PowerBasic - will it recover or is the Air out?

[Frederick J. Harris]

I like your advice and take on this Chris.  You talk a lot of sense.  I was wondering on what you meant by this statement though ...

Also remember the history of Powerbasic. Borland could not hold on to TurboBasic simply because it was just too hot a product to deal with.

I feel bad that at the time I was a Microsoft 'groupie' and was loving my QuickBasic.  I was aware of TurboBasic, but didn't know anything about it except that Borland made (actually marketed) it.

[Christopher Boss]

Turbo Basic (and Borland) was basically constantly on the defensive when it came to Microsoft. It was a threat that Microsoft took seriously and the competition was just too much for Borland. Sadly, businesses can play dirty, so from the days of Turbo Basic likely Bob felt the effect of that. Consider this, if Bob had not worked as hard as he did to keep Powerbasic (aka. TurboBasic) alive, it would have disappeared a long time ago. Likely this made him very protective of his "baby", which could explain why he may at times have been a little too strong when dealing with critics of PowerBasic.

[Patrice Terrier]

Up and down, up and own, up and down.

Saturday morning down again, probably until monday, or perhaps after the vacations 

...

[Theo Gottwald]

Powerbasic was known for its reliability in the past. 

[Kev Peel]

Hi folks,

I have this horrible vision that the server is located in someones basement and gets shut off at bed time

This yo-yoing is extremely negative for PowerBASIC's reputation, of which a large part is the user community on the forum. If the forum is offline then this will give hundreds of potential new users a bad impression. Not to mention the existing community as we see here. We expect these things (server down,lack of info) of the numerous tinpot languages out there, not PB.

I was very sad to hear of Bob passing away, I communicated with him by email many times over the years and always got a professional response. As some on here know I have been an avid PB user since age 15, dropping VB6 in favour of it in 1999. I expect Bob would never had let something like this happen and it's a great shame.

Unfortunately PB was written in very well coded assembly language which would be hard for 99.9% of any modern programmer to maintain, at least to a good standard. I hope they find a good, skilled team to take it on, or even an investor/buyer to guarantee a future for this language. Turbo Basic was BIG in the 80s, many serious apps were written with it, and it is a tribute to the language that it's still going strong in the 2010s (30 years), so it would be such a loss for it to end now.

I personally have a bridge between PB and MSVC, working with both, so it would not harm me as much as others here if there were no new developments with PB. Even so, a compiler runs forever so I will always have it at hand on my desktop even if the worst happens and we get no more updates. I recommend you do the same -- this would be the ultimate tribute to Bob in my opinion.

Whew! thanks for reading.

[Eros Olmi]

If it is true that PB is developed using ASM language, why they didn't switched to PB to develop PB?
PB developed using PB would have been a logical move

[Theo Gottwald]

We are UP again (15-12-12/ 12:24 MEZ)

[Frederick J. Harris]

Even so, a compiler runs forever so I will always have it at hand on my desktop even if the worst happens and we get no more updates. I recommend you do the same -- this would be the ultimate tribute to Bob in my opinion.

Yes, that's a done deal for me Kev (good to hear from you too!). 

[Chris Holbrook]

We are DOWN at 07:37 GMT
That's 02:37 EST

[Eros Olmi]

The last exiting from the office ... switch off the light and ... switch off the server

[Theo Gottwald]

Thats just what i thought now, Eros.
16-12-12 09:28 we are down again.
I suggest that if we are up again that you get this Tool from Garry to download the forum to your local computer.
Slowly i get the strange Idea, that they are afraid that peple write things and nobody can check it.
So if the office is empty they shut down the server?
No its not possible 

[Patrice Terrier]

French: Lamentable.
English: Pathetic.

...

[James C. Fuller]

If it is true that PB is developed using ASM language, why they didn't switched to PB to develop PB?
PB developed using PB would have been a logical move

It IS developed in ASM but I suspect the sheer size of the source would prohibit a move to PB.

I did suggest (In an email to Bob - with no response ) to investigate JWasm. I assumed it would be easier to do a TASM -> JWasm translation than TASM -> "c" which would be needed for cross platform versions. JWasm is 100% masm compatible with versions for both Windows and Linux supporting 32/64.

James

[Chris Holbrook]

http://beprepareduniversity.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/bioelectrical_power_pedal_power_generator_human_power.jpg

The lady needs to rest...

[Theo Gottwald]

This is from the Firefly Forum:

I called PB today and talked to Jim Bailey.   He confirmed that Tom Hanlin is one of their
off site programmers.   Jim said all the staff is off for an early Christmas Holiday.  He's the
only one in the office today.   Said they had moved the website to their in house servers
and have been having some issues with their ISP.   He believes the issues have been resolved.
Over the holidays PB may be a little slow in responding to emails and questions left on the
forum as he is the only one in the office but asked for patience during this transition period.

http://www.planetsquires.com/protect/forum/index.php?topic=3234.msg23789;topicseen#msg23789