What is the best alternative to Visual Basic?

Question

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score 120 · Answer 1

Pascal / Object Pascal

Standard:ISO/IEC 7185:1990 Pascal and ISO/IEC 10206:1990 Extended Pascal

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120 39

score 801 · Answer 2

Python

According to Quartz, Python programming skills on average earn $100,000 per year. Closely followed by Java, C++, JavaScript, C, and R with $90,000 per year and above. See More

Top Pro

Static typing via mypy

Python's syntax supports optional type annotations for use with a third-party static type checker, which can catch a certain class of bugs at compile time. This also makes it easier for beginners to gradually transition to statically typed languages instead of wrestling with the compiler from the start. See More

Top Pro

Interpreters for JS, Microtontrollers, .Net , Java & others

Python is not limited to just be cross platform. It goes far beyond all high level languages since it can run on top of several other frameworks & architectures : Examples of interpreters: Standard (PC Win/Lin/Mac, ARM, Raspberry, Smartphones): CPython usually, but some more specialized for smartphones: Kyvi, QPython, ... Web Browser JS : Brython, PyJS, .Net : IronPython Java: Jython Microcontrollers with WiFi like ESP8266 or ESP32: MicroPython Can be statically compiled (instead of interpreted) with Cython. (Do not mix up with cPython) With python, you're sure your code can run (almost) everywhere, from 2€ computers to the most expensives. So, for instance, with Jython you can access the Java libraries with Python language. See More

Specs

Current stable version:3.7.0 and 2.7.15

GZipped size:22.5MB

Language type:Interpreted

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801 200

score 27 · Answer 3

Assembly

Assembly language syntax is relatively uniform, and so there's less room for a student to get confused by obscure characters, or miss some meaning implied by structure, such as with scoping rules, or call-by-name/value/reference semantics. While there may be a lot of mnemonics to look up, most work involves only a very small subset of them. See More

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27 54

score 80 · Answer 4

Racket

OS:Linux, Windows, OSX

Site:racket-lang.org

Current stable version:6.11

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80 24

score 190 · Answer 5

Haxe

You should use externs when calling non Haxe code, but if you just need to call one or two external JS functions, you can skip type checking by calling untyped code. See More

Specs

Price:Free, Open Source

Site:https://haxe.org/

Current stable version:3.4.4

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190 51

score 102 · Answer 6

Nim

writeLine(stdout, "hello") can be written as stdout.writeLine("hello") proc add(a: int): int = a + 5 can be used like 6.add.echo or 6.add().echo() See More

Specs

License:MIT

CPU:All CPU architectures that have an ANSI C compiler

OS:Windows, MacOS/iOS, Linux /Android/Termux, BSD, Solaris/SmartOS, HaikuOS, lots of others

Site:https://nim-lang.org

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102 33

score 137 · Answer 7

Smalltalk

Hybrid languages (e.g., Java, C#, C++) make it easy to slip into procedural thinking. Smalltalk's pure OO approach makes it hard not to think in object-oriented terms. In addition, since the entire IDE and runtime components are there in the image for you to browse, you have plenty of examples of good OO design to learn from. See More

Top Pro

It invented a lot of stuff

Smalltalk is the inventor of Just-in-Time compilation and the MVC concept, refactoring through their so-called refactoring browser and it was also one of the first adopters of a language virtual machine, closures, live programming, test driven development, an IDE and the development of GUI`s. See More

Specs

OS:Windows, macOS, Linux

Current stable version:6.1

GZipped size:38MB

IDE Support:Self-Hosted

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137 44

score 230 · Answer 8

Clojure

Current stable version:1.9

GZipped size:3.7Mb, requires JAVA

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230 72

score 265 · Answer 9

Elm

Site:http://elm-lang.org/

Current stable version:0.18

GZipped size:23.2 kB

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265 82

score 173 · Answer 10

Kotlin

Kotlin has been designed and built by developers who have an industrial background and not an academic one. As such, it tries to solve issues mostly found in industrial settings. For example, the Kotlin type system helps developers avoid null pointer exceptions. Reasearch languages usually do not have null at all, but APIs and large codebases usually need null. See More

Specs

Price:Free, Open Source

Site:http://kotlinlang.org

Current stable version:1.2

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173 57

score 217 · Answer 11

Elixir

You can call Erlang functions directly without any overhead: https://elixir-lang.org/getting-started/erlang-libraries.html See More

Specs

Price:Open source (Free)

Site:https://elixir-lang.org

Current stable version:1.6

GZipped size:3.61 MB (without required Erlang VM)

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217 71

score 261 · Answer 12

Go

Go is blazing fast, but easier to write than Python, JS, Ruby, or many other dynamic languages. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac etc.

Current stable version:1.11.1 / October 1, 2018

Developer:Google with Ken Thompson, Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike

GZipped size:21,1 MB

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261 92

score 101 · Answer 13

F#

Site:http://www.fsharp.org

Current stable version:4.1

IDE Support:Visual Studio, Code, Rider

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101 42

score 43 · Answer 14

Ceylon

If you don't use platform-specific features, you can reuse the same code in your backend server (be it in Java or JavaScript) and in your client-side browser code, for example for storing data, validating input etc. See More

Specs

Price:Free, Open Source

Site:http://ceylon-lang.org

Current stable version:1.3.2

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43 20

score 238 · Answer 15

TypeScript

Specs

Price:Free, Open source

Site:http://www.typescriptlang.org/

Current stable version:2.3

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238 93

score 226 · Answer 16

Dart

Dart to Javascript compiler (dart2js) generates very high quality source code with very high optimization. The output code is also very readable and easy to understand. See More

Top Pro

Crossplatform

Dart does not just compile to JavaScript, it also compiles to native code on mobile platforms like iOS and Android as demonstrated by flutter.io See More

Specs

Price:Free, Open Source

Site:dartlang.org

Current stable version:1.24.3

IDE Support:Good quality IDE plugin for Jetbrains IDEs

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226 90

score 77 · Answer 17

Julia

Dynamic and high level, but does not isolate the user from properly thinking about types. Can do explicit type signatures which is great for teaching structured thinking. See More

Specs

Site:julialang.org

Current stable version:1.0

Type Model:Dynamically Typed

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77 35

score 67 · Answer 18

Common Lisp

Top Pro

Very Powerful REPL with SLIME

SLIME (Superior Lisp Interaction Mode for Emacs). See More

Top Pro

Carefully designed for interactive use

Almost all aspects of the language are designed with interactive/repl use in mind. See More

Top Pro

Condition/restart system

It is easy to recover from errors. Error resolution can be determined by the user at the REPL. See More

67 31

score 206 · Answer 19

Haskell

Makes categorical higher order abstractions easy to use and natural to the language See More

Specs

Site:https://www.haskell.org/

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206 85

score 114 · Answer 20

Lua