InfoQ

News

Bringing Scripting back to VB

Posted by Jonathan Allen on Feb 21, 2008 06:54 PM

Community
.NET
Topics
Programming ,
Scripting
Tags
Visual Basic.NET ,
DLR

Historically Visual Basic has its roots in scripting and dynamic programming, but never fully embraced it. This is seen in mismatched language features such as the ability to consume objects via late binding, a.k.a. duck typing, but no ability to define them. In a presentation at Lang.NET, Paul Vick talks about bringing scripting back to VB.

His first demo shows an Excel prototype that offers a REPL interface with the full Visual Basic engine. REPL, or Read-Evaluate-Print-Loop, is a standard feature for dynamic languages such as Ruby, Python, and Lisp. The scripting window is based on the Dynamic Language Runtime, so it also supports IronPython and JScript.

Paul first discusses the three layers of the VB compiler. On top of the Core services, the traditional compiler features such as parsing and code generation, is the project services. This handle project level details like references and resources. It also has a decompiler which is used in conjunction with the background compiler to make incremental changes when working in the Visual Studio IDE. The outer-most layer is the Tool/IDE services, which includes all the features needed Visual Studio like code completion and error correction.

The full version of core services for VB compiler is written in unmanaged C++ code. A partial version of core services written in Visual Basic also exists for runtime compilation and late binding.

The future version of VB may contain the full version of core services suitable for runtime use. Perhaps this would even include Tool/IDE services layer allowing developers to create a VBA-like experience.

Another demo discusses the VisualBasic.Editor and VisualBasic.Compiler namespaces. This demo shows how to host a VB Editor in a WinForms application. The editor is still fairly rough, but it does already support things like syntax coloring. In the demo, Paul demonstrated overriding the editor's behavior to immediately execute highlighted by right-clicking.

There is no timeline or definite plans for these features. When more information is available it will be posted on Paul Vic's blog.

Related Sponsor

Red Gate Software makes ingeniously simple tools for over 500,000 SQL Server and .NET professionals.

No comments

Watch Thread Reply

Educational Content

Bindings, Platforms, and Innovation

This presentation focuses on the Internet and separating myth from fact, history from the future, and the mundane from the imaginative. Bob Frankston presents a vision of what could and should be.

  •  Jul 02, 2009,
  •  

Orchestrating Long Running Activities with JBoss / JBPM

This article explores the use of JBoss and jBPM to implement design solutions that effectively address the issue of orchestrating long running activities.

  •  Jul 01, 2009,
  •  

Neo4j - The Benefits of Graph Databases

This presentation covers the use of graph databases as an optimal solution for data that is difficult to fit in static tables, rapidly evolving data or data that has a lot of optional attributes.

Realistic about Risk: Software development with Real Options

This session introduces Real Options and shows how it can help in running your project. Real Options is a decision-making process that can be used to manage risk.

  •  Jun 30, 2009,
  •  

Communication Flexibility Using Bindings

This article discusses the use of bindings on services and references (including the instance of non-configured bindings) as the means to implement SCA communications in a Web and SOA environment.

  •  Jun 30, 2009,
  •  

Writing DSLs in Groovy

After a short introduction to DSLs, Scott Davis plays with the keyboard showing how to approach the creation of a DSL by typing working snippets of Groovy code that get executed.

Scaling Agile with C/ALM (Collaborative Application Lifecycle Management)

IBM Rational and InfoQ present, Scaling Agile with C/ALM, an eBook showing organizations how to become “finely tuned software delivery machines” by enabling team integration and scaling.

Concurrent Programming with Microsoft F#

Amanda Laucher presents a real life enterprise application written in F#. She shows actual code snippets, explaining design decisions and suggesting how to use some of the F# constructs.