The future of PureBasic...personal opinion...

Rook Zimbabwe · Post by **Rook Zimbabwe** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 3:37 pm

Before we degenrate into sniping and meaness I jus want to say I hope PB does NOT go the OOP way. I don't organize my thinking like that exactly, and I have to think in the language I am writing in.

Thats why I like PB. I can be organized and still think in it!

As far as X64 support. Well when an operating system is released that actually works with COREX128 then we will see.

The majority of the populace won't have 64bit for at least another 8 years at a minimum... possibly not for 10 to 12 years.

Some business as well... most mid sized companies are CHEAP!!! My computer (back when I had a job...) was a P4 1.8Hz with 512RAM and a 40GB HDD... That was last year and it was the newest computer in the building!!!

Ramihyn_ · Post by **Ramihyn_** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 4:08 pm

Kaeru Gaman wrote:@Ramihyn
I already answered your before post... you made the work in vain.

Yes sorry, i only saw your reply after posting mine

thefool · Post by **thefool** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 4:12 pm

i like the way the new mail library is handling things, eg a mail "object" like the file handling etc.

Joakim Christiansen · Post by **Joakim Christiansen** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 5:52 pm

Berikco wrote:Open source: write your own and make it open source, you dont even like it yourself if ppl steal your work to sell as there own, and thats what happenend before with the only open source part of PureBasic.

Hehe, true, good point.
I was tired, I get weird when I'm tired, but basically I just wanted some discussion. And I had this vision that PB could once get more popular than c++ if choosing the right path.

thefool · Post by **thefool** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 5:56 pm

Joakim Christiansen wrote: I get weird when I'm tired and i'm always tired

Joakim Christiansen · Post by **Joakim Christiansen** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 5:58 pm

thefool wrote:
Joakim Christiansen wrote: I get weird when I'm tired and i'm always tired

I do have sleeping problems too yes

But don't fake a quote like that... And maybe stay on topic or something.

thefool · Post by **thefool** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 6:03 pm

Joakim Christiansen wrote:
thefool wrote:
Joakim Christiansen wrote: I get weird when I'm tired and i'm always tired
I do have sleeping problems too yes
But don't fake a quote like that... And maybe stay on topic or something.

What are you implying?

jack · Post by **jack** » Fri Mar 21, 2008 12:32 am

agree with procedure returning structures.

Seymour Clufley · Post by **Seymour Clufley** » Fri Mar 21, 2008 12:52 am

Any other ideas? It makes fascinating reading.

That sounded sarcastic; I didn't mean it that way. It's always interesting to read what other people would like to see in a software you use. The future of something you like - what could be more engaging?

Tipperton · Post by **Tipperton** » Fri Mar 21, 2008 2:27 am

I really don't see what good being able to have a function return a structure would do.

And Microsoft agrees, whenever any of the APIs needs to return a structure they have you pass a pointer to the structure as a parameter.

This makes a lot more sense than returning the structure. It's efficient in that there's no need to move the data, the function can simply fill in the structure directly. It also avoids possible problems with memory leaks if the function allocates memory to hold the structure and then only returns a pointer to the structure.

To me returning a structure is just poor programming and a bad programming practice to get in to.

64 bit support would be nice but it's not really needed right now, but in a few years, it probably will be.

.NET? No thank you!

OOP is nice, but it also adds a lot of "behind the scenes" baggage to programs. If Fred were to ever decide to support OOP, I would hope that he does it either in a preprocessor that just rewrites the code for the current compiler or makes it a separate compiler so I can choose whether I want or need that extra baggage or not. Personally I'd be just as happy if Fred decided that PureBasic will not go the OOP route.

And finally (and I know I'll get flamed for this but so what?)

I really think Fantaisie Software needs to rethink the free upgrades for life thing. You simply can't make a living or even decent money on a program you only sell once. You certainly don't incur the expenses of running any kind of business only once, they are ongoing and don't stop until you go out of business, and even then some of the expenses don't stop.

I see some people saying how happy they are or how great it is that they only have to pay once for PureBasic and get all future updates/upgrades for free, but these very same people complain about how slow development is or how far behind PureBasic is compared to current trends like .NET and 64 bit.

Be realistic!

In it's current business model I doubt that PureBasic sales cover all the expenses Fantaisie Software incurs. So Fred and company have to have regular jobs to make a living to pay their own bills, and then have to pay out of their own pockets, those Fantaisie Software's expenses that PureBasic sales doesn't cover.

I don't know that charging for major version upgrades would be enough to live on, but I'd bet it would go a long way towards covering the expenses which would maybe give Fred and company more time to do development work on PureBasic.

So I think that Fred and company should seriously consider charging for major version upgrades to PureBasic. I also think that each platform PureBasic supports should be a separate purchase. Why? Because supporting those different platforms isn't a simple port from one to another, each is a separate development effort all by it self. I know that I would not complain if they did that.

When PureBasic went from v3 to v4 its price also went from $69 to $99. I donated $30 to Fantaisie Software to cover the price difference. I have also donated $10 to $20 each time a new non-beta version of PureBasic is released just to show how much I appreciate the work they put into PureBasic, to show support for continued development of it, and because I don't believe that the pay once, updates/upgrades are free for life, business model works in the long haul.

Dare · Post by **Dare** » Fri Mar 21, 2008 2:34 am

My take on new features:

If it can be done, then why not?
If it cannot be done, then why worry?

Edit:

And if you don't like a feature, don't use it. But don't knock it because others like it.

Nice and simple, eh?

pdwyer · Post by **pdwyer** » Fri Mar 21, 2008 2:47 am

Rook Zimbabwe wrote: The majority of the populace won't have 64bit for at least another 8 years at a minimum... possibly not for 10 to 12 years.

The world moved from 16 to 32bit in the wondows space faster than that, why assume it would be slower?

There was a lot of people on for a long time on the 32bit platform still using 16bit I know but they did move.

I guess the equivelent this time will be many people on 64bit OS's using 32bit apps for many years to come (but there will still be many on 64bit).

By the year 2000, a LOT of people were off windows 3.11 and dos.

I don't mean to say PB needs to hurry with 64bit, I just mean to say that the pickup rate may be faster than you predict.

I didn't like win95 when it first came out but win311 was pretty awful so people moved. Vista seems to have a more "Is it really necessary" feel too it as XP seems fine still. IF 64bit adoption is slower it's proably because of Vista.

Does anyone know what the 64bit adoption rate in Linux is? are those guys picking it up? they don't have a vista issue to deal with on top of their 64bit issue

thefool · Post by **thefool** » Fri Mar 21, 2008 2:49 am

clever thoughts

Fluid Byte · Post by **Fluid Byte** » Fri Mar 21, 2008 3:05 am

Dare wrote:And if you don't like a feature, don't use it. But don't knock it because others like it.

Why the heck implement a feature that nobody needs? What's all that fuss about 64bit? Applications compiled with PB32bit run fine on 64bit Vista. This issue is not about someone who likes or dislikes a certain feature. It's about purpose. And to be honest, there's none.

Well, expect if you want to process the "complete heightfield data of the earth".

dracflamloc · Post by **dracflamloc** » Fri Mar 21, 2008 4:25 am

For the love of all that is sane and holy lock this thread....

Fred... beri??