PureBasic Forums - English

I've seen other threads on this forum where folks have discussed ways to improve PB's marketing visibility and thus it's user base.

Based on my own personal expriences I see 2 potential new pools of PB users:

REALBasic (http://www.realbasic.com)
REALBasic started out on the Mac but has since been ported to Windows and Linux. It also will cross-compile to any of those 3 platforms from the others, which is pretty slick but IMHO, not terribly useful as you still need to test and debug on each platform anyways.
Weaknesses:
Bugs - I held a license at one point but decided to return it because of all the bugs and IDE instability.
Executable size - The executables created by RB are HUGE. 1+MB min. I believe?
GUI controls - REALBasic has a lot of user interface controls but is missing some I consider absolutely required: e.g. a Windows toolbar (!) and a splitter, those should come standard out of the box.

If the OS X version of PB4 could be brought up to the level of functionality and refinement of the Windows version, I believe we could attract many REALBasic users. I now also have a Mac and would be very happy to Beta test PB4 for OS X!

Delphi (http://www.borland.com/delphi)
I own licenses to Delphi 1,2,5 & 6. Nice development environment. The bugs weren't too bad and it generates "relatively" small single-executables (300k min. I think).
Weaknesses:
Uncertainty - Borland is divesting itself of it's developer tools, as such there is uncertainty as to Delphi's future.
Microsoft - Borland's developer tools compete directly with Visual Studio. For me, I don't view PureBasic and Visual Studio as direct competitors (I have a VS 2005 Pro license). Delphi was used by a lot of small, independent developers but Borland always seemed to be only really interested in the corporate customer.
Not cross-platform - Delphi only runs on Windows.

Both:
Cost! - PB is MUCH more affordable than BOTH those environments AND has free lifetime updates!

IDE's - With both Delphi and REALBasic, the IDEs hold your hand much more than PB's but for me, I prefer PB's IDE for it's straightforward simplicity and power. The new/improved Visual Designer will help here a lot when released...

OOP - They both support OOP as well, something PB will never have. This one is a religious battle.

Runtimes - Both have runtimes which handle some nitty gritty work for you but PB makes dealing with those details easy and most PB users would see this as a weakness.


Given the above points, and I'm sure there are many others, if we could attract even just a small percentage of their user bases, it could significantly add to the PB user base.

The question is, how do we reach these potential new users?

One pro that you forgot to mention that both tools have while PB does not have is an IDE (or as some people like to put it, .. a RAD IDE). That is a huge plus which make those languages much simplier to develop in then PB.

RealBasic had years on years to fix their broken IDE. And they have yet to figure out how to .. they are becoming more Microsoft-like.

Borland made a mistake and when backwards with Delphi 7(?) as to make it .JUNK. (aka .net). Last I heard, the in the latest version, they've corrected that mistake.

Delphi is cross-platform as it runs under Linux with the name of Kylix. It may not cross-platform compile, but it's an example of a true crossplatform language

Well, PB is a procedural language If Fred or someone else (??) decided jump on the bandwagon and make a purely OOP version .... that would be great, more then great as a certain other fledgling language have done this ...

I would say lack of a runtime is a definate strength in PB's favor. Runtimes are basically un-necessary bagage that have no good use except bloat ...

I figure if peeps are to market PB, they need to focus on the strength and not it's weaknesses. Though I figure people should be made aware of both in order to determine if PB is right for their project. Just like any other language

So how do we go about doing this?

01. PB create arguably fast, small executables.
02. PB has no runtime libraries.
03. PB references APIs directly (other languages are following it's footsteps concerning this)
04. The community support for PB is quite good.
05. PB *may* be cross-platform enabled sometime in the future.
06. Current price (price for PB4 have been raised!) is much lower then some of the other languages.
07. Free upgrades for life.
08. No license to worry about (as there are none at time of purchase).
09. Unlimited support via email.
10.


I figured if someone came in and made PB more user friendly, for instance:

1. Create an (RAD) IDE
2. Completion of current features.
3. Completion of cross-platform support (Ref PB Linux thread where Fred replied, looks like we may get this quite soon )

Then I believe we would see more people moving from the Apples (Delphi, RealBasic, Visual Basic, etc) to Oranges (Purebasic, aurora, freebasic, etc).

I think the main thing is learning curve, and have to manually create features where the other languages do this automatically. No need to think about it, it just works

Great feedback Shannara, thanks.

As far as a RAD IDE, Berikco is working on some "RADish" features for VD I believe. Nothing as extensive as Delphi, but helpful and again, how far you want an IDE to "help" you vs. "getting in your way" is a matter of opinion.
Not sure what the release timetable for VD is though.

I'm aware of Kylix but didn't mention it as I believe Borland is no longer working on any future releases for fixes for Kylix at all, and hasn't for sometime?

Rumour is Borland have pulled the plug on Kylix for the foreseeable future.

The REALbasic IDE from 2005 onwards is superb, it's the database plug-ins that don't work as advertised and REAL Software don't really seem to give a s**t that they're misleading their customers.

the.weavster wrote:Rumour is Borland have pulled the plug on Kylix for the foreseeable future.

Yes - I looked into this, and it died around 2001/2002.

the.weavster wrote:The REALbasic IDE from 2005 onwards is superb, it's the database plug-ins that don't work as advertised and REAL Software don't really seem to give a s**t that they're misleading their customers.

Yeah - I like the IDE - but Linux version only supports MySql and Postgres - not even ODBC. Doh! I flamed a Linux reviewer at Linux magazine because he verbatim wrote from the RealBasic hype, instead of really testing it.