Future of powerbasic

[Steve Hutchesson]

I think Gary has the right idea, especially with some encouragement, stop treating the language as crippleware and start producing some decent API, ASM, whatever else goes fast style of code. Just happens to be that the forum went down, maybe maintainance ?

[Patrice Terrier]

Hutch--

After two years of automatic flying mode, comes the time of the forced landing.

And Gary while a good guy is not the pilot of the plain.

...

[Steve Hutchesson]

Hi Patrice,

It certainly does not look like anything is going to happen in a hurry and that is if it ever happens but it bothers me little in that the 2 compilers work well and few have exploited their potential. I have this sense of humour that BASIC holds your hot little hand, API code will rap you over the knuckles while assembler will bite your hand. At least the "beached whales" syndrome appears to have faded with them and the folks that are left actually want to write some decent code at last without the endless whining about more and more "intrinsics" and further changes to the compilers to make them more like VB6.

[Mike Stefanik]

I think the biggest problem is the "radio silence" from the PowerBASIC staff and their marketing efforts seem to be non-existent lately. It's always seemed to have been positioned as a BASIC compiler targeted towards the business/professional developer, but they seem to be falling behind the curve there and I'm not sure they have the resources to change things.

I've personally reached out to see if there's something that we could do together with SocketTools and PowerBASIC and there doesn't seem to be any interest at all from them.

[Patrice Terrier]

It's always seemed to have been positioned as a BASIC compiler targeted towards the business/professional developer

Not anymore, because business/professional developer are very pragmatic.
And a compiler should be just a tool, not a religion. 

...

[Theo Gottwald]

Patrice, if we get philosophical,
that opens the question if "a religion should be a religion (in your sense)".
I always say that religions are good and needed to organize a working society.


Is anybody here, who believes that we will see a PB 11 or PB x64 soon?

[Marc Pons]

 

Who cares about PB 11 , what is important for the business is PB for x64 and/or PB for linux

even a free tool like freebasic is going in that direction ...

[Patrice Terrier]

Is anybody here, who believes that we will see a PB 11 or PB x64 soon?

Just consider the facts, objectively, and you will have the answer.

...

[Frederick J. Harris]

What have you been using for your x64 work Theo?

[Theo Gottwald]

See here:
http://www.jose.it-berater.org/smfforum/index.php?board=381.0

[Patrice Terrier]

PureBasic uses another proprietary syntax that is not portable from one language to another, kind of super DDT full of Gadgets

...

[José Roca]

Cross-platform compilers need to do that, because the Windows API only works in Windows. Applications that call the Windows API directly aren't portable to other platforms.

[Mike Stefanik]

PureBasic uses another proprietary syntax that is not portable from one language to another, kind of super DDT full of Gadgets

...

Not to mention that it's not a particularly BASIC-like implementation of the language. Of course, the same thing could be said about Visual Basic as well.

[Tom Perkins]

Of course, the same thing could be said about Visual Basic as well.

But PureBasic is still universally used and still close to the original standard instruction set. Look what has all changed in the meantime, the hardware, the operating systems, the computing power, the Internet and the entire software environment. Requirements and target groups are constantly changing, old structures break up and regroup. Under these circumstances, it is normal if the compiler is developed in line with new challenges. The root is still BASIC!

[Frederick J. Harris]

PureBasic uses another proprietary syntax that is not portable from one language to another, kind of super DDT full of Gadgets

I imagine it can be used like PowerBASIC though, making direct Api calls, while ignoring the 'super DDT full of gadgets'?