PowerBasic Forum down (20.07.2013)

[John Spikowski]

@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?

Sorry Theo, you're asking the wrong person about Windows direction and suggested tools. I'm a Linux guy and if it wasn't for O2 and SB on Windows, I wouldn't even bother with it.

BTW: You said you were hurting for cash so I posted the link to the free eval version of WinDEV so you can at least get started. That was your desire from what I got out of your post.

[Chris Holbrook]

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

We don't know where the power really lies at PowerBASIC Inc, nor what fate has recently thrown at them, so let's give Mr Bailey his chance,  if indeed he is still "in post". If he isn't, there is absolutely no reason to taint his reputation or prospects of employment with speculative abuse.

@John S, I know that you have had your issues with PowerBASIC Inc in the past. They do say that "revenge is a dish best served cold", so why not postpone your dance upon their grave? Personally, I'm hoping to see something viable emerge from the mists, though I'm not putting money on it.

@Chriss Boss, I'm with you in hoping  that all might yet work out well for PowerBASIC and its devotees. The point is, the face they turn to the outside world is - well, not a face, but an entirely different part of the anatomy. It grieves me that the judgement of whoever is running the show is so poor that no plausible statement has been put out by the company. Although I can conceive of possible legal reasons for it, they are not good reasons.

[Patrice Terrier]

I avoid to mix affect and programming work.

From my perspective PowerBASIC has always been <one> of my provider and not the <only one>.
I have always been aware that Robert Zale was a single orchester man, with all the cards in one hand.
The only exception was the fiasco of PBDK (written by Philippe Monteil), because at this time Bob Zale didn't complete his transition from DOS to the Windows programming paradime.
And this is the reason that left him always behind, because he had first to learn and master the new technologies from Microsoft.

At the same time i teached myself from MSDN CD-ROM and the core SDK how to use the native Windows API, with the side effect of forcing me to understand a minimum of C to be able to translate the examples to PB.
At first i selected PowerBASIC to write my DLLs, because the syntax was the closest to my PDS 7.1 roots.
But very soon, it became obvious that if writing a DLL with PB was rather easy, it was totaly unproductive and very time consuming to write a large project with hundreds of windows.
That leads me to look around and search for the best solution to produce large project in the shortest delay.
On that aspect there is no comparison between WinDev and all the other tools i have tried.
Why WinDev is not perfect and p-code only, its screen builder is just the best around and you can prototype a project in a couple of hours, once you master the beast.
And best of all, it works like a charm with DLL(s) writen in C, C++, or PowerBASIC (for me the best choice because the syntax is almost the same).
It gives me the choice to write either procedural or OOP code, and even use or write .net assembly, and it works on 32-bit or on 64-bit (because WinDev itself is written in C++).

Now that i have learned how to translate my PB code to C/C++ and to produce 64-bit DLLs, i broke my chain and enjoy my liberty

[Patrice Terrier]

Garry

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".

Probably because most of the talented programmers posting in the old days on the PB's forum, have already left out the boat.

Just have a look at the quality of the examples posted more than 10 years ago, before the DDT corruption, and you will understand what i mean. Semen we miss you 

[Chris Holbrook]

... before the DDT corruption...

All change is corruption. It just depends where you started from. Inter faeces et urinam nascimur.

[Patrice Terrier]

It is a corruption because it hides the novice of what is going on under the hood, and because the proprietary syntax being used is hard to translate into another language.

Despite the false alleguations of a few, SDK was not harder to learn than DDT, and as long as Windows would exist it will not lead you into a dead end, THIS HAS BEEN MY MOTO SINCE MANY YEARS, and the life (death) made my point right.

...

[Theo Gottwald]

Patrice, anybody here knows some things PowerBasic could have made different in the past.
As a result the company would have had a better standing in the market. As i see it, it was
- from the financial standpoint - never something that really paid out for nobody.
If that would have been the case, somebody would like to buy the thing.
But as said - a few calculations based on download numbers and prices will show you that it was not a well going bussiness.

Having said this, we all know that good programmers need not to be good bussiness people.
Thats why programmers (like me) left only with their bussiness often struggle an only "get rich" in very seldom cases.
Often after they found someone to help manage their bussiness.
But of course such people already have well running bussinesses and do not interest to use their spare time for bussinesses that are not well running.

[Chris Holbrook]

Having said this, we all know that good programmers need not to be good bussiness people.

Quite so, Theo, indeed I suspect that for most people with a skill, the skill becomes their world and business must take a wider perspective than this.

On the bright side, both successful and struggling/failing businesses create demand for skills. Recruitment and resourcing would be areas into which techies might "evolve", though they demand a high level of "people skills" too.

[Carlo Pagani]

I personally think PB bring it upon themselves with a lack of communications. It takes less than 24hrs for DNS to replicate world wide. Why, I'm sure if Viv asked the forums, many would volunteer to assist even without compensations.

All it takes is one static link with a bit of information. Without that, we get grumpy and think negative thoughts. Business 101 = Communicate!

[Jeff Radue]

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

I am not sure I agree with that. Even Microsoft is having huge issues with their own 64-bit products. Although they are threatening to remove the 32-bit compatibilty, I do not see that happening for quite a while.

[James Klutho]

What set PowerBasic a part from the other basic languages is that it had a significant number of professional programmers using it and would be part of the community.  All the others basic languages were 99.9% hobby programmers who generated few if any quality projects.  That difference is evaporating (or has already) for various reasons, but to the forefront is the percieved risk of the future of the language.  Bob's bedside manner was not good but he could get away with it because of his exceptional programming talent.  The current management has zero track record and can not get away with arrogant behavior toward the remaining customers.  The lack of a communicated direction and heads up on events like up coming website outages are devastating.

[Christopher Boss]

I agree that PowerBasic needs to make some big changes if it plans on prospering.

Yet, PowerBasic is like a diamond in the rough, with a tremendous potential they may not even recognize.

Bob Zale and I had a nice conversation on the phone, when I was writing an article about PowerBasic for an online magazine, and he mentioned a number of interesting things which made me feel he was very interested in new technologies. Bob was very interested in Windows 8 and Metro and even ARM.

Having been a long time BASIC programmer, I personally feel that the software industry has made development more complex and more prone to bloat, poor performance and bugs. PowerBasic's compiler offers a fresh change in such a world. It has been interesting since I have been writing a blog on my company web site about programming topics, including about PowerBasic, Windows 8 and Metro, to see some of the different big companies who have browsed my blogs. My blog has been visited a number of times (meaning more than just once) by the likes of Microsoft, Intel, HP, IBM and others. What is interesting is to see which articles they are checking out. For example some from IBM was checking out my articles about the problems with OOP. Someone from Microsoft and Intel have shown interest in my articles about Metro versus the desktop on Windows 8. The point is, that PowerBasic comes to software development from a much different approach than most and there are many advantages to this.

[Jim Bailey]

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.

Actually, we have moved to a bigger office and are having extreme difficulties in the transfer.  Support, and sales email are still working.

We expect the phone line issue to be fixed today.

We hope to have the website back up in the next day (or 2 - I hope not).  With an on-site IT team beginning soon, I can expect the email troubles with the forums to go away.

Expect a new beta forum, and we will be needing testers, so watch for the postings when the website comes up.

Believe me, this is far more frustrating than you can expect for me.

Thank all PB coders for your loyalty and concern.  PB is not going to the wind, but quite differently, growing.

Jim Bailey
PowerBASIC Staff

[Jeff Radue]

Good to here Jim...

[Richard Angell]

Thanks for the information Jim.

In the future, I think I speak the sentiments of many here, please give the community a heads up before such an "moving" event in the future.  Our stress levels will then not be accentuated! I fully understand the hassles having just had a major client go through the same and they were offline for a few days too.