Is PB web site and forum down also for you? I cannot reach it right now.
Hope they are under maintenance due to installation/conversion of new forum :D
I can access it.
Me too now.
Thanks
Quote from: Eros Olmi on August 24, 2007, 08:04:57 AM
Hope they are under maintenance due to installation/conversion of new forum :D
Will it ever be done? :)
Bye!
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1404067
:D ... maybe ... one day ... who knows ... never say never ...
I do not understand how they cannot understand that a move like that would improve a lot Power Basic community and Power Basic knowledge share. But, maybe, they ... do not want that.
Quote from: Eros Olmi on August 24, 2007, 11:43:40 AM
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1404067
OMG! That's incredible! There's hope at the end of the tunnel... :)
BTW, I second the opinion that it will probably better to simply start with a new / fresh forum and freeze the old one as a reference & archive. New messages will be posted that will simply link old messages in the old forum; some of the old messages will maybe simply cut & pasted in the new, and so on.
Converting the "old mess" right would be a very complicated thing, and probably is simply not worth the effort.
Bye!
If thats really "our Bob", that means that if they would convert the forum,
all Links in the Forum-Posts that lead to the old Forum would be invalid.
Maybe the best sollution would be to leave the old Forum "as is", just close it for new posts.
Then open the new forum.
This way the Links would still be usable.
Well, you have to tell Bob about that :D
I'm already been ... let say ... "officially invited" to not disturb PB forum quiete with my un-polite requests.
Quote from: Theo Gottwald on August 24, 2007, 11:56:12 AM
If thats really "our Bob",
from http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=235494 you get "...254,000 plus threads..."
from http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1404067 you get "...I recently imported a UBB Classic 5.45c board..."
Name is Bob Zale but maybe who is posting is not really Bob Zale but someone else on his name who is making the real job. Tone seems not Bob tone to me (but maybe I only know angry Bob tone :D ).
Quote from: Eros Olmi on August 24, 2007, 12:43:45 PM
Tone seems not Bob tone to me (but maybe I only know angry Bob tone :D ).
Maybe just because he his in "normal user" instead of "local Emperor" mode! :D
I don't think there is anybody at that company that would dare answer in the name of the president and owner, so that throws that theory out the window.
I will go further and say that Bob is more cautious in what he writes as opposed to what he might say in person. Few people write just as they talk, you know, and his posts generally show an effort at deliberation. His tone is usually more ironic in print, which is a departure from the way he tends to speak in person.
But speaking of rhe PB forums, is it just me, or does it seem that the level of innovative participation has gone down? I had a habit of visiting the site often, but over the last year or so, found the Cafe more interesting than what was going on elsewhere. Now the Cafe itself is becomeing tiresome, and people seem to be posting mostly to create controversy and get a dialog going. I don't find that constructive, since peole just argue and express opinions and points of view, and sometimes get into name calling.
I look at the really great contributions some people here are making, and that is the way I remember the PB Forums of old. It's like the fire has gone out there, and only embers are left. Or maybe the innovative contributors have just moved on.. .
I agree. The PB forum strikes me as tired as well. Lack of updates of the compiler (which by its nature is legacy) does little to spark innovation. It is more and more a hobbiest compiler without game graphics. If no meaningful upgrades to the compiler are made then the distinction between Powerbasic and Freebasic will continue to blur.
IMHO, at least a part of the problem is due to (mis)management:
- poor attitude toward a lots of brilliant users that then leaved (either because of a ban or by their choice) - no need to quote names, I'm sure anyone miss the posts of some members
- poor software board that complicated things that should be easy / obvious - a minor thing, maybe, but time after time it become very annoying. Source code posting is just an example, and being a forum for coders...
Bye!
Same feeling here.
Anyhow it seems who remained in current PB forum likes current feeling. I tryed to say something against but I was put into an angle like I was the only one thinking that there were too much not tech related posts.
Anyhow, we will see.
Compiler is not seriously updated since some years now. So time seems mature to get a new 9.0 version.
If also forum will be updated maybe a new feeling will return.
If this will not happen, well, time will be mature for me for a complete definitive change. Maybe also the second best compiler on hearth will well fit my needs :D
>Anyhow it seems who remained in current PB forum likes current feeling.
First i don't mind the current board software at all.
Then i really think people change, there is newer software, the market might also change to internet applications instead.
Any wizkid can use an asp.net and since dotnet is so well supported and extensive, why bother with anything more difficult?
The people posting here are familiar to me and they use PB for some time now, IF the world is changing we are simply the next not liking the changes around us (or believe it)
We might be the left-overs..
I just speculate all of this, i made the same change so you can also say that i just told the story of my life.
It's so that PB is not much used by me compared with my other tasks.
And.. i don't even like website building much :)
Oh and remember, each year a new bunch of programmers enter the market, each year billie and others dump new software on the market even more spectacular then before.
Don't stay to much behind but then.. you also know the stories about old farths still having a job updating old fashion software.
Is that you?
Quote
Don't stay to much behind but then.. you also know the stories about old farths still having a job updating old fashion software.
Is that you?
I still have a job updating an old multiuser vertical application for DOS :)
Have fun then :)
Boy, i did QB45, enough misery for me.
Generating errors on View to detect current mode (80x50) etc..
Ha ha.
Ha, i was quiet good with it, wrote a shell for Orcad in those days and my productivity increased a lot!
Good times (in elektronics development)
>I had a habit of visiting the site often, but over the last year or so, found the Cafe more interesting than what was going on elsewhere
Yes, I agree with you Donald.
>and his posts generally show an effort at deliberation.
Thats really true, Donald. Anyway I have seen some e-mail which have been quite different from that.
If I would put these e-mails aside of the posts we know from "our Bob", I#d say they are from someone else or there is a a "split personallity".
Because really, Bobs posts are nearly always well thought, all words well choosen. While some mails (from Ex-PB Forum Users) I have seen, did make a much diffrent impression to me.
But anyway we are not a psychologist forum here. Actually my biggest problem with PB is just that I'd like to buy something NEW and its not READY. :-)
I'm sure that they are going to react now that they have competition :)
There have been many suggestions made about where some people would like to see the PowerBasic language go. I have mixed feelings about some of the ideas myself. Either things I probably will never use, or paying for an upgrade that adds a bunch of stuff I would not be interested in.
As Jose and others keep proving, it's not like most of those things can't be done with the present version, you just have to learn how. In fact, the growth in the number of intrinsic functions in PowerBasic has not brought many really needed capabilities, it has just meant more time trying to memorize what is there and how to use existing freatures rather than writing your own. As I see it, PowerBasic has left its lean and mean days far behind.
Most serious programmers do not limit themselves to one language. They gain experieince with a number of programming tools, each best suited for certain tasks or roles. Each language has a syntax and range of commands that are built around certain overall concepts. When someone tries to create a universal programming language, they might try go layer new commands around the existing common concept, or they may create additional cores of focus within that language. The results may be less than satisfactory - a bulkier
language, awkward syntax, a difficulty with learning to use the new elements
might be examples of the problems encountered.
I suspect that many of the people that have left the PowerBasic forums have religated the PowerBasic compilers to one of several tools, rather than the one exclusive tool in their repertoire. While others may continue to cry for the
compilers to be updated with new features, I wonder how many of those that have moved on to gaining experience with other tools will come back, invest again in the compilers, and attempt to consolidate their development work under the PowerBasic mantle.
Though I've suspected that PowerBasic's goal might be to woo the VisualBasic crowd, I wonder if that will be successful or not. PowerBasic is quite different,
meaning a relearning and conversion curve, and VB will likely be good enough for what it does, with those members instead looking for additional tools to do other things. Perhaps PB is good enough for what it does, and the same problem with getting it sold into the same PB market again. I recall that when Microsoft came out with version 6 of VisualBasic, many owners of version 5 failed to upgrade, because version 5 was considered good enough, and in some respects, better than version 6. Apparently the latest isn't always the greatest.
PureBasic allows the user to always get the latest version free of additional charge. That way everybody is on the same page, or can get to the same page. Already we see the PowerBasic camp divided between DOS, Windows, and the CC versions. In addition, multiple releases have come about, but since they cost money, we see a community trying to decide whether to upgrade or stay with an older version. So there is considerable fragmentation in the PowerBasic community. And we've seen problems with getting some programs to compile and run just as they are as a consequence. then of course thare have been the numerous problems with sourcing code on the PowerBasic web site and through the forums.
I think the Cafe has given rise to further fragmentation and distractions in the PowerBasic community. I'm sure others will disagree, but that's the impression I've gained after a time spent in following it and being involved with it.
I'm not anti-PowerBasic or down on their business model. I'm just looking at the present situation and musing about what seems go be going on, and what might have brought it about. Thist's not to say that things would have been better otherwise, but you wonder at what will happen next.
>Though I've suspected that PowerBasic's goal might be to woo the VisualBasic crowd,
PB 'started' with PB/DLL, to create dll's for VB.
Of course, a new name and some form stuff added and we had PB/WIN.
But PB is no longer suitable for the current VB releases.
I brought this to attention on the PB forum and my fingers still hurt :) (smaackk!!)
We can have discussion all over how suitable PB is with other languages but it's not..
Times of using VB3 and 6 with PB dll's is over, i mean, no-one will use these tools in that combo to start out a new serious project is it?
This week i wrote me greate 200kb exe in PB for maintaining and uploading documents.
I like PB as it is.
But if you ask me how much trouble i encountered between PB and ASP.NET..
Using PB for dll's in the newer unicode based tools is pretty daunting, especially the ackward declarations required in dotnet.
Everything needs to be marshalled..
If that's easy?
(Not undoable though)
Seems that now they are really rolling out the new vBullentin based forum!
Let's say "Hello!": PowerBASIC Peer Support Forums - Cafe PowerBASIC - New forum! (http://www.powerbasic.com/support/pbforums/showthread.php?t=34706) :)
Bye!
And the Purebasic forum is down as well.. oooohohhhh conspiracy and so..
:) :)
BTW, not entirely surprising it seems that the PB folks are restarting to lockdown many features of the forum software! :(
Well, at least now the forum is usable, even if only for the basic functions.
Yeah Marco, I saw your image that you posted but when I returned a few minutes later the image was gone. Looks like image posting is now disabled. Too bad. :(
Yes, just very basic options and informations.
No global stats, no online users, no avatar, no code syntax highlight (only for PHP but who cares), ...
They seems to have some fear users are able to "count" forum usage. I suppose they will remove post read count too.
I feel that this kind of "control mentality" on the web belong to the "dark ages", not to the present days. boh...
BTW, I see quoted about 3.200 active members.
In these days, how many active PB developers wouldn't subscribe to the forum?
You will be surprised. Among them, all PBers that don't speak English. Do you really think that I'm the only Spanish using PB? They just lurk from time to time, but don't register and don't post. Think about it. If PB had only 3200 customers they could not survive.
Yes, exactly!
Indeed what I was meaning (see, my english too isn't particulary good! :D ) is if it was possible to get a rough estimate of the userbase based on the registered members. I would not really know how much the ratio can be...
If you've continued to visit the PowerBasic web site, you have noticed that they have installed new software for managing the site. Which it fine as far as it goes. The old forums are closed "permanently", but Bob Zale mentions that there are still a huge store of example code that can be accessed. Some features apparently have not been activated yet,
After all this time, and suddenly PowerBasic is doing another face lift? I wonder if that is suppose to tell us something or not? I guess time will tell. The last time they spruced up the web site, if I remember correctly, was around the time they released the new compilers.
I'm sure that if they do offer something new, there are many people ready to take advantage of it. In the past, it's been sort of automatic for me to upgrade as well, but I guess this time I will have to wait and see what comes in the package. I've really been happy enough with what I have, and with Jose Roca proving that it is already capable of doing much more than I would have expected, I wonder what else I could possibly want or expect. I'm sort of like that about cerials and bread as well - it it is good enough to eat, I don't have to keep looking for something even better. I also drive an 11-year old car, so I know my choices will not be the same for many other people.
Well. speculation aside, I find I don't spend as much time there. Now that Jose has this web site, I actually spend more time here, though I don't post as much. I'm not as active in programming as I once was, so I'm mostly just reading what others post instead. I'm really impressed by the caliber of the contributions made. I hope in time we get some people who are as dedicated to exploring what can be done with BASIC in the Linux world. Like I explained elsewhere, I don't see Vista as a part of my personal future. Far too costly, with not enough to show for the reinvestment required.
Also the recent offers of upgrades sent to all the customers in recent times, make me think some new versions isn't too distant.
Hey!
Where is.. "Bye!"
:)
Whooops! :o
Bye! :D :D
QuoteAlso the recent offers of upgrades sent to all the customers in recent times,
You think they shall buy 8.03 soon before something new is available? :-)
In that case Bob should not have sent that mail out, which tells us that there are surprises in his box.
I doubt he wanted to surprise me with the new forum, I rather wait until his surprises are there.
Anyway I did all the upgrades and I will maybe in future.
Que sera, sera, whatever will be, will be...
Maybe we have helped to accelerate the change. This forum was opened in May and Bob opened his account with vBulletin in June. Or maybe is only a coincidence. Who knows? Anyway, the change was heavily needed and is very welcomed.
But we have images, attachments, a nicer theme, updated code... and we are more innovative.
vBulletin is great, but they are constraining it so much that already has less features available than this one.
Quote from: José Roca on September 03, 2007, 08:34:17 PM
But we have images, attachments, a nicer theme, updated code... and we are more innovative.
vBulletin is great, but they are constraining it so much that already has less features available than this one.
So true. They seems to be a little "paranoid" about it...
>Maybe we have helped to accelerate the change.
I hope not. Thats would be no bussiness system,
- to wait till others do something and then
- you run after them,
-> to deliver a bit less then competition did.
Anyway the design you have choosen for your forum, especially the lightblue colour, and the options to attach files, still make your forum first choice for sorts of postings.
I am not yet used to the darker colours of the actual PB-Forum. Whats good is, that the Links to the old forum are alive and do still work.
You have 12 colors to choose. I'm using the 2nd from the left, that is a blue a bit darker.
I always use the light blue colour, I have never seen a nice forum then this, Jose.
I was using Google to search for links involving Linux and PowerBasic. Lance Edmonds made a few comments back around 2001/2002 on the likely coming of a PB/Linux product, and even earlier, someone quoted Bob Zale in 1999 that they were developing one for Linux, but the writer expressed doubt because just going from PB/DLL to PB/Win took forever. Seems his premonition was right on.
Anyway, one of the links led to the old PowerBasic forums, but when I tried to follow it, I ran into a roadblock that said the site was permanently closed. In this case, the link was probably way outdated, so no big deal. But it might get frustrating if you were following a code link, and found that the old forum was shut down so that you could not continue it.
Someone my remember that on their About page (http://www.powerbasic.com/aboutpb.asp), PowerBASIC used to refer to Linux.
A little search on the Internet Archive (http://web.archive.org) show that was changed near the end of 2005.
From the archived copy of July 2005 (http://web.archive.org/web/20050716045235/http://www.powerbasic.com/aboutpb.asp):
QuoteWe offer compilers for DOS and Windows today. Linux is coming soon, and other platforms will follow. Our 24-year history started with BASIC/Z, the very first interactive compiler for CP/M and MDOS.
On the next update, November 2005 (http://web.archive.org/web/20051125002954/http://www.powerbasic.com/aboutpb.asp), instead:
QuoteWe offer compilers for DOS and Windows today. Linux is coming soon, and other platforms will follow. Our 24-year history started with BASIC/Z, the very first interactive compiler for CP/M and MDOS.
The latter is what appear still today.
Bye!
In the Frequently Asked Questions on the forum, they say:
"Is there a version of PowerBASIC for Linux?
"PowerBASIC for Linux is under development, and it's quite a high priority for us. However, we maintain a strict "No Vaporware" policy, so more details are not available at this time. Please watch our web site at www.powerbasic.com as info will be posted there as soon as it's available."
But I think like others, that the big market draw with be ever tighter integration into Windows, and that Linux just does not offer the same prospects for future sales. I think that this could change if anything electrifying occurred in the third party arena that would serve to unify the Linux community, but what that might be is beyond me.
One key factor that would likely have to be solved is the difficulty of having suitable drivers for the diverse hardware out there. Microsoft has redefined its driver standards for newer generations of its Windows operating systems, forcing venders to play keep-up, and relatively few venders create drivers that are intended for Linux. Some create drivers for the Mac OS though. I would think that to solve this, it might be necessary to devixe a method of supporting drivers other than those specifically written for Linux.
Just found this topic. I do not usually read much outside of the development forums cos I have so little time, but it was refreshing to read openly expressed views, something many of us have learned the hard way, doesny fly on with uncle Bob.
>But we have images, attachments, a nicer theme, updated code... and we are more innovative.
You have much more than that, you have free speach!
and posts that dont suddenly dissapear if they are even mildly critical..
>I brought this to attention on the PB forum and my fingers still hurt...
hahaha, yes, been there, done that.
The number of fantastic developers that have left is amazing.
I love PB don't get me wrong, but the Uncle Bobs regime is legendary.
How can someone that brilliant be so shortsighted and petty...