An implementation of Basic that is fully code-compatible with VB.NET has been released. Mercury adds multi-platform support and is feature compatible with C#.

The creators of Mercury, RemObjects, have a number of similar products for other languages, including C#, Object Pascal, Go, Java and Swift.

The team says that Mercury is currently 99.9% compatible with Visual Basic.NET, and already adds a wide range of language extensions and support for C# 9.0 features that will make the VB developers lives easier. The extras include support for pointers and unsafe code, lazy properties, and C# 9's new records.

The implementation also comes with a number of extra language features through being part of the RemObjects Elements compiler tool chain, including mapped types and support for aspect-oriented programming.

Mapped type let developers create compatibility wrappers for types without ending up with classes that contain the real type. The wrappers are then eliminated by the compiler and rewritten to use the type referred to by the mapping. Mapped types behave just like regular non-mapped types.

Aspect oriented programming separates general code from those elements (aspects) that interact with other objects or layers by crossing the boundaries between them. Mercury  supports aspects and attributes, and allows the compiler itself to be extended by creating custom aspects, which essentially are more sophisticated attributes that can control the compiler's behavior.

One attraction of Mercury is the range of target platforms it supports, including .NET, .NET Core, Mono and ASP.NET Core; the Java VM; Android, iOS, macOS, tvOS and watchOS, CPU-native Windows and Linux, and WebAssembly.

For programming, Visual Basic.NET developers can work with Mercury in Visual Studio, or use the native and light-weight IDEs for Windows and the Mac that come as part of Mercury.

More Information

Mercury Webpage

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