PB web site and forum down?

[José Roca]

 

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

[Edwin Knoppert]

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)

[Theo Gottwald]

>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. :-)

[José Roca]

 
I'm sure that they are going to react now that they have competition

[Donald Darden]

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.

[Edwin Knoppert]

>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)

[Marco Pontello]

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! 

Bye!

[Edwin Knoppert]

And the Purebasic forum is down as well.. oooohohhhh  conspiracy and so..

[Marco Pontello]

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.

[Paul Squires]

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.

[Eros Olmi]

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.

[Marco Pontello]

I feel that this kind of "control mentality" on the web belong to the "dark ages", not to the present days. boh...

[Marco Pontello]

BTW, I see quoted about 3.200 active members.
In these days, how many active PB developers wouldn't subscribe to the forum?

[José Roca]

 
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.

[Marco Pontello]

Yes, exactly!
Indeed what I was meaning (see, my english too isn't particulary good! ) 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...