PureBasic Forums - English

Hello,

Has anyone developed any programming tools/compilers/interpreters using PB?

If yes how powerful they are and whether it is official to develop programming tools and sell them commercially using PB?

TIA

Yogi Yang

You'll get about the same answer here as you got when you asked this question on the Powerbasic forum.
You can develop anything you like but you cannot simply wrap Purebasic functions and present them as part of another language or pass them off as your own work.

The PureBasic IDE is written in PureBasic. Theoretically you can write any kind of advanced software development tool. You'd start with a ScintillaGadget and build from there, you aren't limited by anything. Fred said recently that PB's IDE is over 100k lines of code now.

netmaestro wrote:The PureBasic IDE is written in PureBasic.

In the first second, it looks like the old hen-and-egg-Story

Yogi Yang wrote:If yes how powerful they are and whether it is official to develop programming tools...

If you really would know what it takes to create a compiler you would not ask this question.
You would just do it.
And yes, PureBasic is fully capable to help you with this.

Yogi Yang wrote:Has anyone developed any programming tools/compilers/interpreters using PB?

Yes.

In my youth (roughly 7 or 8 years ago) I was fascinated by assembly and machine code, so with the help of the internet I gathered enough information to write a true compiler that generated machine code for x86 on 32 bit Windows (console and gui).
It worked. But not more than that.

After a few month I realized what needed to be done in order to use it on a daily basis. More time and more brain.
Had the brain (well... sort of) so more time was needed.
Around that time I bought a new computer and it came with Windows 7-64 bit.
It was then that I realized that my compiler was obsolete, being so close to the metal a rewrite (to emit 64 bit) was necessary.
However, after realizing I needed even more devotion to the cause, I decided to just be happy with what I learned in the process and let it go.

Do I regret my decision? No.
Did I (will I) ever publish the code? No.

In the meantime I use Linux and MacOSX (Windows only at work) and enjoy learning new programming languages and hardware platforms every few month or so.
Strangely enough after wrapping my head around a new language I write a parser and syntax evaluator for an imaginary programming language.
It's always a lot of fun...

Yogi Yang wrote:...and sell them commercially using PB?

Nowadays, starting from scratch and "invent" a new commercial programming language is not worth it. It's hard to make money with this.
Fantaisie software has now SpiderBasic but the selling model differs from PureBasic in order to make it worthwhile.

GCC, Swift, Go, C-Lang (LLVM) , etc. are all free.
How can anyone compete with that?

PureBasic is already established, and cool to work with to get stuff done fast.
It probably will be around for another decade or more.

EDIT: typos...

fsw wrote:GCC, Swift, Go, C-Lang (LLVM) , etc. are all free.
How can anyone compete with that?

Additionally to being free of charge, almost all new programming languages are also OpenSource.

Simply to spread/disseminate/broadcast it, and development + eliminating bugs is also much faster with hundreds of helping hands.
For the language and it's system libraries itself, as well as for add-on libraries and imports.
That's the reason even giants like Microsoft and Apple open-source their compiler stuff or use open-source compiler platforms like LLVM.

Two interesting projects for people interested in programming languages stuff:
- Haxe
- Vala (C# to C converter)

fsw wrote:

Yogi Yang wrote:If yes how powerful they are and whether it is official to develop programming tools...

If you really would know what it takes to create a compiler you would not ask this question.
You would just do it.
And yes, PureBasic is fully capable to help you with this.

Ditto.

Google Jack Crenshaw's article on how to write a compiler, and you will see how simple a core can be accomplished. However, the core is the simple part. Making it actually useful is the hardest part--I would guess it is about 100x more work to make it useful than it is to make it run a simple program.

Tenaja wrote:

fsw wrote:

Yogi Yang wrote:If yes how powerful they are and whether it is official to develop programming tools...

If you really would know what it takes to create a compiler you would not ask this question.
You would just do it.
And yes, PureBasic is fully capable to help you with this.

Ditto.

Google Jack Crenshaw's article on how to write a compiler, and you will see how simple a core can be accomplished. However, the core is the simple part. Making it actually useful is the hardest part--I would guess it is about 100x more work to make it useful than it is to make it run a simple program.

This is so true.
Also, Jack Crenshaw's article can be found in different variations/programming languages.

@Yogi Yang:
Please do not see my post above as a discouragement.
If you are really interested in the inner workings of a compiler and want to create one yourself:
LET NO ONE STOP YOU!
You will learn a lot along the way.
(about compilers, about the programming language you use to write the code, and most importantly about yourself)

Another side effect would be to appreciate even more what Fred & Freak have put together over the years.
(...and the other members of the team)

Happy coding.

bosker wrote:You'll get about the same answer here as you got when you asked this question on the Powerbasic forum.

Not at all.

In face the developers and moderators at PoweBasic are very eccentric while on the other hand developers and moderators here are considerate and open and would be ready to discuss any topic.

I can go the length to say that Bob was a pain in the **s on PowerBasic Forums. He could not stand discussing and comparing PowerBasic against PureBasic or any other BASIC compilers !

Anyways not that management has take the decision that the tool that we will develop has to be cross platform so PowerBasic is out.

I am posting such question here to get other peoples inputs as to whether it is advisable to use PureBasic or should we prefer to use C/C++ for developing other tools.

TIA

Yogi Yang