PureBasic 4.30 final released!

White Eagle · Post by **White Eagle** » Tue Apr 14, 2009 3:52 am

The main concern is that a command was removed without ANY clue of HOW to do it in the new release. If one remove a command, it should at least be some clue how to pull it off using a better, improved method (as always Purebasic progresses to the better in overall of course)

Unlike most languages, each new update of PB breaks existing code. I seem to be in the minority that has a problem with this. It is one of the things you have to learn to live with.

srod · Post by **srod** » Tue Apr 14, 2009 12:03 pm

Much of my code gets broken as well and with some programs topping 30000 lines of code it can take a while to sort out! Such is the price of progress however!

Post by **freak** » Tue Apr 14, 2009 12:39 pm

White Eagle wrote:
The main concern is that a command was removed without ANY clue of HOW to do it in the new release. If one remove a command, it should at least be some clue how to pull it off using a better, improved method (as always Purebasic progresses to the better in overall of course)
Unlike most languages, each new update of PB breaks existing code. I seem to be in the minority that has a problem with this. It is one of the things you have to learn to live with.

The 4.10 update changed only 1 function name which was a simple search and replace. The 4.20 update had no incompatible changes at all. "Each new update" is a bit exaggerated, don't you think ?

4.00 and 4.30 where the only recent updates that introduced major changes, and both with good reason: 4.00 brought a ton of internal changes to implement new features and improve the overall language, and 4.30 brought the 64bit version and the DirectX9 based OGRE.

Psychophanta · Post by **Psychophanta** » Tue Apr 14, 2009 1:51 pm

Anybody who comes to you and says he has a perfect language is either naive or a salesman.
-- Bjarne Stroustrup

Good one

White Eagle · Post by **White Eagle** » Wed Apr 15, 2009 3:21 am

"Each new update" is a bit exaggerated, don't you think ?

If you are only going to count back to 4.0, then yes, my comment would seem inaccurate. I have been using PB a lot longer than that, and am speaking from direct experience.

As the other person I quoted pointed out, at least the documentation should reflect the syntatical changes.

blueznl · Post by **blueznl** » Wed Apr 15, 2009 3:42 pm

As long as it is a clear improvement they can change anything they want!

For example, I hated the stupid UseWindow() UseFile() etc. commands.

To each his own I guess...

PB · Post by PB » Wed Apr 15, 2009 9:13 pm

> Unlike most languages, each new update of PB breaks existing code

Unlike most languages, PureBasic only has a small team and not thousands
of dollars and hundreds of staff to work on the language. (Thinking Visual
Basic here). And unlike most languages, the PureBasic team listens to their
customers and talks with them openly on their forums. Yes, some commands
get changed to enhance them, and this breaks existing functionality. But hey,
you're welcome to keep using v3.94 to use the old functions and miss out on
all the new functions, bug fixes and optimisations. It's up to you.

White Eagle · Post by **White Eagle** » Thu Apr 16, 2009 2:07 am

Unlike most languages, PureBasic only has a small team and not thousands
of dollars and hundreds of staff to work on the language. (Thinking Visual
Basic here).

You are comparing two different critters, perhaps I should have said most indie languages (that I use). I was not referring to mainstream languages.

Since you brought it up, PB has a larger team than many indie languages. I can remember how rock solid PB was stability wise when just Fred was doing all the work, and I have watched that stability erode as the team grew and the product shifted to feature creep over stability.

And unlike most languages, the PureBasic team listens to their
customers and talks with them openly on their forums.

This is normal for most indie languages (except for BRL). I guess one could wonder how well the PB team listens when looking at the current bug reports that have gone unanswered for over a month and over two months for others? For some of us, it has brought our development to a grinding halt:

Unable to complete games:
http://www.purebasic.fr/english/viewtopic.php?t=36342
http://www.purebasic.fr/english/viewtopic.php?t=36776

Most of the bugs are ones that should have been caught during alpha testing, but were never caught because PB only opens that up to a select few.

you're welcome to keep using v3.94 to use the old functions and miss out on all the new functions, bug fixes and optimisations. It's up to you.

Like most, I install each new version in its own directory. It makes it much easier to maintain programs that were written in different versions and can't be easily ported to new versions

I am quite thankful for all of the changes that 4.3 has brought. I just wish those changes actually worked. It seems the Linux side especially was problematic this last time around.

Expressing opinions only, everybody has one and has the right to them. As I said before, these "issues" are things you learn to live with in the PB world. Original post was just giving moral support to the person I quoted as I can understand his frustration.