PureBasic Forums - English

Heh, that was a nice indirect way for me to list the pros of PB over other languages, and I am all game for it

I'll start with Visual Basic, I have used that since version 4. Runtime libraries are a big issue here. Just because it produces smallish exes, they are not really small at all because you have to take into account the runtime library size and memory requirements. PB produce nice and small exes in both file size and memory requirements. The only things I see VB have over Pure Basic is ease of use (w/ activex support), server side network and some speed comparisons, however with the PB 4 list, it' wont be long ...

Next on the list is Power Basic. I think that language is a pure joke. Basic in it's entirely.

Hmm, iBasic is another one that comes to mind. I own the pro version of that and havent touched it except for a few hours, Purebasic wins hands down due to being quite easy to use compared to iBasic. However the designer it uses for the copy/paste and generate code on the fly is very useful (though rumor has it that future purebasic ides may support this ... oh the joy!)

Real Basic ... they may have come close to cloning VB if it wasnt for the crummy IDE, poor documentation and lets face it, useless code shoved into the final executable.

Notice I have talked about BASIC dialecs so far, lets go for the other languages ...

.NET ... what can I say about this? Great for web development .. other then that ? hrm, even Purebasic has a hand in web development thanks to Paul's famous CGI library.

Delphi/(Free) Pascal - Pascal have flooded various oses while Delphi/Kylix is win/linux only. They both compile, which is a good plus, but not as easy to develop in as Purebasic. Plus Purebasic's compiler supports 4 Oses, basically the most popular past/present/ and arguably future OSes.

C/C++ - This language have been around for ages, albit not as long as Assembly ... hmm.. what to say about this? Unnecessarily high learning curve. Hell, recent incarnations of Assembly is easier, HLA anyone?

ASM? Well .. ah .. erm ... who can beat that language? Ease of use? Ha! PB win hands down! Built in support for gadgets/controls, other commonly expected functions from the coding community? PB wins again ..


So the short of the above is, PB definately have pros when compared against EVERY other language available. But like every language, it is missing features that people take avantage of (when coming from another language background).

Fred, I'm wondering why everybody in your team have a reaction of this kind when we make a criticism on Purebasic ? As you know, making criticism is not for fun, it's here to tell you which point we think are not great.

1. Keyboard library is broken, so it cannot be used.

For this one I can't tell you I've never used it.

2. Not really cross-platform yet (I understandf this will be fixed before 4.x).

Nothing is more true ! Even if it's becoming cross platform it is not for the moment.

3. Very long commands to use for simple calls.

Well, I agree this one is not really important.

4. Inconsistancy

The word which is going for me is "Right". There's some part of the language that need to be reworked on.

5. No unsigned variables

True.

6. poor documentation

I would not say that, it's just that the documentation is badly organized IMO.

7. Single pass compiler, places unnenessary (sp?) burden on the programmer and forces workarounds to be coded.

Right in a way. For example having to declare the procedure is sometime annoying.

8. Requires Dx7 or higher, this forces textures to be dividable by 2. This has been fixed in Dx9 and the newest video drivers for decent video cards. There is no limitation to the sizes, but PB still has them!

Right also, it's good to use dx7 for older videocards, but the latest version should be available as well (I think you planned to work on that, so it won't be an issue too long )

Also, you say :

What about my suggestion ? I mean, choose another programming langage to code in.

If someone is telling you what you should do for your language, I guess this is for worse suggestion i've ever seen, as Shannara is helping you.

I precise these comment are just to make PB better, don't take any offence in what i've wrote as it's not the aim.

Well, I think one of the issues is that I type direct, even when I am wrong. Though when I am actually proven wrong, I do apologize Do a search just under my name and read the my posts in content to the threads, there are times when I am wrong and apologies, there are some threads I no longer reply to because the other peeps in the thread read my posts out of context.

So I think by default when people read my posts, they think negatively

Shannara: your new list gives a more much accurate pro/con than your previous one, so thank you to have took the time to do it.

Polo: may be we have such reactions when we see incorrects things publiced on a public forums. Let's take the points:

1. Not true - many games have been done using this lib since ages

2. It is crossplatform. Take a look to the new IDE, it's 100% PureBasic; works on Linux & Windows. Also all commands which doesn't work on a plateform is mentionned in the doc. PB has more than 800 commands, it's not obvious to get the commandset running at 100%. Actually the compiler runs on AmigaOS, Linux, Windows and MacOS X. That's what i call crossplateform.

3. Just a point of view. I find it a strength. Writing MsgRqr is smaller than MessageRequester() but much less explanatory.

4. Examples ? - Saying just that is useless. I bet you will enter in small cases inherant to every langages out of here. We are looking to major pro/con features here.

5. True.

6. Again another point which needs to get explained. Where is it poor ? It is published in 3 langages (!) and has a complete definition for each keyword. Many other programming langage doesn't have such support. You can of course compare it to VisualBasic or Delphi, but i won't call this comparaison fair.

7. This has nothing to do with ease of use. Where are the limitation of the single pass compiler (you mentionned the 'declare' stuff which is almost never needed). In other hand you get a very fast compiler, that should may be mentionned as well.

8. This is a very particular point of the langage and will be probably solved soon.

All in all, i don't call this a Pro/Con list, but a 'Con' list. The Pro part was too ridiculous.

It's right, we put more cons than pros, but everybody is like that, we always see the bad part and forget the good ones. And purebasic has a lot of good parts, as you said, a fast compiler, very good commandset, based on a good library system, ...
For the Cross Plateform stuff, I still disagree : it is not crossplatform. As you said there's a lot of commands, and it's not sure they'll work the same way always in all platforms : this is exactly why it's not cross platorm I know this is an exigeant thing, but Cross platform is also something exigeant

3. Just a point of view. I find it a strength. Writing MsgRqr is smaller than MessageRequester() but much less explanatory.

I agree.

4. Examples ? - Saying just that is useless. I bet you will enter in small cases inherant to every langages out of here. We are looking to major pro/con features here.

This is major. Well i think it is. I agree it needs example, so I'll put the whole Gadget library as an inconsistancy : you can get it working, but the way you need to code it is inconsistant.

6. Again another point which needs to get explained. Where is it poor ? It is published in 3 langages (!) and has a complete definition for each keyword. Many other programming langage doesn't have such support. You can of course compare it to VisualBasic or Delphi, but i won't call this comparaison fair.

As I said for me it isn't poor at all, but it would need to be organized better. No idea in which way but when I read the doc I think the organization could be better

7. This has nothing to do with ease of use. Where are the limitation of the single pass compiler (you mentionned the 'declare' stuff which is almost never needed). In other hand you get a very fast compiler, that should may be mentionned as well.

Right the compiler is really fast, but I wouldn't say the declare stuff is never needed.I've about 150 functions in my library, and a lot of them call each others: you know why i'm talking about that

Polo: may be we have such reactions when we see incorrects things publiced on a public forums.

Incorrects things sometime are published, but there's no need to react in this way. Just say what's incorrect when something is, no need to go farest.

Hi
My pro and cons: regards
Stefan

Polo wrote:Incorrects things sometime are published, but there's no need to react in this way. Just say what's incorrect when something is, no need to go farest.

If about 90 percent of a user's posts are incorrect, and the user believes he is always right, and the user is breaking down Purebasic, it's Fred right to react.
Bill Gates also reacted when he got a free cake in his face when he visited Belgium last time

You should see how many request's i get in this forum and on IRC to ban some users in this forum.
It only happened twice, one user we had to ban because he requested warez PB version here, and another one was asked to leave because of postings like Shanara, no, im not going to say who, the "old" guys here know the "secret"
So we are not banning a user very easely, its not like other forums i'v seen, where one critic post about the language will get you kicked off...
So, feel free to make critic posts, but make sure what you post is true, and if it's your own opinion, make sure everybody understands it's your opinion, and not a fact.


Today, Fred was told by IRC users about this thread, and they asked what was wrong with the Keyboard lib, coz it worked fine for them...
This is just a lie.
It's not crossplatform.
Also a lie, depending on your coding style, none to a lot of modifications are necesary to compile the code on the different platforms.
Only API support on Windows??? Is this a joke? must be
Of course the Winows API is not available unde Linux, But most ppl wil know this.

And please, stop comparing the docs of a 59 euro language to the docs of billion Dollar company's products.

Claiming something is a lie when it is obviously not, is .. plain wrong. Proof of references:

viewtopic.php?t=14941
viewtopic.php?t=14725

Fred never replied stating whether he will fix these bugs or not. As it stands, it renders the library unusable for any games.

As for the api deal, API stands for "Application Programming Interface", not Windows only application programming interface. Someone mentioned the API in this thread or there of, but did not mentioned that it is win api only and not native to others Just a clarificatgion to help clear beginners headaches.

I'm not doing any comparison and don't want to break down Purebasic, don't worry.
For me the crossplatform thing is not yet done, not perfectly if you prefer, I didn't mean it wasn't corssplatform at all, just not totally crossplatform, sorry for the misunderstood, It's ahrd for me to speak english

Today, Fred was told by IRC users about this thread, and they asked what was wrong with the Keyboard lib, coz it worked fine for them...
This is just a lie.

Can't tell you, i haven't say anything about this, as I'm not using it.

Only API support on Windows??? Is this a joke? must be

I'm sure it is, who has say that ??? Api is supported on linux too...

And please, stop comparing the docs of a 59 euro language to the docs of billion Dollar company's products.

Not sure if you say that to me as i've never compared these two product (but if I do, it's clear to say i prefer Purebasic to Visual Basic, I'm not fond of bloated stuffs )

You should see how many request's i get in this forum and on IRC to ban some users in this forum.

Ban an user because he says what should be worked on in Purebasic ?? Can't believe you're saying that.

Anyway, we shouldn't be arguing like that, we stop Fred from working on Purebasic

Berikco wrote:So, feel free to make critic posts, but make sure what you post is true, and if it's your own opinion, make sure everybody understands it's your opinion, and not a fact.

Very Good Point!

Polo wrote:Ban an user because he says what should be worked on in Purebasic ?? Can't believe you're saying that.

When every single post from a user is just slagging off PureBasic and not contributing to solving issues or helping people then they should be removed from the public forums. Not only is it not very helpful or constructive but it also gets on peoples tits! 'nuff said!

Polo wrote:

You should see how many request's i get in this forum and on IRC to ban some users in this forum.

Ban an user because he says what should be worked on in Purebasic ?? Can't believe you're saying that.

Thas what i'm NOT saying, i post very clearly that i get many user requests to do this!
We are very proud on this PureBasic forum community, because so little interference from the moderators is necesary.

So if Shanara posts that a complete lib is unusable because of a bug, it's a lie, it's his opinion, and not a fact.

Case closed...