I want to learn a Basic dialect (the whole picture)

[Mike Trader]

In response to the post
http://www.jose.it-berater.org/smfforum ... pic=3177.0

Greetings;
I want to learn a Basic dialect, but there are so many to choose from. Ugh!
PB personal I think costs $99. RealBasic costs $199. And some of the others cost around $50.
What I really want is a small, fast, exec output file ('C' output would be ok too). And a great visual-dragDrop-IDE. I realize this is a PB friendly site. But surely you checked things out before landing on PB.
Oh yes, in line code assist would be great too, but not absolutely have to have.
I am coming from a object pascal background (novice).
Anyways, Thanks in advance! ...Vern

I think this question deserves a fuller answer, especially since the poster is considering PureBasic.

As Mr Gotweld points out:
"Looking at their Page, I just realize that they actually even have a 64 bit version. "
You are NEVER going to see that from powerbasic nor will you see Unix and Mac support.

powerbasic recently implemented COM in v9 thanks to work done by Mr Roca it seems. powerbasic refuses to even discuss upcoming features, probably because as most of us have deduced, there are none of note. If you need yet another enhanced string manipulation feature to PARSE or something then I suppose you might be happy.

While powerbasic is limited in many ways, it is robust and mature. Goodness knows it should be... years elapse between any significant changes. Its painfull.

What is more painfull with powerbasic is the alarming treatment of the userbase. Many of us hgave been banned (I have still not been given a reason) and barred from purchasing the new version in some twisted "cut of your nose to spite your face" logic by the owner, Mr Zale.

If you are thinking that this will never happen to you (as we all did) guess again
"Banned from the forum after 9 years after reporting a bug via email"
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.lang ... 169a01cb21#

While I would like to contribute to this thread on Mr Roca's forum, he elected to buckle under pressure from Mr Zale and ban me from his forum the day after I was banned from the powerbasic forum. A coincidence? I think not.
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.lang ... f0614d38bf#

While everyone knows what is going over at the powerbasic bunker, no one is willing to stand up and address it directly because it does tend you make you unpopular. While being unpopular is not pleasant, it is NOTHING by comparison to the frustration and rage you will feel after spending 10 years making friends, contributing code and relying upon the help of fellow developers when you find yourself suddenly banned for in-adveretantly offending the owners sensibilities.
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.lang ... 9475040f62#

If I had the decision to make over again, there is no doubt what I would choose. I hope this has been helpful. I WISH I had read a response like this 10 years ago...

[Kaeru Gaman]

this should be moved to the Offtopic section...

[SFSxOI]

I hate soap operas

[Mike Trader]

>this should be moved to the Offtopic section...
You are right. Sorry about that. Perhapas the admin can move it to the appropriate section.

>I hate soap operas
Oh god I agree... until you find yourself in the middle of one. Then you got no choice but to deal with it.

[SFSxOI]

>

Then you got no choice but to deal with it.

Key word there

[Mike Trader]

Well there in lies the reason for the post. I could shrink into the woodwork like every one else, or I can stand up and speak my truth so others do not fall victim to this. I think you only have to read the posts by Wayne to realize how impactful these events are. To suggest that more than 25 people (named in the link I posted above) are all troublemakers or in some way not representative of what is going on over there is a bit of a stretch.

Wouldn't you want to know this stuff if you were trying to choose between this product and that one? Wouldn't you want to know if your bank was foreclosing on homes preamturely? Wouldn't you want to know if a child molester moved into your neighborhood? This is the power of the internet. I know its not as fun as a new coding toy (Which I also posted today) but it probably should not be swept under the carpet either.

[netmaestro]

It's not our job to sell you on PureBasic or spoonfeed you on getting the power out of it. If you like it, use it, if not use something else. But don't waste my time telling me what 25 Powerbasic programmers think. 'Cause I don't care.

[UserOfPure]

Sounds like he's still very disgruntled with his PowerBasic history and wants to vent everywhere he can. We're not interested.

[Rings]

...me what 25 Powerbasic programmers think. 'Cause I don't care.

we all don't care.
topic moved....

[Mike Trader]

Thank you.

Would you say this statement is still generally true here:
"The moderators here are very accomodating and will only really remove spam posts."
viewtopic.php?f=13&t=27944

meaning, are threads allowed to die there own death due to lack of activity and interest even if they may not be politically correct or even slightly controversial, or are they likely to get deleted now?

This is probably the biggest indicator of the degree of freedom in a forum and is totally lacking on the Powerbasic forum, even when the poster is polite and articulate.

While I envy your lack of concern about all things powerbasic, it would seem relevant to address a question from a newbie about reasons for choosing PureBasic over powerbasic by mentioning the history. This is not lost on many purebasic users who have switched to purebasic over the years for the very same reasons.

[UserOfPure]

While I envy your lack of concern about all things powerbasic

These are PureBasic forums. We're not here to discuss PowerBasic. Don't be envious. Just do what we do: code, and be nice. Don't discuss what happened elsewhere. You'll bore us so much that we won't bother replying to you in future. Just dig in to PureBasic and enjoy!

[Fred]

Thank you.

Would you say this statement is still generally true here:
"The moderators here are very accomodating and will only really remove spam posts."
viewtopic.php?f=13&t=27944

meaning, are threads allowed to die there own death due to lack of activity and interest even if they may not be politically correct or even slightly controversial, or are they likely to get deleted now?

Is your thread deleted ? We don't delete threads, unless it's really insulting. And please stop cross forum answers, it's no sens.

[Little John]

And please stop cross forum answers, it's no sens.

Moaning here about the PowerBasic forums doesn't make any sense at all ...
If at least this thread had a proper title, e.g. "Pointless lamenting about another programming language".

[SFSxOI]

I partially agree a little bit at least as to the use of real names forum wise, i'm a little uncomfortable with that myself which is the reason I never went with that product and came here instead. My personal reasoning for this is because of my work and what I have seen with seemingly unrelated scraps of info here and there being tied together and then linked to a real person somewhere. You'd be really suprised at what some of the more creative ID thieves can gather on the 'net. However, no offense intended and I do understand your frustration or anger over such a situation, I don't think this was the proper outlet for your expressions of trouble and concern over this. If you feel as if you have been wronged in such a manner as to deny you what you have purchased a more suitable use of the time might be contacting someone for legal opinion or taking some form of legal action or reporting the behavior in a complaint to those agencies who handle such in both your country and the country in which the origin point of the product exists. Posting about it, ranting about it, or complaining about it on various forums or other methods on the 'net is actually in the end of little use and degenerates into a a he said - he said thing which does not solve the problem.

[Foz]

There is no such thing as a straight forward answer whe deciding what dialect to use. The best you are going to get is to list your requirements and see which one ticks the most boxes. For instance, with me I had a few requirements:

Compiler (no run times to install)
Cross platform (Windows, Linux and Mac OS X)
A workable demo for each platform (absolute importance! I have no time for trying to get demos to work. If it's a ball ache to get working, then it's a no sale!).
Affordable! (I'm not an enterprise company, I'm just a guy on his own doing what he can in his limited spare time. I'm not a freeloader, but I'm not made of money either...)

When I was looking I did some checks and tests:
RealBasic, I'm sure it works well, but I could not get the demo to work at all on Linux (my main platform). Given the cost of the licence that they are wanting for cross platform development and I couldn't get it to work, I didn't try too hard to get it to work. (999 euros is a bit much for me. Especially for just a single year.

PowerBasic didn't register.

FreeBasic, fails on Mac OS X development, but looks promising in the future. Cost is a bonus (free!)

PureBasic. Good compiler. True cross platform without the need for additional libraries. The demos Just Work. Affordable = Yes!

Obviously, I've chosen PureBasic (otherwise I wouldn't be here). Are there issues? Of course! But any package will have issues and quirks. But overall, the benefits outweigh using C and cross platform toolkits. (I also beleive that getting GCC to work on Windows is nothing short of a nightmare).