PureBasic Forums - English

I realise the open source PB thing didn't work out so I am not suggesting it. If a few selected members of the PB community had access to a source control PB it would mean quicker bug fixes for small issues. A fix here, and a fix there would help Fred over the long run and because it is only a few select individuals of the community there would be a good amount of trust.

Over the last month of using PB on various tasks I have found it enjoyable but there have been snags here and there regarding consistency in the libraries.

I.E. The most recent one happens to be DisplaySolidSprite. It takes an RGB colour value, but the colour constants are in RGBA, and so it causes issue where you have to reverse the colour.

The issue above can be solved quickly by simply using RGBA values in DisplaySolidSprite and ignoring the alpha value. This would just make it consistent with the colour constants. But there is another issue, other functions expect RGB and not RGBA values. Wouldn't it have been easier to just stick with RGBA through and through and avoid this confusion?

There have been other slight inconsistent issues, which I should have logged, but other than that having more examples on how to do things in the manual would also be good.

I still have yet to use a larger portion of the PB libraries, but the ones such as DB access is awesome because they are so simple. Being a huge fan of the Python programming language and having used it commercially I found that while I am 40% less productive with PB over Python, but the figure can be reduced with time, and by learning the library functionality. I chose PB in order to keep the Python simplicity but gain a large performance advantage as my current project requires a fair bit of processing power for data generation. This project is a hobbyist one, of course.

I find that PB's strength comes from having a very simple language, but with a lot of libraries, which would reduce development time on certain kinds of projects. Are there any plans to incorporate other libraries into PB in the future? What goals does Fred have with PB? Is he going to take over the world with it?

Working with PB has been a pleasure so far, but I am missing certain things that other languages have, such as first class functions, closures, list comprehensions. It is very difficult to move away from functional languages of any kind as they are the most productive languages to work with, as demonstrated by the addition of functional tools in mainstream languages such as Java, C++11, and the .Net, and performance of functional languages is pretty good these days.

Just my $100.

Kruno, most rants and ranters usually have an overriding idea or point that is being expressed.
Yet for some reason I could not detect one in your post.
Perhaps it just that I haven't been around this forum long enough to figure it out, but I would like a little clarity on your rant.
Especially the one sentence "I find that PB's strength comes from having a very simple language, but with a lot of libraries, which would reduce development time on certain kinds of projects.".

You do know that all programming languages have strengths and weaknesses, and a lot of them are not apparent until one uses the tool with specific design approaches or constraints?
Even the "best" tool will usually fail you in some way while creating a complex application, and you'll have to hack, improvise, or worse case redesign the app.

Also this one..."Working with PB has been a pleasure so far, but I am missing certain things that other languages have, such as first class functions, closures, list comprehensions.", evoked a big WTF??? I've been programming BASIC since 1981 and I do know a little about other languages such as Python and Java. I understand where things belong and I think that (unknowingly) you would really muck up the language.

I find that PureBasic's strength comes from it having been developed by a small group of dedicated visionary developers tightly CONTROLLING the base toolset. Just so you know where I'm coming from... "Too many cooks spoil the broth.".

edit: I just saw that you have been here less time than I.
Have patience there grasshopper, the world was not created in a day.

@Kruno: You probably missed the interview I made with Fred in December 2012. There are a lot more informations about PB and it's future, etc.... => go here: http://www.purearea.net/pb/english/inte ... d_2012.htm

I forgot to rename my title to "PB thoughts" right after I hit submit.

I am just a little overexcited. I haven't been a big fan of BASIC other than QBASIC because it was the first language I had ever used when I was 9. It is very exciting to see a viable version of BASIC that has been around a long time and is nice to use. I loathed VB 6, and VB.NET more-so as it takes BASIC and straps objects to it to make it uglier than a half decayed corpse.

Yeah I don't want to botch the language by making it complex with all kinds of syntax, but my idea of inner procedures with state capture was a bad idea?
Maybe lambdas don't fit into the language. I have spent far too much time with functional languages.

Fred is a pretty cool guy and I am drooling at the idea that LLVM may be used in the future.
Nice to see the PB team is 6 man large.

Do you mean access to the test suite ? Well we could imagine it.

34.Will there be a (larger) “PureBasic User Meeting” one day?
I don't know, such meeting is hard to setup !

I'll bring the beer.

Reading the rest, will come back later.

Thanks Andre I will read it very closely.