An interesting story related to Purebasic...

byo · Post by **byo** » Sat Oct 06, 2007 9:08 am

Well today was Purebasic's day. It was the king of all languages today and I believe it'll ever be.

So I'm a tech support guy for a Delphi + SQL Server database system for public accountability control and there was a check printer from Bematech who was experienceing some tech difficulties. Our developers said that it was the problem of Bematech's DLL (the company that made the check printer) and not our problem.

They've made a modification to our system's executable regarding the printer and prompted us to test it. So I had one different idea today. I had Purebasic in my USB stick (not installed in my company) and I was able to create a little application accessing the printer's DLL to properly test it before doing it in our Delphi one. I created it really fast and tested it. All was OK. There were no errors. NO DLL faults. Nothing.

And the programmers said it was Bematech's DLL problem and that they could nothing about it. I couldn't help but smile. In about 15 minutes, I made a little app with Prototypes from the DLL in Purebasic and all worked really fast and clean and no problems were detected at all.

All this from my USB stick without installing anything in my company's computer.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. I fell in love with Purebasic many years ago, bought it not long ago and I'm really happy to be a registered user. Few applications make me smile like that. And keep in mind that the development team of my company has about 14 guys programming all day long, drinkin caffeinne.

This is a little story involving Purebasic today. I hope it wasn't too boring or hard to read.

DoubleDutch · Post by **DoubleDutch** » Sat Oct 06, 2007 9:41 am

Nice!

What did the developers say?

PB · Post by PB » Sat Oct 06, 2007 9:55 am

> What did the developers say?

I know; he left out the best bit, like leaving the punchline out of a joke!

byo · Post by **byo** » Sat Oct 06, 2007 5:46 pm

Well, PB and DoubleDutch, I haven't shown it to everybody because I was a little afraid that some of the developers would tell my boss that we were secretly programming in the the tech support room. And we're not supposed to do that.

So I've shown to only two or three of them, mostly people I get along well. they were saying things like:

"15 KB ?? Are you using assembly??? I didn't know you knew Assembly!!"

"You're lying. You've donwloaded a test application in Bematech's site. Get outta here. "

"I'd rather you not show it to the other guys cause it might hurt their feelings and stuff, especially the people who made the faulty part in the code and blamed the DLL. Just tell them you detected the problem using a test application downloaded from Bematech's site."

And yeah, the developers of my company are little too sensitive. Maybe it's the caffeine daily overdosis.

Derek · Post by **Derek** » Sat Oct 06, 2007 5:49 pm

You should of padded it out, nobody believes a 15kb program can do anything, now if it was a few mb's then people would take notice. Don't figure. :roll:

DoubleDutch · Post by **DoubleDutch** » Sat Oct 06, 2007 6:16 pm

Tell them it it was assembly then it would be 2KB!

byo · Post by **byo** » Sat Oct 06, 2007 6:24 pm

Derek wrote:You should of padded it out, nobody believes a 15kb program can do anything, now if it was a few mb's then people would take notice. Don't figure. :roll:

It's true. Once I tell them that our executables were becoming bigger and bigger each version and they said to me: "Who cares about size? Most good software have big executables anyway!"

And each executable is about 10 MB in size!!! Imagine how hard it is for any clients to download, in every update, a 80 MB update installer. Some of them are still using dial-up, for Christ sake.

Tell them it it was assembly then it would be 2KB!

Hehe. They are used to starting a project in Delphi with 600 KB in size already, for a blank window.

Irene · Post by **Irene** » Sat Oct 06, 2007 6:30 pm

byo wrote:Some of them are still using dial-up, for Christ sake.

What about us with a 12000 baud? ^_^
[/sarcasm]

Derek · Post by **Derek** » Sat Oct 06, 2007 6:35 pm

I sometimes think people have forgotten the past, years ago you had to squeeze every last byte of space you could but now in this day of masses of storage and ram it just doesn't matter anymore. Sad really but a sign of the times.

DoubleDutch · Post by **DoubleDutch** » Sat Oct 06, 2007 7:18 pm

I remember writing good stuff in 4k for the 8-bits. The biggest 8-bit game I wrote was 128K and it took ages for it to get ok'ed because of the cartridge cost (about 8k was code, the rest was level data, maps, music and gfx) - 6 months to write - 6 months for approval.

The screen alone takes a minimum of 64k now (320x200x8).

I'm amazed that on mobile phones, with the 200mhz Arm processors, 16MB ram and hi-colour hirez screens that the games are so bad!

Thalius · Post by **Thalius** » Sat Oct 06, 2007 7:22 pm

Derek wrote:I sometimes think people have forgotten the past, years ago you had to squeeze every last byte of space you could but now in this day of masses of storage and ram it just doesn't matter anymore. Sad really but a sign of the times.

*sighs* Memories of my first Internet Connection over a 1200 Baud Modem on the Amiga ( A500 9 MB Ram 14 Mhz 68020 ) coming to mind ...

Such good times !

...30 mins later .. ! Whoa! look its a picture there ! ... hey wait.. are thoose tits .... followed by a discrete *click* form the modem .. NOOOOOO!

DoubleDutch · Post by **DoubleDutch** » Sat Oct 06, 2007 7:26 pm

I had a 300 baud modem.

An acoustic coupler. I should have kept it! Worth a fortune now I bet!

Derek · Post by **Derek** » Sat Oct 06, 2007 7:35 pm

I wrote some assembler stuff for the BBC micro and the Amstrad CPC464 before moving onto the Amiga, now I have Icons that use more memory than those computers! (Well almost)

Kaeru Gaman · Post by **Kaeru Gaman** » Sat Oct 06, 2007 7:52 pm

DoubleDutch wrote:I'm amazed that on mobile phones, with the 200mhz Arm processors, 16MB ram and hi-colour hirez screens that the games are so bad!

seems that people who write them haven't written games 20 years back...
the way they are thinking is completely different from the philosophy 20 years ago.
they come with there "no matter how big, no matter how complicated,
performance comes from hardware"-thinking to a cellphone,
and are only upset about the hardware, not about their own programming style.

DoubleDutch · Post by **DoubleDutch** » Sat Oct 06, 2007 8:02 pm

Too true.

We all used to change the background colour of the screen (on the machines that allowed it) when changing routines. That way you had a visual impression of how long a routine was taking. If the colour changed for a few lines then you could measure it against other colour changes.

Everything had to run within the tv frame. Games were smooth and playability was great. Go over a frame and everything starts to suffer.