Converting Java App to Brightscript

Short answer, no.

Your first code snippet is a Java function definition, the second is a BrightScript roAssociativeArray definition. In Java, braces are used to define code blocks, which is not true in BrightScript. In BrightScript, braces denote a roAssociativeArray. The Java code would translate to BrightScript as something like this...

sub Somekindathing()
  a = something()
  b = somethingelse()
end sub

Thanks! I'm sure I'll have some more questions later, hope you don't mind.

- Joel