Best Programming Languages for Visual Basic

Mercury is an implementation of the BASIC programming language that is fully code-compatible with Microsoft Visual Basic.NET™, but takes it to the next level, and to new horizons. With Mercury, you will be able to build your existing VB.NET projects and leverage your Visual Basic™ language experience to write code for any modern target platform. You can mix Mercury code with any of the other five Elements languages in the same project if you like! The Mercury language will be deeply integrated into our development environments. Develop your projects in our smart yet lightweight IDEs, Water on Windows or Fire on Mac, with project templates, code completion, integrated debugging for all platforms, and many other advanced development features. Of course, Mercury will also integrate into Visual Studio™ 2017, 2019 and 2022. With Elements, all languages are created equal. Even within the same project, you can mix Mercury, C#, Swift, Java, Oxygene and Go.

Synergy DBL is a proven, ANSI-standard business language with class libraries, a high-performance database, and .NET interoperability at the heart of the Synergy/DE product suite. Flexible and reliable, it gives you the power to create scalable, portable enterprise applications and supports both object-oriented and structured programming techniques. Synergy DBL comes in two forms: traditional Synergy DBL and Synergy DBL for .NET. Traditional Synergy DBL supports numerous open technologies (including XML, HTTPS, SSL, and ActiveX) that allow you to interface with third-party applications and data. The multi-pass Synergy DBL compiler supports strong prototyping and other strict error-detection features. Synergy DBL for .NET enables you to create Synergy libraries and applications that run natively in the .NET framework, then extend your applications by taking advantage of .NET Framework libraries and third-party controls and interoperating with applications written in other languages.

X# is an open-source development language for .NET, based on the xBase language. It comes in different flavors, such as Core, Visual Objects, Vulcan.NET, xBase++, Harbour, Foxpro, and more. X# has been built on top of Roslyn, the open-source architecture behind the current Microsoft C# and Microsoft Visual Basic compilers. We have added a new options page (tools/options/text editor/X#) where you can control which suggestions the editor will suggest in the "general" code completion list. Code completion after a colon or dot will show namespaces, types, members, etc. And code completion after AS or IS will show types and namespaces. Several preprocessor fixes to make the preprocessor more compatible with FoxPro and Xbase++. We have also added the #if and #stdout commands. We added several smaller fixes in the RDD system to improve the compatibility with Visual Objects, XBase++ and FoxPro.

QBasic as well as QuickBasic is an easy-to-learn programming language (and therefore ideal for beginners), based on DOS operating system, but also executable on Windows. QBasic is the slimmed-down version of QuickBasic. Compared to QuickBasic, QBasic is limited as it lacks a compiler. Therefore QBasic cannot be used to produce executables (.exe files). The source code (usual files with .bas extension) can only be executed immediately by the built-in QBasic interpreter. Furthermore, QuickBasic has a more extensive command set than QBasic. The best way to learn to program is to start with a lightweight programming language and a simple compiler. Qbasic (short: QB) has great advantages for pros and beginners that other compilers can't offer. Back then, when DOS was the most widely used operating system, QB IDE enjoyed great popularity. On current Windows systems, QBasic/QuickBASIC requires a DOS emulator, e.g. DOSBox.

Prolog is a logic programming language associated with artificial intelligence and computational linguistics. Prolog has its roots in first-order logic, a formal logic, and unlike many other programming languages, Prolog is intended primarily as a declarative programming language, the program logic is expressed in terms of relations, represented as facts and rules. A computation is initiated by running a query over these relations. Prolog was one of the first logic programming languages and remains the most popular such language today, with several free and commercial implementations available. The language has been used for theorem proving, expert systems, term rewriting, type systems, and automated planning, as well as its original intended field of use, natural language processing. Modern Prolog environments support the creation of graphical user interfaces, as well as administrative and networked applications.