Free PureBasic

Everything else that doesn't fall into one of the other PB categories.
#NULL
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Re: Free PureBasic

Post by #NULL »

Pazl wrote:I do not want to limit the schoolboys. At the beginning of teach 800 lines is enough, but in the future it may be not enough.
Maybe a future lesson then would be about include files. :wink:
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Re: Free PureBasic

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#NULL wrote:
Pazl wrote:I do not want to limit the schoolboys. At the beginning of teach 800 lines is enough, but in the future it may be not enough.
Maybe a future lesson then would be about include files. :wink:
The limitation still applies. It's not exactly 800 lines or any specific number of lines. It really depends on the code. I think the hard limit is expressed internally as some number of bytes of compiled code, which just happens to be about 800 lines of average source code.
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Re: Free PureBasic

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Pazl wrote:Hi all.
It would be great if one of the old versions, for example PureBasic 4.02, was free. Then one would be able to teach schoolboys using PB. Yes, I know about the educational license, but it does not allow installing PB on schoolboys home computers, which is necessary for solving homework tasks. And unfortunately the school is not ready to buy an educational license. For the smallest countries with low income, € 199 is not small money (me need 2 months to work to earn this money). The school administration offers me to choose a free programming language.
Thanks.
Hi, Pazl. I had a very similar idea. I posted about it here: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=71397 I was thinking about the US. Thousands of universities and colleges, and almost all of them require that students take an introductory course in "computers," which almost always involved writing at least one little program. Right now, everyone downloads Microsoft Visual Studio Community Edition because it's free. But it also causes problems because it is so big, so professors have to spend a lot of time just helping students get it to run.

I didn't think of free, because Americans can always pay something, but I thought a price of USD 15 per student would be very affordable to the students and very profitable to PureBasic. Unfortunately, the idea was not appealing. I think PureBasic doesn't want to grow, which is very disappointing.

You know, if you are just teaching schoolboys the basics of programming (variables, conditional branching, loops, etc.), perhaps consider any of the open source languages. Of course, you could set up PHP and MySQL on a server, and every schoolboy could access it. But you could also try something like AutoHotKey. It is open source, and while its main purpose is to write macros that control the operating system, you can even create GUI interfaces with it. It has all the constructs a language needs -- variables, procedures, loops, conditionals, even arrays.
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Re: Free PureBasic

Post by Dude »

Thorium wrote:If an old version would be made free, i think it would be a great solution.
But if the old version fits most of their needs, then that might prevent that person buying the newer version. I've experienced that myself, when someone emailed me with a support question for one of my apps. Turns out they were using an older free version that I put up on GiveAwayOfTheDay, and when I said they'd need to upgrade to the latest version to get the functionality they needed, they politely declined and said they'd just keep using the free version.

In fact, I didn't make one single sale from that giveaway promotion, nor from another one (SharewareOnSale). I think such sites exist just for cheapskates to get free products with no intention of paying. So I will never make that mistake again (giving away my hard work for free). Ever.
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Re: Free PureBasic

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RobertSF wrote:The limitation still applies. It's not exactly 800 lines or any specific number of lines. It really depends on the code. I think the hard limit is expressed internally as some number of bytes of compiled code, which just happens to be about 800 lines of average source code.
When I tried it, I hit the limit somewhere around 800 lines, by including a similiar second code at the end of the first file I could aproximately double that, and the lines of both files where something like increasing a variable or something like that, that doesn't get optimzed away, IIRC.

<edit>
I can ouput something like this with the demo version:
(the code is aproximately 780 * 4 = 3120 lines)

Code: Select all

file f.pb line 2
file f.pb line 3
; ...
file f.pb line 778
file f.pb line 779


file ff.pb line 2
file ff.pb line 3
; ...
file ff.pb line 780
file ff.pb line 781


file fff.pb line 2
file fff.pb line 3
; ...
file fff.pb line 780
file fff.pb line 781


file ffff.pb line 2
file ffff.pb line 3
; ...
file ffff.pb line 780
file ffff.pb line 781
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Re: Free PureBasic

Post by Pazl »

RobertSF wrote:But you could also try something like AutoHotKey.
Thanks, but it is only for Windows. School administration ordered to install free Linux OS on all computers, so as not to buy Windows. On home computers schoolboys will probably install Windows. And we need a compiler for Windows and Linux. I am now teaching the theoretical part (telling how computers work, etc.), and in the future I will begin to teach programming.

It is a pity that the developer of PureBasic ignored this topic.
Dude wrote:But if the old version fits most of their needs, then that might prevent that person buying the newer version.
Many versions PB (even the current 5.62) can be downloaded from pirated sites, but it is illegal to use them and it is prohibited in school.
That is, who does not want to buy (and use illegally), he will not buy, but for training in school need a free legal version. This requirement is a school administration.
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Re: Free PureBasic

Post by RobertSF »

Dude wrote:But if the old version fits most of their needs, then that might prevent that person buying the newer version.
Many versions PB (even the current 5.62) can be downloaded from pirated sites, but it is illegal to use them and it is prohibited in school.
You mentioned that this is in a low-income country, and many people in low-income countries don't mind using pirated software. I think it's very admirable that your school is determined not to do that. It says a lot about the school's integrity and legitimacy.

I don't know if this will help, but check out this list of compilers. There are several that are free and multi-platform, but I don't know how active they are.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_compilers
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Re: Free PureBasic

Post by C87 »

Adding my two penneth, I cannot see a reason why a student cannot manage with 800 lines. There will be many experienced programmers who used the 800 limit to ascertain if PureBasic would be suitable for their requirements, myself included. I don't know which low income country it is where it takes two months for a lecturer to earn €199 yet all the students have a PC at home.

I can see no benefit in using out of date versions as it will only generate syntax errors if they copy their code to later versions for testing or amending. They should always use the latest versions. How can you teach if different versions are in use? It will be hard enough for the students to write software that doesn't fall over, without having to contend with puzzling syntax errors caused by version differences.

As far as buying it on Ebay I cannot see that is legal. As a developer for 35 years I am totally opposed to pirating software or suggesting that anyone can obtain software that may not be licensed to them. It takes a huge amount of time and money to create sound and reliable software. I fail to see why PureBasic should change their model and suffer a discount, particularly as they do provide a full test version. PureBasic is not just very good value, it is excellent value, with frequent free updates as a bonus.

It used to be the case in the olden days before the credit card, that if you couldn't afford something you saved up! Maybe asking everyone in the town to contribute? Or as has been suggested use the 800 line version. It will do the students no harm at all to learn to create programs within that restriction, quite the opposite in fact.

There are other options out there. Download FreeBasic, nothing like the same product but if it is just affordability, then that is problem solved. Surely good enough for initial training and understanding. The minority that want to continue to write software can then buy PureBasic later.
If it's falling over......just remember the computer is never wrong!
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Re: Free PureBasic

Post by Mijikai »

Pazl wrote:
RobertSF wrote:But you could also try something like AutoHotKey.
Thanks, but it is only for Windows. School administration ordered to install free Linux OS on all computers, so as not to buy Windows. On home computers schoolboys will probably install Windows. And we need a compiler for Windows and Linux. I am now teaching the theoretical part (telling how computers work, etc.), and in the future I will begin to teach programming.

It is a pity that the developer of PureBasic ignored this topic.
Dude wrote:But if the old version fits most of their needs, then that might prevent that person buying the newer version.
Many versions PB (even the current 5.62) can be downloaded from pirated sites, but it is illegal to use them and it is prohibited in school.
That is, who does not want to buy (and use illegally), he will not buy, but for training in school need a free legal version. This requirement is a school administration.
Just use the demo version of PureBasic and make a donation.
The limitations of the demo are not really severe - u cant make a dll and u can only have 800 lines of code!
Btw. the API limitation is not really one (at least on Windows).
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