My perspective
Posted: Fri Jul 25, 2014 7:09 am
Hi All,
I wanted to talk about Purebasic in relation to my personal journey in programming. I started out at 16 years old while most people were buying cars I bought the TRS-80 Level 2 computer as it was the latest
thing at the time. I took a loan out and bought it for $1200 as I recall in 1977 and immediately saw the limitations of basic and tried to get into assembler. It was a bit overwhelming and I ended up selling it for $1000, including
software (at the time it was easy to sell it as there wasn't much out there). I then bought the Color Computer from Radio Shack, at 64K it seemed like a good deal. I also bought an assembler tutorial but again
as I have noticed in my life as smart as I think I am there are much smarter people out there able to figure out the inticracies of assembler clearly in their mind, for me it was a struggle, I understood the concepts
but there always seemed to be the details that would throw a monkey wrench into things. I really should have taken computing at my college or university having had such an early start in it but sadly I didn't and
lived to regret that decision. The CoCo3 with 512M of memory seemed like a godsend, I was early on to realize that you can never have enough memory or hard drive space. I got into OS9 which was a multiuser/
multitasking OS for the color computer. As the IBM PC started to take hold I stubbornly stuck to the esoteric platforms such as the Amiga and of course Apple, and proudly claimed my superiority with the Amiga's hardware sprites and
the Apple's advanced OS compared to the plain PC. As Microsoft went from DOS to Windows 95 I stubbornly stuck to IBM's OS2 as the only multitasking multiuser OS available. It was clear that at the time anything Microsoft produced was going to be a winner, and of course it obliterated OS2. I eventually begrudgingly went to Windows and immediately looked at Quickbasic, here was something I could easily understand and use for my limited purposes. At the time it was a breath of fresh air in computing for me. I had worked with the color computer's BASIC and OS9's BASIC and quickly liked the similar context. That started me on a few very limited applications and got my appetite whet for more. To make a long story short, I researched many languages to bring me to the functionality I could get with BASIC, and a few stood out. I looked at PowerBASIC, which looked promising and after a few email exchanges with what I found out later was an alias of Bob Zale and
who actually was Bob Zale, I asked him about the Windows API and he didn't like how my line of questioning went and immediately put me on his list of "people who were not allowed to purchase his product". I was put aback because I
don't think I was rude or asked anything out of line and went on to a forum and he showed up and I thought I would clear up this misunderstanding and told him my story, and to my surprise he stood up for his "associate" and made me
out to be the wrong one. So I was disappointed but it turned out that it was the best thing that he could have done for me. I looked at alternatives and at the time a very young language was taking shape with a new and promising up and
comer from France named Frederic Labourer. I immediately downloaded the demo and although the language was fairly new and unpolished, there was a freshness to the language that drew me in. I loved that there was an alternative to
PowerBasic and updates came early and often. As it turned out Powerbasic would have been a total waste of money for me, as I need a language that shelters me from the API, and PowerBASIC with all its strengths, that isn't one of them.
PureBASIC has allowed me to grow as a programmer. If I wanted to stay with straight BASIC, I could have programmed happily with PureBASIC forever, but as I continue to look at the other aspects of PureBASIC, I find myself using Linked Lists, Maps and Structures, all the gadgets and even threading, because in the language you are using it is there and you ask a few questions on the forum and people help you understand how this could be done better using this advanced feature, and pretty soon you see the code and realize its not that bad, maybe you can actually understand it. Then you get how much more powerful you can be. I've programmed stuff on PureBASIC which is 10 times more complicated than I ever have on any previous language I have programmed. I am sad that it seems that in this new smartphone and tablet based world that regular computers are less popular, because I have a feeling PureBASIC is waning in popularity, when I think it should be right now popular and thriving. Bob Zale didn't know how to adapt to a changing world, Fred seems to get the importance of cross-platform and modernizing the language. I hope with all my heart that PureBASIC thrives and succeeds in whatever new world we create, for an old-timer that never really and will probably never really do advanced programming, your language has allowed me to exceed my skill level, and that is a great thing for me and hopefully others like me who may never do assembler or C, but who get stuff done on the back of a great language that does all the complicated stuff behind the scenes and allows us to do stuff we never imagined we could.
Thanks PureBASIC Team, lots of people complain and will always complain because that is peoples' nature, but for me you are doing it right.
Dano
I wanted to talk about Purebasic in relation to my personal journey in programming. I started out at 16 years old while most people were buying cars I bought the TRS-80 Level 2 computer as it was the latest
thing at the time. I took a loan out and bought it for $1200 as I recall in 1977 and immediately saw the limitations of basic and tried to get into assembler. It was a bit overwhelming and I ended up selling it for $1000, including
software (at the time it was easy to sell it as there wasn't much out there). I then bought the Color Computer from Radio Shack, at 64K it seemed like a good deal. I also bought an assembler tutorial but again
as I have noticed in my life as smart as I think I am there are much smarter people out there able to figure out the inticracies of assembler clearly in their mind, for me it was a struggle, I understood the concepts
but there always seemed to be the details that would throw a monkey wrench into things. I really should have taken computing at my college or university having had such an early start in it but sadly I didn't and
lived to regret that decision. The CoCo3 with 512M of memory seemed like a godsend, I was early on to realize that you can never have enough memory or hard drive space. I got into OS9 which was a multiuser/
multitasking OS for the color computer. As the IBM PC started to take hold I stubbornly stuck to the esoteric platforms such as the Amiga and of course Apple, and proudly claimed my superiority with the Amiga's hardware sprites and
the Apple's advanced OS compared to the plain PC. As Microsoft went from DOS to Windows 95 I stubbornly stuck to IBM's OS2 as the only multitasking multiuser OS available. It was clear that at the time anything Microsoft produced was going to be a winner, and of course it obliterated OS2. I eventually begrudgingly went to Windows and immediately looked at Quickbasic, here was something I could easily understand and use for my limited purposes. At the time it was a breath of fresh air in computing for me. I had worked with the color computer's BASIC and OS9's BASIC and quickly liked the similar context. That started me on a few very limited applications and got my appetite whet for more. To make a long story short, I researched many languages to bring me to the functionality I could get with BASIC, and a few stood out. I looked at PowerBASIC, which looked promising and after a few email exchanges with what I found out later was an alias of Bob Zale and
who actually was Bob Zale, I asked him about the Windows API and he didn't like how my line of questioning went and immediately put me on his list of "people who were not allowed to purchase his product". I was put aback because I
don't think I was rude or asked anything out of line and went on to a forum and he showed up and I thought I would clear up this misunderstanding and told him my story, and to my surprise he stood up for his "associate" and made me
out to be the wrong one. So I was disappointed but it turned out that it was the best thing that he could have done for me. I looked at alternatives and at the time a very young language was taking shape with a new and promising up and
comer from France named Frederic Labourer. I immediately downloaded the demo and although the language was fairly new and unpolished, there was a freshness to the language that drew me in. I loved that there was an alternative to
PowerBasic and updates came early and often. As it turned out Powerbasic would have been a total waste of money for me, as I need a language that shelters me from the API, and PowerBASIC with all its strengths, that isn't one of them.
PureBASIC has allowed me to grow as a programmer. If I wanted to stay with straight BASIC, I could have programmed happily with PureBASIC forever, but as I continue to look at the other aspects of PureBASIC, I find myself using Linked Lists, Maps and Structures, all the gadgets and even threading, because in the language you are using it is there and you ask a few questions on the forum and people help you understand how this could be done better using this advanced feature, and pretty soon you see the code and realize its not that bad, maybe you can actually understand it. Then you get how much more powerful you can be. I've programmed stuff on PureBASIC which is 10 times more complicated than I ever have on any previous language I have programmed. I am sad that it seems that in this new smartphone and tablet based world that regular computers are less popular, because I have a feeling PureBASIC is waning in popularity, when I think it should be right now popular and thriving. Bob Zale didn't know how to adapt to a changing world, Fred seems to get the importance of cross-platform and modernizing the language. I hope with all my heart that PureBASIC thrives and succeeds in whatever new world we create, for an old-timer that never really and will probably never really do advanced programming, your language has allowed me to exceed my skill level, and that is a great thing for me and hopefully others like me who may never do assembler or C, but who get stuff done on the back of a great language that does all the complicated stuff behind the scenes and allows us to do stuff we never imagined we could.
Thanks PureBASIC Team, lots of people complain and will always complain because that is peoples' nature, but for me you are doing it right.
Dano
