About Powerbasic

[Kari Laine]

Hi All,

I have had PowerBasic compilers and Perfect Sync Tools for years now. And I have studied SDK-based programming. I like Basic even though serious programmers don't even think it is a programming language. I have been on and off with Powerbasic and studied C, C++ and Java which are considered industry languages. I have not studied .NET because I think it must be slow because it is interpreted and it involves a huge runtime. I would like to stick with powerbasic but I am worried about the resources of the company. It is small. It seems it does not have much in staff - I really miss Lance. PerfectSync tools have not been updated since I bought them - at least I have not been informed and when I compared the version numbers they were same. Also as I have learned powerbasic compilers are done with assembler - that is not goog because they are not portable and maintenance must be difficult. Also they are 32-bits and produce 32-bits code which is not good when the whole world is moving to 64-bit. If they were written for example with C the porting to 64-bit would probably have happened already. Also companies are so blinded with Microsoft .NET-platform that they probably don't consider Powerbasic as contender.

Don't get me wrong I really love Powerbasic and most of the little programs I have made I have done with PB/CC-compiler. I have not done much PB/WIN programming because of the difficulty. I bought Chriss Boss GUI-development environment and I am going to learn it when I have time. I am also going to purchase the other GUI-development tools and compare. They are not very expensive and really make GUI-programming a lot easier. With them it is closer to VB6 which I have used. I think that hand coding GUI-applications with SDK is probably waste of time in most cases. I think Powerbasic should purchase one of the products and include it in the PB/WIN compiler.

What if PowerBasic goes out of business? There should be escrow that if PowerBasic goes out of business the source of compilers would be public domain or GPL or some other license which would allow someone to pick up the pieces. Otherwise it is risky to commit yourself to Powerbasic because it is so little player among big sharks :-)

Just my rampling - have been up 20 hours trying to install solaris 10 on Sparc....

Best Regards
Kari Laine

[José Roca]

I like Basic even though serious programmers don't even think it is a programming language.

Many of us are serious programmers and we are using Basic.

PerfectSync tools have not been updated since I bought them - at least I have not been informed and when I compared the version numbers they were same.

There have been no new versions of the ODBC drivers, so there is not need for updates. If you miss a feature, then you should send a suggestion to Perfect Sync.

[...] it is risky to commit yourself to Powerbasic because it is so little player among big sharks.

So far, the ones that have been abandoned are the users of VB6.

[Frederick J. Harris]

In the late 1990s I used Microsoft QuickBasic 4.5 to write all the handheld data collection software for a very large state goverment organization that collects massive amounts of data.  These programs are still in very, very wide use even though QuickBasic 4.5 hasn't been updated since I'm guessing around 1988.  And its now 2009!

My point is, even if the next tornado (God forbid) should take PowerBASIC out, the compiler still works and is very close to bug free.  And if Mr. Zale (PowerBASIC president/owner) should fully retire, I expect he would sell the company to someone with whom he could entrust its future.  For reasons such as this I don't worry much about such issues.  I personally write as much as I can of what I do in PowerBASIC because it allows me to be more productive than in other languages.  I can tell you for a fact that there are a lot of tremendously skilled mainframe, C, C++, and asm coders who don't consider PowerBASIC a second rate sort of thing.   

[Patrice Terrier]

I think that hand coding GUI-applications with SDK is probably waste of time in most cases

Just amazing!

Coding in SDK makes you free, and protect your investment on the long run.
Once you know what is going on behind the hood, then you can switch to another compiler in a a few monthes, because the low level API is always the same whatever the language being used.
And once you have written your own set of tools, it doesn't take any longer to produce working application than using third party addons 

...

[Mark Smit]

Hey Guys,

I have to share my comments here.

While I really like PowerBASIC and will continue to purchase updates I also think it's getting a little "old". Sure you can always fall back to the SDK but who really does that now a days. I've been keeping an eye on the job postings for some time and not once have I even seen PowerBASIC as a desired or required skill. Fact is on a percentage basis, nobody is using it. It's a shame because it really is a fantastic product but I have yet to see it printed on a job/contract posting. Especially now with Mac OS X and Linux gaining market share you have to wonder how long they can compete. There are FREE and very capable development tools for just about every platform so cost really isn't an issue anymore.

The recent COM support was nice to see but it's about 10 years to late in my opinion. The reality remains that if you want to be competitive in this field you need to have multiple skills sets available. Relying on PowerBASIC alone simply won't cut it no matter how great it is. We all need to learn new languages and keep up with this fast paced industry to continue our careers.

[Frederick J. Harris]

I second what Patrice just wrote.  You might find this hard to believe, but I don't believe its any faster to use GUI generation tools to produce applications.  I used Visual Basic very, very heavily throughout the 90s with the drag and drop control placement, and all that does is provide a way for folks to get apps done who don't know how to hand code things.  Anymore, for example, if I need to put a button on a Dialog/Form, I just copy another CreateWindow() call from somewhere else, modify the locations, add an equate to an inc file, and I'm done in probably less time than it would take to fool around with sizing handles, locate properties in some other window, etc.  

And here's another one to think about.  Charles Petzold makes this point in his Windows 95 book.  The software development kit for Windows 1.0 that became available in 1985 is quite similiar to what we are using now, at least in terms of the smaller subset of functions that were available at that early date.  So what you have in the SDK programming technique is a method of programming that hadn't changed in its fundamentals for 24 years!  Considering how rapidly things change in the computer world, anyone who would have made the investment necessary to learn that technique at that time could have spent the ensuing 24 years furthering his/her knowledge of this one programming paradigm, rather than constantly learning new programming paradigms every few years as old things are thrown away (and with that all the hundreds or thousands of hours you've invested in them) and new tools come into vogue (VB, VB.net, MFC, OWL, etc.).  

And if for some reason you don't or can't use PowerBASIC, if you do it the SDK route, the transition to C or C++ SDK coding is relatively painless.    

[Patrice Terrier]

I would like to ellaborate a little more about my personnal case.


I am usig different programming tools, each one being targeted to a specific task.

I would never used PowerBASIC, nor C#, nor C++ to write complex ERP or buisiness application using hundreds of windows.

Instead i am using a modern L5G that allows me to have the job done 10 time faster than using VISUAL STUDIO.

And when i need to speed up things here and there, then i am using one of of my PB/DLL booster to put the main L5G shuttle application on orbit.

What i want to say here, is that one single language can't cover all the modern programming paradigm, we must have a limited arsenal at our finger tip, and select the best tool to solve a specific problem.

See my WinDev section, and ask yourself, how long it would take you to produce such application with your "classic" tools?

...

[Edwin Knoppert]

Copying an existing CreateWindow() statement wasn't good enough for me.
It took ages to get the form right.
I sometimes still use WM_COMMAND stuff even if i have event procedures.
It's a matter of perspective, what would your boss think if he finds out your are wasting time with things which are obvious in other languages?
(Like form design)

All the current designers seem the provide a low-level mechanism so you can program in SDK style.
This was not true in VB6 (and earlier) and required hooks and other non-sense to make things work.
We, ide builders, know what you want but there are limits, so what, i can still manage with my tool from ~1995

About the latest com stuff, it's late but it is a great thing to have.

[Theo Gottwald]

What if PowerBasic goes out of business?

In real bussiness life you can't count on Player size.

Where is the Support for VB5 in Vista?
It was not only dropped, its even buggy.

There incompatibilities between the VB 5 Runtime and Windows Vista.
It just says "There are known problems". Does it help you much?

And both products are even from the same "Big player".
Both have a lot of bussiness users!

Still that doesn't halp Users with VB 5 Programms if they want to use them in Vista,
they may become trouble at this or another point.

We had the same experience with a Company I am working for: WinRobots.
People used to buy for a lot of money a product from Symantec called "CCM ON Command".
Because its the big player.

I hear them how they tell me how important it was to be with the big player.

And now Symantec just dropped the product. It was dropped because of marketing-strategic decisions.

While the product was never technically as good as WinRobots, it also wasn't that bad.
It was just a "strategical marketing decision".

They just wanted to sell the customers something new.
The same like with VB and DOTNET.

Comparing two players, one thats just big and a small one.
Both are long time in the market. Then experience teaches me:

Rather stay with the small players, they can't afford to drop  you.

Especially if these players are for long time in the market, the risk with the big player is higher.

[Kari Laine]

Hi,

thanks for good insight. I am not professional developer. It just a hobby. So whether Powerbasic goes out of business or not is not that important to my hobby programming. But PB/CC and PB/Win are so good compilers that it is pity they are not used wider. It is stupid that Microsoft has cornered the development tools market with it's visual studio series, which cost a lot of money.

Thank you for Jose Roca for this very good service - you should really have PayPal to donate your money. Even I which have very limited funds could donate your some.

Best Regards
Kari

[Bob Zale]

How can you possibly go on and on about "PowerBASIC going out of business".  You have absolutely no knowledge of my company and no basis to make such allegations.  Why would you wish to start such unfounded rumors?  PowerBASIC is NOT going out of business.  This is in very poor taste.

Best regards,

Bob Zale, President
PowerBASIC Inc.

[Mark Smit]

Bob,

Thank god for that!

Although you do have me worried with the prospect of your eventual retirement

As always keep up the great work!

[Bob Zale]

<smile>  You made my day.  I'm going nowhere!

[Petr Schreiber]

It is stupid that Microsoft has cornered the development tools market with it's visual studio series, which cost a lot of money.

MS provides Visual Studio for C#/C++/VB for free in Express editions, some of my friends make money with it.

But I still prefer PowerBASIC for high performance applications. I think with PB/WIN 9, PowerBASIC became very close to ideal for game developement.
It is fast, it supports inline assembler with SSE ( great for interpolating complex 3D shapes to achieve animation ), José provides headers for DirectX 9/10 and OpenGL 1.0-3.0. All of these are latest technologies. I see nothing missing here

I also appreciate no run times, no .NET dependency and rock stability. All ( few ) issues I discovered and reported were fixed in maintenance update.

I think it is a bit question of what you expect from your tool, for ultracomplex UIs you might save time by purchasing PBForms/PwrDev/FireFly or others helpers. It is true writing code to create dialog will be always more time consuming than dragging controls on the screen visually.

For developement of modules and libraries I found PB to be ideal for the job.

For future I would appreciate some expansion on general purpose ( not "just" COM ) OOP side, but it is not something I couldn't live without. I know PB can do OOP fast after experiments with PB9, so I am fully confident they could provide solid general purpose OOP in future. Better take time and do it right.


Petr

[Theo Gottwald]

@Bob:

What Mr. Laine writes is an unspoken idea some people have in their mind.
Even bussines people sometimes think like that.

They believe that the safety is only on their side if they stay with the "big players".

They do not realize that the software market has changed a lot in the last years.
There is no safety with big players, you can't count the big software companies who closed their product line in the last years.

These big players are investment objects. The new owner is not interested in keeping product lines.

Safety is with those who can use "what they have".

You know that I am already waiting for the next PB release, whenever it will be ready, count me in as you customer. Besides from that, I can still take even my Powerbasic 7 and use this year and next year and even under Windows 7.

This is safety. The product I have is reliable and works. You can't do that with VB 5.

Having the new PB 9, i can kust take the same source and just compile it.
And it works like a clockwork. This is safety.

You can't do that with VB or many other languages - especially not from big players who took the DOTNET train.

There are reasons for that:
The organisation of a big company does not really help to develope a bugfree programming Environment.

Imagine, The boss of such a big company comes from holiday, he has a great idea.
He doesn't know from programming, he knows only about marketing. He calls the technical director and orders "we do now this and such".
This is the first step to get bugs in a product, if those who decide which features come in are too far from the programmers.

For no software you have the safety that it will still exist in any year to come.

Safety is, to have the latest version of PB on the harddisk.

While it may be necessary to exchange some components which are not orginally from PB but from MS to really get the Windows 7 Logo.