possible programming challenge: a smart(er) IDE?

[madscijr]

It sounds like a nice idea but I agree with whoever that this would be so much work for so little reward. What you'd probably want to start out doing first would be making a translator for Python by making new wrappers. Completely rewriting QB64 for Python. Then doing the same for JavaScript. THEN you'd need to make this whole new IDE that has the capability of just switching back and forth between these two. I've had enough trouble just trying to do the little bit that I've done with Python QB64. It's something that no one should spend any length of time on, in my opinion.

At this point in the game, I'd tend to agree with you! 
This is more an intellectual exercise more than anything. 
Eventually I do think we'll have smart enough general AI or specialized AI, that it will be possible to automatically convert code to a different language on the fly. 
I think it could even be done now for a simplified subset, but I see your point about the work vs reward. 
It would definitely be more a labor of love for someone looking for a challenge, than a practical tool.

---

Maybe it's like that episode of Seinfeld, you know, where Kramer was pretending to be a moive-plex answering service... "Why don't you just tell me what movie you'd like to see?"  Anyway, I hope the Kramer behind that "A.I." website doesn't develop carpal tunnel syndrome.

Pete

UPDATE: it's openai.com
Sign up for an account, and try this one 
https://beta.openai.com/playground/p/def...inci-codex

I played with it about a year ago, and I ran into one weird problem, it's kind of politically correct! 
Check this out - it refused to convert one of the programs I fed it, 
saying the code was "unsafe". 
The error message didn't say what about the program was "unsafe", 
so I wrote their tech support, and they told me what line number the problem 
was in, and it provided a link to their page 

• Usage Guidelines - OpenAI API > 6. Filter sensitive and unsafe content
  

which included: 

• Consider using regex or other methods to check for sensitive content in user inputs or API completions, making use of libraries such as bad-words. Upon detecting such words, you may wish to replace these with a stand-in (e.g., replacing swear words with symbols) or ask the user to submit different input information.
  

I looked in my program at the offending line, and it turned out to be a comment (not even code that executes!):

Code: (Select All)

// function can be called without the need to gook up the code with unwieldly escape sequences

Evidently their "safety checker" thought the word "gook" made it "unsafe"! 
Which is a little ridiculous, if you look at the context in which the word is used. 
The word is not being used to describe Viet Cong soldiers or Asian people, a lexical parser should be able to figure that out. 
But what can you do!

I removed that line and the program translated just fine! 

I just went back and tried converting a program with the above comment and it worked, so maybe they updated it! 

Anyway have fun with that!