PowerBasic Forum down (20.07.2013)

[Theo Gottwald]

As i have just verified, the PB Forum seems to be down again.
Ok. Sometimes over the weekends they clean up stuff.
Lets see what happens next week.

[David Roberts]

Assuming that they haven't been up since then, they have then been down for 14 hours. It doesn't take 14 hours to "clean up stuff".

Thanks for starting the PureBasic threads, Theo. I bought a licence a few weeks ago. 32 and 64 bit, in-line x86, AES CBC built in - it is looking good.

[Dan Campbell]

Purebasic definitely has potential.

[Chris Holbrook]

Thanks for starting the PureBasic threads, Theo. I bought a licence a few weeks ago.

More likely that Delphi or C++ will reclaim me, it's about time.

[Theo Gottwald]

Whatever you choose, you will still be welcome in this Forum.
Tell me your choice.

Let me say that the overall traffic in our Forum here is a bit higher then normal (11 GB).

im folgenden finden Sie den Datentransfer Ihres Paketes it-berater.org:

Transfervolumen für den 21.07.2013:                 528,75 MB
Transfervolumen der Woche vom 15.07.2013:         3.369,43 MB
Transfervolumen für den Monat 07/2013:            9.148,67 MB
Geschätztes Transfervolumen im Monat 07/2013:    13.505,18 MB
(Hochrechnung ohne Gewähr)

In Ihrem Paket ist monatlich unlimitiertes Transfervolumen inbegriffen.

Seems that we make the homeless PB'er the new home?

PS: I hope anyway that PowerBasic will come up again.

[Dan Campbell]

Whatever you choose, you will still be welcome in this Forum.
Tell me your choice.

Let me say that the overall traffic in our Forum here is a bit higher then normal (11 GB).

im folgenden finden Sie den Datentransfer Ihres Paketes it-berater.org:

Transfervolumen für den 21.07.2013:                 528,75 MB
Transfervolumen der Woche vom 15.07.2013:         3.369,43 MB
Transfervolumen für den Monat 07/2013:            9.148,67 MB
Geschätztes Transfervolumen im Monat 07/2013:    13.505,18 MB
(Hochrechnung ohne Gewähr)

In Ihrem Paket ist monatlich unlimitiertes Transfervolumen inbegriffen.

Seems that we make the homeless PB'er the new home?

PS: I hope anyway that PowerBasic will come up again.

Agreed.  Powerbasic does have a few features going for it.  One of them (the console compiler) is the useful TXT window, along with the Graphics windows. 

None of us have to be married to any particular language.  I have to use Java & Groovy at the office, but nobody can tell us what we're supposed to use for personal projects.  Aside from the absence of support for viewing objects in their debugger - something that I consider a standard feature - it isn't a bad tool.

[John Spikowski]

PS: I hope anyway that PowerBasic will come up again.

I always knew you would be the last one standing and responsible for turning off the lights. Just remember, pets should be loyal to their owners, not programmers to their vendors.

[Christopher Boss]

One of my customers emailed me asking about the PB web site. I didn't know.

Shortly afterwards he emailed again and said he got an email from Jum Bailey at PowerBasic and simply put, they are:

"moving locations / carrier / web site"

So it appears PowerBasic is still alive and well.

[John Spikowski]

"moving locations / carrier / web site"

So it appears PowerBasic is still alive and well.

Shows what PB thinks of their customers giving them no warning especially being on thinICE as it is.

Unless Jim announces a 64 bit PowerBASIC, their future is toast.

[Ross Boyd]

On June 12th I emailed PB support if this is the end of PB. (And pointing out there were no beta releases since many months)

Vivian Zale replied stating...

This is not the end of PB.  Just because we lost Captain Bob, the ship is not going down.  It has been very difficult with our leader gone.  We are struggling but still marching forward.   Research has left us behind without our leader and they are going through a restructure process to adapt.
I hope this answers your question about whether this is the end of PB.

@Chris B, they're alive but quite obviously not well.

Frankly, I'm very keen to see just a 32 bit beta. That would give me some assurance they were at least capable of ongoing development.

[David Roberts]

"moving locations / carrier / web site"

It would seem then that nothing was learnt from the last fiasco making Jim Bailey incompetent. I should think that at least one other member of staff would have pointed out that a different approach be employed this time. Perhaps it went in one ear and out of the other - a classic symptom of incompetence. I have read all of Bailey's posts at the PowerBASIC forums and he has struck me as someone who is clueless. With Jim Bailey at the helm PowerBASIC's future is toast.

[John Spikowski]

With Jim Bailey at the helm PowerBASIC's future is toast.

Unless Vivian knows how to program in handcrafted ASM, she should cut her loses and shut it down. I don't know anyone foolish enough to buy the company from her.

[Gary Beene]

It's hard to match what I've seen with PowerBASIC, including recent events, with the pessimism going on here.

I've certainly never thought of PowerBASIC as a cash-cow, but I've always assumed that they've had a steady income, sufficient to stay afloat for quite some time now.  Further, I'm expecting more people to get disillusioned with the MS/.NET world and to find PowerBASIC a technically suitable alternative.  It doesn't seem to me that the future is so dim for PowerBASIC.

There is, of course, the need to get past Bob's loss and to get their company pursuing a clear technical path. And while under Bob's rule, customer focus wasn't a company strong point, my experience is that customer service has improved slightly in the last few months.

The glaring exception, of course, is the mystifying silence of PowerBASIC during these two outages. I can't find any excuse for the silence, so it does cast a shadow on whether the company has an effective leader at this point. 

It's hard to believe that the company existed today solely because of Bob's technical coding skills.  I expect that his role in the earlier years was far more coding-participatory than in more recent years. Running a business leaves little time for coding contributions, so I have to believe there is more employee technical depth than is being given credit here.

And finally, I'm having trouble with the 64bit compiler comments. From the forum responses I've seen, a few folks really really want one now, and most other folks are happy enough with the idea that one will be out eventually.  That's hardly a recipe for "toast".

I'm in more of a wait-and-see mood. I find it hard to embrace the doom-and-gloom message being sown here.

[Theo Gottwald]

Gary, some very simple calculations - based on the downöload number you have for your freeware - will show you that PB can not and has never been a bussiness that was a cash cow. Possibly not even more then the hobby of a very dedicated programmer whoi left the ship.
Now think a moment. What would your wife do (with your site) if you leave the ship?
I believe they will switch to a cheaper internet company and continue to sell PB for a while.
After all we don't know what the future brings. My hope on new compilers from PB is rather small.

BUT: The current PB (10.03) is very stable, nearly bug free and it works as expected.
So we can use it as long as 32 bit software is going to run on any windows OS.

AND: The future may look dark, but it can change any day. There are even Rumors that the pope will cancel the celibacy.

Meanwhile we have a lot of discussions here in the forum about alternatives.

@John, I would like to know your opinion and technical experience about many things, but not about Powerbasic.
Why don't you try WINDEV? Whats your Opinion about Visual Studio?
Take this as a soft hint before action occurs. 

[John Spikowski]

I'm in more of a wait-and-see mood. I find it hard to embrace the doom-and-gloom message being sown here.

Would you use PowerBASIC for anything other than a hobby project based on what you know now?