PB over PowerBASIC any day of the week

Little John · Post by **Little John** » Sat Sep 27, 2008 2:25 pm

It was somewhat similar with me:
In the old days, I had used PowerBasic for DOS and I really liked it. The last version of PowerBasic that I bought was a 16 bit Windows DLL compiler with almost no GUI. Then I was "not amused" because the developement of PowerBasic was years behind comparable products. I switched to another language for daily programming. Out of curiosity, I looked at PowerBasic's website twice a year or so. After there has been some significant development of PowerBasic, I saw that they sell 2 rather expensive compilers (for Windows only), for the same purpose where other companies sell one cheap program (for two or more platforms) -- or even give it away for free.
When I wasn't satisfied anymore with that other language, I looked at a lot of programming languages, and decided to use PureBasic. I'm still happy with PureBasic, and especially didn't have any desire or need to use PowerBasic again. I think Bob Zale didn't read the signs.

Regards, Little John

Tipperton · Post by **Tipperton** » Sat Sep 27, 2008 3:04 pm

Little John wrote:I think Bob Zale didn't read the signs.

Sounds to me like he's still totally blind to them or just plain ignoring them.

In the end though I believe his attitudes, methods, and practices will be his and PowerBASIC's undoing. Then again maybe not, PowerBASIC has been around a very long time and doesn't seem to be in any danger of "disappearing" any time soon.

Ionic Refugee · Post by **Ionic Refugee** » Sat Sep 27, 2008 4:20 pm

I can't decide who is worse: Bob Zale or Paul Turley

pdwyer · Post by **pdwyer** » Sat Sep 27, 2008 4:27 pm

My opinion only, but I belive that for all Bob's many faults, he's basically honest and does value his customers needs. While my opinion of Paul stems from only rumours and his comments in some forums I'm not sure I can say as much for him.

Tipperton · Post by **Tipperton** » Sat Sep 27, 2008 4:39 pm

Ionic Refugee wrote:I can't decide who is worse: Bob Zale or Paul Turley

pdwyer wrote:My opinion only, but I belive that for all Bob's many faults, he's basically honest and does value his customers needs. While my opinion of Paul stems from only rumours and his comments in some forums I'm not sure I can say as much for him.

Agreed, Zale has his faults, but at least he doesn't put up the "endless soap opera" and/or "endless begging for money" that Turley apparently does. That would wear real thin real fast.

thanos · Post by **thanos** » Sat Sep 27, 2008 9:57 pm

In my opinion it is worthless to compare the features of PowerBasic against the feature of PureBasic.
The PureBasic is richer. This is a fact. But it is not the point.
The critical point is the huge gap in philosophy of the founders of PowerBasic and PureBasic.
PowerBasic's founder always talking about customers.
Fred is talking about developers. This is the point. He is a developer himself and offers a tool to developers.
Regards.

Thanos

thanos · Post by **thanos** » Sat Sep 27, 2008 9:59 pm

And beyond the above and concerning with Fred's modesty, the whole PowerBasic site is the personification of arrogance.
Someday, i read about the speed of new version (PowerBasic 7 if i remember well). It was 8 times faster than the winner previous version!
I was curious and i was done a simple test.
I took the source code from the site (a simple memory loop) and i asked from a friend of mine who has the PowerBasic to compile it and send me back the executable. I transfer the same code in PureBasic and i executed both the exe files to compare the results.
Believe or not, PureBasic was 2 times faster

Regards.

Thanos

pdwyer · Post by **pdwyer** » Sun Sep 28, 2008 5:41 am

I'm not really a "Rah Rah Rah Mine is better than yours" kind of person. I used Powerbasic for about 6 years and in some areas it is faster than Purebasic. I prefer to look at each on it's technical merits.

Anything string releated Powerbasic will win
Simple loops are largely irrelevent

some loop types Powerbasic can optimise better with it's register variables, having the control of which vars get the registers is quite powerful. People who know their ASM don't need this and both languages support ASM inline.
I have found purebasic easier to optimise memory operations easily so I get a speed kick in that direction.

To me, it's the whole system of LIBs that sets purebasic apart. Powerbasic leaves you wondering if a feature will be added or not and Bobs too tight lipped to tell anyone what's planned till release day, not even in the beta (apha) phase do you hear anything. In Purebasic, we have this ever expanding rich set of libs supported but the PB team and improved and optimised though an open beta system.

We hear about more bugs in Purebasic, and we also get open discussion about them and quicker fixes. Powerbasic is closed about their bugs and each customer has to trip over them on their own to hear about them then no fixes till next update, often a year or more away by which time you've had to work around it in some ugly way yourself and put the code into production so it's hard to use a fix when you do eventually get it.

thanos · Post by **thanos** » Sun Sep 28, 2008 7:31 am

@pdwyer.
Very objective post.
You exactly described, from a technical view, the differences in philosophy between PureBasic and PowerBasic.
I am also not really a "Rah Rah Rah Mine is better than yours" kind of person.
Your sign's statement is very important:
“In nature, it’s not the strongest nor the most intelligent who survives. It’s the most adaptable to change” - Charles Darwin
I totally agree. Everything here is more tolerant. Toleration is necessary for adaption.
Regards

Thanos

srod · Post by **srod** » Sun Sep 28, 2008 10:09 am

pdwyer wrote:...Anything string releated Powerbasic will win...

Except for unicode!

pdwyer · Post by **pdwyer** » Sun Sep 28, 2008 10:32 am

fair enough

Or if in Purebasic you use memory and pointers instead inbuilt string functions

yoxola · Post by **yoxola** » Sun Sep 28, 2008 5:12 pm

I'm using PureBasic currently and satisfied, I also have some code written for FreeBASIC.

I did use PowerBasic from DOS days, but after FreeBASIC is out, I convert my sources to FreeBASIC as FB can nearly do all PowerBasic can, or have similar wrappers, after using FB 0.16 I never switched back again.

I don't recommend to pay $199(PowerBasic) for some task I can do for free in FreeBASIC, however, it's just personal preference...

byo · Post by **byo** » Sun Sep 28, 2008 6:02 pm

I've used Powerbasic in its DOS era as well and I thought it was amazing. But the 16 bits Windows compiler and the price quckly drove me away.

Purebasic is just intuitive. If something is wrong you get to know exactly what it is and how to fix it. I have some large codes for my company and everytime someone finds a bug or asks for an improvement I just load Purebasic from my USB stick and in a few minutes the new executable or DLL is ready from any computer. It can't get any better than that.

Even my workmates who use Java, Delphi and Visual Studio are starting to say good things about Purebasic just by seeing me coding.

That said, Powerbasic is great for what it is and the support is good so it's a matter of choice. Purebasic is the only programming language that makes me want to donate some money without thinking twice (in a few days I'll do so once I get paid).

thanos · Post by **thanos** » Sun Sep 28, 2008 7:10 pm

yoxola wrote:I'm using PureBasic currently and satisfied, I also have some code written for FreeBASIC.

I did use PowerBasic from DOS days, but after FreeBASIC is out, I convert my sources to FreeBASIC as FB can nearly do all PowerBasic can, or have similar wrappers, after using FB 0.16 I never switched back again.

I don't recommend to pay $199(PowerBasic) for some task I can do for free in FreeBASIC, however, it's just personal preference...

I totally agree with what you said about FreeBASIC.
Regards.

Thanos

Tipperton · Post by **Tipperton** » Sun Sep 28, 2008 8:54 pm

byo wrote:Purebasic is the only programming language that makes me want to donate some money without thinking twice (in a few days I'll do so once I get paid).

Yup, I usually send the team some money whenever they release a new (non-beta) version because their point releases are like other people's/company's major releases with all the new stuff they put in them.