I want to learn a Basic dialect

[Vernon Marsden]

Greetings;
I want to learn a Basic dialect, but there are so many to choose from. Ugh!
PB personal I think costs $99. RealBasic costs $199.  And some of the others cost around $50.
What I really want is a small, fast, exec output file ('C' output would be ok too). And a great visual-dragDrop-IDE. I realize this is a PB friendly site. But surely you checked things out before landing on PB.
Oh yes, in line code assist would be great too, but not absolutely have to have.
I am coming from a object pascal background (novice).
Anyways, Thanks in advance! ...Vern

[Theo Gottwald]

Why do I use PB?

Not because of its great IDE (I am sure the IDE's from those many competitors are much better). Try PureBasic. It includes even a Visual Designer.
On the other side there are VD's for PB available - but they want to be paid extra.

I use PB because it just works like a charm. I tell it "RUN" and it Runs.
No question, it will just do what I want.

I have also licenses from PureBasic and other Tools, but as my coding style is a bit different from mainstream, i experienced problems and errors whenever i tried it.

In the past I was soon at the point, where I don't know "Is that Bug from my code or is it from my Tool"?

With PowerBasic the answer is very clear. If there is a bug - the bug is in my code not in PB.

Thats in short why i always find myself back to PB after trying new things.

While its quite a year ago that i tried for example Purebasic. Looking at their Page, I just realize that they actually even have a 64 bit version.

If I'd be new to BASIC, I'd choose between one of the two, depending if native 64bit support is more important or just stability.

From the code-structure I'd say that PowerBasic is the "More Basic-like" thing of both.
Because its built around a rock solid string-engine.

Having all those little small helpers that are missing somewhere else. JOIN$, PARSE$, EXTRACT$, REMAIN$, REMOVE$, BUILD$ etc.

You can use dynamic strings for memory allocation and for anything.
This little difference makes things often more easy - at least to my taste.

PureBasic is much more like C. To me it looks as something between C and Basic, they do not have that complete, easy to use dynamic string support like PowerBasic.  Maybe they don't need it?

I don't know but looking at the help file of the newest version of Purebasic, the overall style looks like a "Game-C" to me as it was before. Lots of support for Game-Programming. Big community.

If I'd really take it for a serious application?

Not so long i have PowerBasic. Maybe I will try if I need a native 64 bit EXE, because i have a PureBasic licence also for long time.

[Frederick J. Harris]

The string handling issue is really important.  If you are an application programmer, you spend a lot of time minipulating strings.  I don't think you can find more rock solid string handling anywhere.  I use a lot of other programming languages in my work including C and C++, and there simply is no better string handling functions available anywhere else.  I only use other programming languages on platforms not supported by PowerBASIC, such as Windows CE. 

There are quite a few options available in terms of designing the GUI of your applications.  There are at least four 3rd party add on products available, and PowerBASIC itself sells PBForms which many people use and like.  As for myself, I mostly hand code everything (mostly cut & paste work actually, i.e., 'clip-board inheritance').

Another really big issue is that all the folks both here and in the PowerBASIC Forums are really knowledgable and helpful.  Many members will spend hours really trying to help when problems develop.  There is no absolute guarantee on this of course, but I've seen it countless times, and done it myself.  For some reason PowerBASIC seems to draw both beginners and very experienced programmers.  For beginners, the BASIC language is somewhat easier to get started with than somethic C like I guess.  The more experienced programmers seem attracted to it I guess because when you need to do the really low level interaction with the internals of the operating system itself ( Win Api ), you have all the capability of C or C++.  And of course there is always inline asm if you are inclined that way.

And like Theo said, the compiler itself is rock solid. 

[Theo Gottwald]

Have a sidenote. I have just taken a look on Purebasic x64 which looks like its a nice system with many features.
What dissapointed me a bit was, that i hoped i would get 54 bit in string lenght also. Which is not the case.

On my request to get a "c$=SPACE(5000000000) I did just get around 705 MB of string space instead of the expected 5 GB.

Looks to me that - while producing 64 bit executables and DLL's - the internal structures are still 32 bit somehow,
at least the used string engine.

And ... Purebasic is develope in VC 8. No wonder they have a large Sites with Bug reports.

See: http://www.purebasic.fr/blog/?cat=4

[Vernon Marsden]

Please;
I wonder if someone could generate a simple Form ( + panel, + richedit, + ScrolledBox) generate a VD output file. And post what the output of VD looks like.
Thanks very much! ...Vernon Marsden

[Patrice Terrier]

Have you seen there ...

See also here
and there
and there

...

[Edwin Knoppert]

Please;
I wonder if someone could generate a simple Form ( + panel, + richedit, + ScrolledBox) generate a VD output file. And post what the output of VD looks like.
Thanks very much! ...Vernon Marsden

For PwrDev showing the generated PwrDev output is illegal (license)
+ the code is of no use since it is generated and compiled each time and never to be updated manually.

[Vernon Marsden]

Patrice Terrier;
Thanks for these links.
...Vern

[Paul Squires]

FireFly works the same way. The generated code is 99.99% of the time of little use to the user. The user should never have to manually go into the generated code to do any work. All of the code should be entered into the visual designer/code editor itself and then FireFly will assemble it all into the proper output format. This approach is very clean and hides all of the mundane inner workings of the generated code and allows the user to concentrate on only their code.

[Edwin Knoppert]

Hey Paul, having fun writting your new version?
Are you also into the 'inheritance' stuff?
I have lot's of fun rewritting things into oop, it's a nice challenge, PB's oop was a great addition to me at least.

[Paul Squires]

Hi Edwin,

To be honest 90% of FireFly 3 was written before the new compiler was released. I toyed with the idea of going back and re-writing the guts of the engine to be OOP/Class based but it would be a huge task at this point. I really do want to change it at some point.... but not until maybe FireFly 3.5  

[Patrice Terrier]

I am using OOP when i have no other choice, for example in C#, however i found the procedural model more universal, especialy when you have to write DLL addons that must be compatible with a large scope of programming languages.

...

[Edwin Knoppert]

To be clear, i meant the internals for my PwrDev, i am not writting an OOP version like a VB or so.
The basic part is ordinary code, only optional code is written using com classes.

For the PwrDev internal code i am rewritting as much as i can to oop, for example i can fetch me a form which generates DDT code or i can fetch me a SDK style formobject which produces SDK code.
I threat DDT and SDK mode as two different 'compilers' and thus i can add a new inheritant for a different compiler later on.
The inheritance forces me to make all code the same.

'Get me a form for DDT and produce it's styles etc.'

[Gérôme Guillemin]

Hello,

And FBSL (VB like) costs $0 for personal use.
It has a visual designer, code editor, extensible language, intel assembly compatible, tons of samples, tutorials, a forum and 8 years of experience.
What about giving it a try ?

Yours,
Gerome GUILLEMIN
http://www.fbsl.net

[Theo Gottwald]

Of course. $0 is a competible price. For me and those using PB since long time, i doubt we want to change.
Even if they would pay me for that i won't use another car so long "my good old one" drives me where i want.

You know all the switches and buttons. You know how to come from A -> B.

So you don't change unless you get into a situation where you need to switch over to something because you just can't do it this way.

Generally I'd say that people are quite happy with PB because its a well thought programming system and very reliable. Anyway if the price is a important part of a decision there are alternatives for people not already used to PB.

As said ... long time PB-Users most often don't want to change over to something else.
But this may be true for most users of any reliable programming system or tool.