Knowing HTML, CSS and JavaScript Is Optional

Knowing HTML, CSS and JavaScript is Optional

Hello Everyone,

This is my first HN posting.

I am in the process of completing development of a new programming language, "Vista Basic", for developing web applications.

My hope in starting this thread is to initiate an interesting discussion about where web technology is headed and, incidentally, to get some publicity and maybe some funding.

Here is a link to the blog post to provide some context: http://vistabasic.com/index.php/2017/05/06/knowing-html-css-and-javascript-is-optional/

My premise is that there is a very large market for a product that would enable people with VBA (or similar) coding skills to create web applications for their employers or clients. By "web applications" I mean data-intensive applications with complex UI interactions. Something like what Visual Basic or C# programmers would produce for internal networks.

A bit of background about myself: -- professional programmer since 1977 -- web application development since 2000 -- ExtJS application development since 2011 -- I created Vista Smalltalk about ten years ago -- VB uses a similar interpreter to VS

Vista Basic is already working and is should be ready for simple application development sometime over the next couple of months.

In summary,

1) web app programming today is about the level of MS Windows programming circa 1990 - remember the Charles Petzold "Programming Windows" books which were about a thousand pages each. (NEAR and FAR pointers yuck). http://www.charlespetzold.com/books.html

2) desktop programming became much easier as Visual Basic and then VB.net and C#.net got smarter and Visual Studio got better

3) web application programming will probably follow a similar trajectory

4) there are fortunes to be made :)

Thanks for reading,

-- Peter Fisk