime.
If you don't want to make a direct clone of SB, but extend its capabilities, then I would still consider making it 100% backwards compatible with extra features. If you do fancy writing a direct clone of SB, then perhaps you could make it run on linux and Mac - this is certainly a missing feature now - quite a lot of work, but doable with .Net core. Not being able to use existing extensions has always detered me from this!
I assume you know that any compiled exe of Small Basic program can be converted to C# using .Net reflection tools fairly easily. Therefore, it would be good to consider how your work would complement this capability - I assume using C# without the Primitive types. Perhaps showing the C# equivalent to SB code alongside the SB code in an interface.
I may be wrong and it would be good to get other input about the biggest challenge programmers find migrating from SB to C#.
In summary, I would try to get a clear plan of what you would like the final version to do, then identify the challenges (stuff you are not sure how to do) and work on these. This would influence the code you write - for example static dynamic types, arrays, lists, maps etc.
Anyway, great work so far and I hope that we can help Small Basic users migrate to C# once they have a good grasp of Small Basic.
Nice work Kristian,
This is my understanding of what you are doing.
So far what you have on GitHub looks like a reworking in C# of most of the standard objects (effectiively SmallBasicLibrary.dll written without reference to Primitive types). You also suggest you are mid way through writing a syntax converter between a Small Basic (like) syntax and C#.
I would suggest that it would be a good idea to make the language converter 100% compatible with standard Small Basic if possible - there is just such a large backlog of Small Basic programs and it would be fantastic to progress users to C# using this resource. For example I feel this is one unfortunate issue that sVB has - it is similar but not compatible with original Small Basic syntax - it would have been great to extend the language (not change it); this also applies to the various other online SB variants.
One big hurdle I see with migration to C# from SB is the daunting complexity of Visual Studio (and to a slightly lesser extent SharpDevelop) - some way to ease this pain would be good. What kind of interface to envisage for your program - it could even be a plugin for VS, VS Code, SB-Prime.
If you don't want to make a direct clone of SB, but extend its capabilities, then I would still consider making it 100% backwards compatible with extra features. If you do fancy writing a direct clone of SB, then perhaps you could make it run on linux and Mac - this is certainly a missing feature now - quite a lot of work, but doable with .Net core. Not being able to use existing extensions has always detered me from this!
I assume you know that any compiled exe of Small Basic program can be converted to C# using .Net reflection tools fairly easily. Therefore, it would be good to consider how your work would complement this capability - I assume using C# without the Primitive types. Perhaps showing the C# equivalent to SB code alongside the SB code in an interface.
I may be wrong and it would be good to get other input about the biggest challenge programmers find migrating from SB to C#.
In summary, I would try to get a clear plan of what you would like the final version to do, then identify the challenges (stuff you are not sure how to do) and work on these. This would influence the code you write - for example static dynamic types, arrays, lists, maps etc.
Anyway, great work so far and I hope that we can help Small Basic users migrate to C# once they have a good grasp of Small Basic.