PB & VB Newbie question

[naw]

Hi Guys,

A pal / colleague of mine has developed a nice application in VB that does lots of XML stuff.
He doesnt like the .NET dependencies & bloat and is interested in PB as an alternative and perhaps convert his app to PB...

I've always thought that this community is the major but unquantifiable benefit to going with PB. I wonder if any VB devs might be able to offer their opinions / experiences of migrating a VB app to PB?

[srod]

Providing that he isn't absolutely dependent upon dedicated ActiveX controls or asp.net and such like then he shouldn't really have a problem.

They'll be a few things which, having got used to the .net framework handling much of the required functionality, he might have to code for himself; which is half the fun of it!
Then again there are a lot of Purebasic user libs floating around these parts, including some which will handle xml etc. which make life somewhat easier.

In my opinion, PB is (depending upon the type of apps that you're developing) as much a RAD product as VB is. More so in many ways as you don't have to wade through all the bloat!

[thamarok]

I think, the best way to see if something suits you, is to test it before making any conclusion. Testing tells more than words.

[PB]

I've used both and it's like srod says: as long as no ActiveX or other custom
controls are used, and just the VB editor itself, then converting is very easy.
This is mostly due to not needing declarations. Look here to see what I mean:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PureBasic

See how the PureBasic code is like a stripped-down version of the VB code?