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What is the best free basic compiler ?
Posted: Wed May 13, 2020 9:22 am
by Psychophanta
Hi,
I need to know from a good knower of it.
It is for a friend which is making a programming youtube channel for BASIC.
What is the best free basic compiler for linux and windows?
FreeBASIC?
BlitzBASIC? (by the way, is it free?, where to download?)
Is PB free version good enough to learn?
...
Thanks

Re: What is the best free basic compiler ?
Posted: Wed May 13, 2020 9:25 am
by Kiffi
Re: What is the best free basic compiler ?
Posted: Wed May 13, 2020 9:32 am
by Psychophanta
Thanks, is not it too much complex for just beguinners who approach to programming for first time?
Re: What is the best free basic compiler ?
Posted: Wed May 13, 2020 9:40 am
by Kiffi
Psychophanta wrote:Thanks, is not it too much complex for just beguinners who approach to programming for first time?
You asked for a free basic compiler and not for a suitable development environment for beginners.
Nevertheless, B4J is quite suitable for beginners (in my opinion)
Re: What is the best free basic compiler ?
Posted: Wed May 13, 2020 9:47 am
by Marc56us
Psychophanta wrote:I need to know from a good knower of it.
It is for a friend which is making a programming youtube channel for BASIC.
What is the best free basic compiler for linux and windows?
FreeBASIC?
BlitzBASIC? (by the way, is it free?, where to download?)
Is PB free version good enough to learn?
Why learn another language? PureBasic quite simply
Demo version is not a demo, but a limited version and free for use.
- No DLL can be created
- you can't use the whole external Win32 API support
- no development kit for external libraries
- maximum number of source lines: 800
It won't use any of this to start and even to go far.
When he needs it, he won't be a beginner anymore and he will buy a license and that will boost the world economy and save the planet.
(and the youtube ad is going to make him some money, it would make sense to circulate some to the team)

Re: What is the best free basic compiler ?
Posted: Wed May 13, 2020 10:07 am
by marc_256
Hi Psychophanta,
Since i had have a lot of virus detections with PB,
I use QB64 32/64 bits for 85% of my work now.
It have 10...15% CPU use ...
But for me it works very well, and never virus detections.
It is also fully QB45 compatible, and simple BASIC syntax.
Slow to compile ... PB is very fast.
QB64 have a very fast debug follow up, and in full development, v1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, ...
greetings,
marc
Sorry ...
https://www.qb64.org/
Re: What is the best free basic compiler ?
Posted: Wed May 13, 2020 10:23 am
by Karellen
Psychophanta wrote:Is PB free version good enough to learn?
In my opinion, yes. Especially the start with PureBasic is very easy. You can immediately write a first program with few, logical and understandable commands. In the same way you improve your program step by step. It's cross platform and the learned syntax can also be used in SpiderBasic for web and app development. When the limitations of the free version are reached, you are no longer a beginner and can consider whether to continue working with PB / SB.
Re: What is the best free basic compiler ?
Posted: Wed May 13, 2020 10:27 am
by Marc56us
<off topic>

Warning: this page (.net) seem abandoned and hacked.
The official page of
QB64 is
http://www.qb64.org
</off topic>
Re: What is the best free basic compiler ?
Posted: Wed May 13, 2020 10:42 am
by marc_256
Marc56us wrote:
<off topic>

Warning: this page (.net) seem abandoned and hacked.
The official page of
QB64 is
http://www.qb64.org
</off topic>
thanks,
I changed it in my post
Re: What is the best free basic compiler ?
Posted: Wed May 13, 2020 11:57 am
by Danilo
Psychophanta wrote:BlitzBASIC? (by the way, is it free?, where to download?)
The Blitz-Research products Blitz3D, BlitzPlus, and BlitzMax are at
github and
itch.io
BlitzMax is continued by the community as „Blitzmax NG“:
blitzmax.org,
github
Cerberus-X is Blitz-Research‘s „Monkey-X“ continuation by the community:
cerberus-x.com,
github
GameMaker Studio 2, AppGameKit Studio, and GLBasic are commercial projects, so no URLs for those.
Gambas is based on an interpreter and wanted to be something like VisualBasic for Linux.
I read that it got a JIT compiler lately, but didn‘t look any further.
Re: What is the best free basic compiler ?
Posted: Thu May 14, 2020 5:45 pm
by yoxola
FreeBASIC + poseidonFB IDE actually works incredibly well on Win/Linux if you know basic coding.
FreeBASIC has no official IDE but has a active community that keeps reinventing the wheels, many projects are born and dead quickly, you have to choose what you need by looking at many threads.
Re: What is the best free basic compiler ?
Posted: Thu May 14, 2020 7:00 pm
by jack
even though I don't use QB64, I am inclined to recommend it for beginners, plus their forum members like to program things that are probably interesting for beginners, also there's a very talented member that was a programming teacher who put together an interesting site perfect for learning
https://www.qb64sourcecode.com/
Re: What is the best free basic compiler ?
Posted: Fri May 15, 2020 1:59 am
by Rinzwind
Another youtuber who doesnt know what hes talking about? I mean, I hope when the subject is Basic, the YT producer has real experience with what hes discussing. But I know, many many times its just a random list of options.
VB.Net has little future because of MS. All C# now. It wasnt like classic VB anyway. Still is maintained, but almost got no attention from Ms. They also killed of FoxPro and VB6 in a very uncustomer friendly way.
QB64 is QuickBasic. Old procedural style. Still could be fun.
There are some features one could compare
Compiler: machine code, to C, to intermediate language
Platforms
GUI libraries, designers
Procedural, OOP, mix
IDE, debugger
Pricing
3rd party support (libraries, components, gui)
Community support (forums, stackoverflow)
Delphi has finally a nice community edition. Theres also Lazarus ofcourse (the name...). Ok, it aint Basic, but for native Windows programming very suitable and fast.
Re: What is the best free basic compiler ?
Posted: Fri May 15, 2020 2:03 am
by Kuron
Rinzwind wrote:VB.Net has little future because of MS.
VB 16 was released in 2019.
Re: What is the best free basic compiler ?
Posted: Fri May 15, 2020 3:40 am
by Rinzwind
VB.Net 2019. True, it is still maintained and released. Just very, very few attention given to it, especially by its maker. No examples, no talks about it, no new features, few books, always lagging behind C# (Xamarin, Core). C# by now is also quite convoluted with all additions made during the years. Sadly there's also amazingly lots of popular misinformation about VB.Net on the net. About how it's a toy language. Clearly not a clue what they're talking about. Idiocy of MS to drop the whole native thing back then. Slowly coming back from it again, but all their dev tools are gone except for C++ which does not even support decent RAD + GUI designer.
If you want something VB6 like, go B4X. Not native sadly. But Java is hidden quite well
