I have known the product since the DOS version and have followed its development over many years, but contrary to all myths, the demise of PowerBasic was not only caused by the author himself but also by certain people in the user community. The aggressive attitude of this hard core in their community has also contributed to a lot of users not only leaving the forum but also abandoning the product as a whole in favour of other languages over the years. In addition, the compiler was increasingly watered down with additions, which increasingly damaged its performance. In the DOS era, at least for some time, the compiler was actually the fastest in the world compared to competing products at the time. In later versions there was no longer any trace of this and in the long term one couldn't regain the old market position from the old laurels alone!Rinzwind wrote: Fri Dec 02, 2022 11:05 am PowerBasic ... for some reason bought it years ago (last version too). Then its programmer died sadly and that was it. A end-user bought the rights and then again more silence. There are still fanboys out there on its forum who believe it is still being developed and are waiting for the x64 version.Disillusioning I think.
The website and forum is at least still active (a bit by same users).
To date, all attempts at rescue have failed miserably and some people there seem to be unable to learn from their mistakes or simply lack the will. But the bad karma was also earned through a completely misguided market policy by constantly trying to silence critical voices, simply negating even constructive suggestions and also trying to hold users back with empty promises. One of the best examples of this, at least for a very short time, was the announcement of a Linux version. Practically all active users in the forum at the time were aware of this announcement and also the respective website. Then all of a sudden this site disappeared and all inquiries about it were either simply ignored or, what's worse, the author denied that it ever existed. For some users, this was not only incomprehensible but also an insult to consumers.
The mood in the forum at the time suddenly deteriorated because this behaviour not only provoked open protest, but also some users took the trouble to provide counter-evidence with corresponding screenshots. So what Mr. Zale apparently never understood during his lifetime was that the Internet never "forgets" anything, everything remains somehow always stored somewhere and therefore accessible. In the end, more and more users threw in the towel because they came to the conclusion that the product was not worth the hassle and that there was a much better solution on the market that suited their needs. One of them is certainly PureBasic!
