What is the best alternative to Visual Basic?

Question

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score 122 · Answer 1

Pascal / Object Pascal

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

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122 39

score 831 · 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

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

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

Specs

Current stable version:3.7.0 and 2.7.15

GZipped size:22.5MB

Language type:Interpreted

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831 209

score 196 · Answer 3

Ruby

Focussing on OOP in a beginner stage is an easy and popular plan, but not the best one. See More

Specs

Price:Open Source (Free)

Site:https://www.ruby-lang.org

Current stable version:2.4.1

GZipped size:13.5 MB

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196 102

score 28 · Answer 4

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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28 53

score 87 · Answer 5

Racket

OS:Linux, Windows, OSX

Site:racket-lang.org

Current stable version:6.11

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87 24

score 192 · Answer 6

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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192 51

score 139 · Answer 7

Smalltalk

Many languages today use object orientation, while the most of them stock on the half way in that perspective. Smalltalk sees literally everything as an object and this includes things like the classes and primitive data types. There is are zero control structures such as selection and iteration, since all is done by sending messages to objects. It use a lot of concepts from Lisp in order to provide a nice experience for this pure kind of object orientation. It provides immutable data structures, closures, anonymous functions and higher order functions, while all those functions are objects. This is what makes Smalltalk so simple, elegant, and easy. All this counts for Pharo, while other implementations as Amber are probably feature complete to it. See More

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As a first language, almost forces you to learn OO design

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

Specs

OS:Windows, macOS, Linux

Current stable version:6.1

GZipped size:38MB

IDE Support:Self-Hosted

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139 44

score 104 · Answer 8

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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104 35

score 180 · Answer 9

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:1.3

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180 57

score 273 · Answer 10

Elm

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

Current stable version:0.19

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273 83

score 240 · Answer 11

Clojure

Current stable version:1.9

GZipped size:3.7Mb, requires JAVA

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240 75

score 236 · Answer 12

Elixir

Site:https://elixir-lang.org

Current stable version:1.6

GZipped size:3.61 MB (without required Erlang VM)

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236 74

score 278 · Answer 13

Go

This naturally also supports first class and high order functions, so you may pass functions as variables to other functions. 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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278 98

score 101 · Answer 14

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 15

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 80 · Answer 16

Julia

Julia has built in n-dimensional arrays similar in functionality as Python's numpy. See More

Specs

Site:julialang.org

Current stable version:1.0

Type Model:Dynamically Typed

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80 35

score 242 · Answer 17

TypeScript

Specs

Price:Free, Open source

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

Current stable version:2.3

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242 94

score 230 · Answer 18

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

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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:2.0.0

IDE Support:Good quality IDE plugins for Jetbrains IDEs and Visual Studio Code

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230 90

score 214 · Answer 19

Haskell

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

Specs

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

Paradigm:functional

Type System:static

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214 87

score 69 · Answer 20

Common Lisp

Top Pro

Very Powerful REPL with SLIME

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

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Carefully designed for interactive use

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

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Condition/restart system

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

69 32