What is the best free basic compiler ?

[Psychophanta]

Hi,
I need to know from a good knower of it.
It is for a friend which is making a programming youtube channel for BASIC.
What is the best free basic compiler for linux and windows?
FreeBASIC?
BlitzBASIC? (by the way, is it free?, where to download?)
Is PB free version good enough to learn?
...

Thanks

[Kiffi]

B4J: https://www.b4x.com/b4j.html

Visual Studio Community: https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/de/vs/community/

[Psychophanta]

Thanks, is not it too much complex for just beguinners who approach to programming for first time?

[Kiffi]

Thanks, is not it too much complex for just beguinners who approach to programming for first time?

You asked for a free basic compiler and not for a suitable development environment for beginners.

Nevertheless, B4J is quite suitable for beginners (in my opinion)

[Marc56us]

I need to know from a good knower of it.
It is for a friend which is making a programming youtube channel for BASIC.
What is the best free basic compiler for linux and windows?
FreeBASIC?
BlitzBASIC? (by the way, is it free?, where to download?)
Is PB free version good enough to learn?

Why learn another language? PureBasic quite simply

Demo version is not a demo, but a limited version and free for use.

• No DLL can be created
• you can't use the whole external Win32 API support
• no development kit for external libraries
• maximum number of source lines: 800

It won't use any of this to start and even to go far.
When he needs it, he won't be a beginner anymore and he will buy a license and that will boost the world economy and save the planet.
(and the youtube ad is going to make him some money, it would make sense to circulate some to the team)

[marc_256]

Hi Psychophanta,

Since i had have a lot of virus detections with PB,
I use QB64 32/64 bits for 85% of my work now.
It have 10...15% CPU use ...
But for me it works very well, and never virus detections.
It is also fully QB45 compatible, and simple BASIC syntax.
Slow to compile ... PB is very fast.

QB64 have a very fast debug follow up, and in full development, v1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, ...

greetings,
marc

Sorry ...
https://www.qb64.org/

[Karellen]

Is PB free version good enough to learn?

In my opinion, yes. Especially the start with PureBasic is very easy. You can immediately write a first program with few, logical and understandable commands. In the same way you improve your program step by step. It's cross platform and the learned syntax can also be used in SpiderBasic for web and app development. When the limitations of the free version are reached, you are no longer a beginner and can consider whether to continue working with PB / SB.

[Marc56us]

Since i had have a lot of virus detections with PB,
...
https://www.qb64.net/

<off topic>
Warning: this page (.net) seem abandoned and hacked.

The official page of QB64 is http://www.qb64.org
</off topic>

[marc_256]

Since i had have a lot of virus detections with PB,
...
https://www.qb64.net/

<off topic>
Warning: this page (.net) seem abandoned and hacked.

The official page of QB64 is http://www.qb64.org
</off topic>

thanks,
I changed it in my post

[Danilo]

BlitzBASIC? (by the way, is it free?, where to download?)

The Blitz-Research products Blitz3D, BlitzPlus, and BlitzMax are at github and itch.io

BlitzMax is continued by the community as „Blitzmax NG“: blitzmax.org, github

Cerberus-X is Blitz-Research‘s „Monkey-X“ continuation by the community: cerberus-x.com, github


GameMaker Studio 2, AppGameKit Studio, and GLBasic are commercial projects, so no URLs for those.

Gambas is based on an interpreter and wanted to be something like VisualBasic for Linux.
I read that it got a JIT compiler lately, but didn‘t look any further.

[yoxola]

FreeBASIC + poseidonFB IDE actually works incredibly well on Win/Linux if you know basic coding.

FreeBASIC has no official IDE but has a active community that keeps reinventing the wheels, many projects are born and dead quickly, you have to choose what you need by looking at many threads.

[jack]

even though I don't use QB64, I am inclined to recommend it for beginners, plus their forum members like to program things that are probably interesting for beginners, also there's a very talented member that was a programming teacher who put together an interesting site perfect for learning https://www.qb64sourcecode.com/

[Rinzwind]

Another youtuber who doesnt know what hes talking about? I mean, I hope when the subject is Basic, the YT producer has real experience with what hes discussing. But I know, many many times its just a random list of options.

VB.Net has little future because of MS. All C# now. It wasnt like classic VB anyway. Still is maintained, but almost got no attention from Ms. They also killed of FoxPro and VB6 in a very uncustomer friendly way.

QB64 is QuickBasic. Old procedural style. Still could be fun.

There are some features one could compare
Compiler: machine code, to C, to intermediate language
Platforms
GUI libraries, designers
Procedural, OOP, mix
IDE, debugger
Pricing
3rd party support (libraries, components, gui)
Community support (forums, stackoverflow)

Delphi has finally a nice community edition. Theres also Lazarus ofcourse (the name...). Ok, it aint Basic, but for native Windows programming very suitable and fast.

[Kuron]

VB.Net has little future because of MS.

VB 16 was released in 2019.

[Rinzwind]

VB.Net 2019. True, it is still maintained and released. Just very, very few attention given to it, especially by its maker. No examples, no talks about it, no new features, few books, always lagging behind C# (Xamarin, Core). C# by now is also quite convoluted with all additions made during the years. Sadly there's also amazingly lots of popular misinformation about VB.Net on the net. About how it's a toy language. Clearly not a clue what they're talking about. Idiocy of MS to drop the whole native thing back then. Slowly coming back from it again, but all their dev tools are gone except for C++ which does not even support decent RAD + GUI designer.

If you want something VB6 like, go B4X. Not native sadly. But Java is hidden quite well