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Posted: Wed Aug 15, 2007 5:08 pm
by dell_jockey
Am I correct in assuming that all you need is a loyal following and you're home free? Now, that's a thought, cool !!!
How about creating a following like that? Is there a 'dummies' book out there that tells me how to do that? ;)

Posted: Wed Aug 15, 2007 5:19 pm
by fsw
I will try to stay on topic...

After playing with Aurora and Emergence I have to say that the compilers aren't to bad at all. The usability of the ide is a little bit strange and the build in debugger is in a bad shape compared with the one PureBasic comes with.

Have to say that Kale is right if he says that Aurora is a good product for oop coding.

It really seems that this guy would do a awesome job if he would work for MS, Borland or so (steady income and all the benefits from a big company) sitting in his cubicle with no customer interaction at all.


Anyway, now that Emergence and Aurora are free it needs to be seen (in the long run) how many users from PureBasic that don't have their oop needs fulfilled wander off... (using the freeware versions and don't care about the guy sitting behind it) :roll:

Posted: Wed Aug 15, 2007 5:28 pm
by dontmailme
fsw wrote:Anyway, now that Emergence and Aurora are free it needs to be seen (in the long run) how many users from PureBasic that don't have their oop needs fulfilled wander off... (using the freeware versions and don't care about the guy sitting behind it) :roll:
The question has to be:-

How long will the guy be sitting behind it ?

The products look good...... but where would you be if you used them for your projects and then they ceased to exist ? You'd have to port everything again.....

It's too much of a gamble... unstable product / unstable coder :(

Posted: Wed Aug 15, 2007 5:38 pm
by fsw
dontmailme wrote:The question has to be:-

How long will the guy be sitting behind it ?

The products look good...... but where would you be if you used them for your projects and then they ceased to exist ? You'd have to port everything again.....

It's too much of a gamble... unstable product / unstable coder :(
If you try to make money out of coding then you could be right, but most coders that code for a living use MS tools (or Borland etc.)
On the other side, look at rapidQ, not maintained in 7 years but still a lot of people coding with it...

Posted: Wed Aug 15, 2007 5:51 pm
by Kale
fsw wrote:Have to say that Kale is right if he says that Aurora is a good product for oop coding.
I do say that. :wink: Aurora is awesome for OOP. But as dontmailme say's Paul is too much of an unstable coder to invest in. I've personally un-installed Aurora from my dev machine and use C# instead.

Posted: Wed Aug 15, 2007 5:51 pm
by theNerd
I think the fear of a language no longer being supported is a valid fear but even MS eventually out dates their own stuff. Sometimes faster than anyone else. Take VB 6 for example, and I don't just mean the language itself, but for those who know VB they'll know MS has tried to push new technology in only to never fully support it beyond a year (ex. ActiveX document (yes, I mean "documents" and not "controls"), and also using Visual Basic 6 for DHTML - this was kinda of a neat idea but really convoluted.) There are other technologies dropped such as scriptlets for web pages.

However, there are still people who successfully use IBasic Std and Pro and are still happy with them. The same will be true for EBasic and Aurora. They are very stable and as long as they work with newer OS's I don't think it's an issue.

I think many of you would think the same way of PureBasic. As long as it is stable and works with newer OS's and service packs then it is still a useful tool.

Posted: Wed Aug 15, 2007 7:58 pm
by Edwin Knoppert
After they became free i noticed EBasic = IBasic (imo)

I did had a tool for IBasic at that time but i abandoned it.
The syntax is not my favourite + the compiler could not be called externally, just expressing my taste here though.

I believe the other one is kind of c ?
I also believe it has a seperate compiler, this would be much better if you write tools for it.

I have no explicit remarks about his software, just had a laugh about the dog issue :)

Posted: Thu Aug 16, 2007 12:24 am
by pdwyer
:lol:

Looks like the fate of the dog is entirely in the hands of the donators. (I had to go back to their site again this morning to catch the latest installment of "-=IonWind=- Drama in Basic Land" ) If you look, the dog fund only seems to go up when people donate and no money seems to go in from himself or "his wifes extra shifts".

Basically the point of this little scam seems to be "If dog dies then it's the fault of ionwind forum members" so come, assauge your guilt and give to my dog!

He should go into teleevenagelism ;) "Give! Give till it hurts!" :twisted:

well, back to work. (I have a family to feed)

Posted: Thu Aug 16, 2007 12:56 am
by Randall
Does anyone know much about Paul's work history?

When I first learned about Aurora and Ionic Wind, Paul was unemployed, but seems like I remember reading something about him fixing slot machines.

After a while, he got a job as some sort of technician, working with liquid nitrogen or something. I recall he bitched about it being physically demanding work. After about a month, he announced he was unemployed again.

Now, it seems he is back working again fixing slot machines.

So, why is it this very talented developer does not have a very high paying job with a major company? Why is it he can't (or won't) take a programming position?

Why does he keep finding himself unemployed?

Are Paul's statements about his employment history true, or is he just making this stuff up?

This all just doesn't make sense to me.

Posted: Thu Aug 16, 2007 2:24 am
by Tipperton
The idea of giving away the software and selling support for it makes a certain amount of sense. That's how Invision Power Board started out and it was very successful. Of course they (Invision Power Services) now sells both the software and support services.

In a way printer manufactures do the same thing, they know there's not much money in selling the printers so they sell them to at almost no profit. The money is in the consumables and they crank up those prices. Pay $150 once for the printer, then pay $40 or more many times for the ink cartridges...

I predict that Ionic Wind will eventually follow the path Pyxia did, he'll sell it.... :P

Though I doubt he'll get anywhere near what he supposedly got for Pyxia...

Posted: Thu Aug 16, 2007 3:11 am
by Randall
Tipperton wrote:The idea of giving away the software and selling support for it makes a certain amount of sense. ...
I wonder if the indie language market is big enough for a pay-for-support model, especially when a site like CodingMonkeys is going to provide support for free?

On another topic, I wonder if it is possible, and I'm not implying Paul Turley would do this, I'm just wondering if it is possible to build into a compiler/language code that would steal private information and send it to another site? Could this be built into one of the library functions, and anytime this function is called, code is executed in the background to do something malicious? I know about viruses and trojans, but could this sort of thing be built into a compiler, so every executable you create automatically has this bad code secretly inside? If this is possible, then trusting the person or company creating the compiler/language becomes pretty important, especially if we start seeing a lot of free-ware pay-for-support compilers/languages become available.

Posted: Thu Aug 16, 2007 5:57 am
by yoxola
Well, just let this topic rest.

This topic has gone off the road and involves personal things.

We should concentrate on coding now :twisted:

Posted: Thu Aug 16, 2007 1:42 pm
by aaron
Tipperton wrote:Though I doubt he'll get anywhere near what he supposedly got for Pyxia...
For those of you who like conspiracy theories, how about this one... lets assume that ibasic sales are slowing down and $$$ aren't rolling in anymore particularly with the weight of those free upgrades for everyone. Maybe Paul fakes the sale of his compiler to someone, the 'new' owner basically lets the ibasic compiler die, then Paul shows up with a new compiler (which behaves exactly like the old compiler) and all the old users have to buy new licenses... nice big cash influx.

Now... I'm not saying anything like that happened... but we are talking about a guy who asked for $50 for a haircut and gas money to go to a job interview just a few weeks ago, along with the other begging that constantly happens there. :roll:

Posted: Thu Aug 16, 2007 4:13 pm
by theNerd
Actually Aaron, Tom Hanlin was well known in the PowerBasic crowd and was a real person. He dropped the ball, not Paul.

I've already apologized to Paul a few days ago for the stupid things I posted and removed them and we're on good terms again. I think that particular day some tempers flared between many people of the forum. I think he's a good guy with financial problems. He just tends to be open about his problems more than others. That's just part of his personality.

Live and let live. This is a great community and there are many great people on the other forum. I wish success for everyone.

Posted: Thu Aug 16, 2007 4:51 pm
by Kale
theNerd wrote:I think he's a good guy with financial problems. He just tends to be open about his problems more than others.
The only thing open about Paul is his grabbing hands. :lol: Honestly, do we all really believe that he needs the money? What if he's lying? We don't know. It's quite a nice little earner if you think about it, free cash for nothing.