The fate (future) of PB

[Amiga5k]

Hello everyone. I haven't posted here in a while because I've been busy programming a game...in Blitz Plus.

Why not PB? To be honest, I actually like PB better, but overall, B+ is just way ahead in terms of whipping up code quickly with a decent result. And, as has been pointed out elsewhere here, the docs for PB are not as good as they can be (B+'s docs are not the best I've ever seen, either, but easier and more consistant than PB's - Visual Basic has, probably, the best layout I've seen for docs, but of course M$ has the cash-ola to hire the doc-writers).

Anyways, unfortunately the only real thing that is keeping me here with PB is the hope that it will someday soon be in a non-beta stage and will have the docs that it deserves (and desperately needs) and the incredible openness of the language itself. Now, when BlitzMax finally debuts (supposedly some time this year), I'm worried about how this will negatively affect PB, since BMax is VERY PB-like and cross-platform (Win, Linux and Macintosh!)

I fear that PB's days are numbered if some MAJOR changes aren't made in a very short time! I hear that PB 4.0 is supposed to be a "partial rewrite" with some major issues addressed. I hope so, because this is the only thing, I believe, that will keep PB afloat.

Good luck, Fred, Andre, Bennie and the rest. I'll keep checking back from time to time to see what's going on.

Russell

[freak]

So... what exactly is the purpose of this post

[techjunkie]

BlitzMax will be in done in "modular" nature... That's sucks!!

But I really don't understand the first post... If you compare Blitz and Pure, I would say that you should compare BlitzPlus and PureBasic... and I think BlitzPlus is more or less useless - Pure has many more features - BlitzPlus miss so many things... I think it is a way to get more money - the product isn't finished...

For 3D I would say Blitz3D is better then Pure - but it would be nice if this changed...

[Dare2]

Heya Amiga5k,

Was that a paid advertisement for BB?

PureBasic will survive - and thrive.

Anyhow, success to you in your ventures, here and elsewhere.

[cykotic]

first thing... BlitzPlus's only strong point is 2D.. i wont even give it a 1 out of 10 for its application building features as Purebasic excels way beyond it in that category. Blitz anything has always been directed towards making games and is VERY good at doing so and I think that is why its app building stuff is far inferior to PB's. Sure Purebasic has 2D commands and is very capable of creating 2D games.. just check out Restricted Area to see what it IS capable of.. You don't see a lot of commercial quality games in purebasic because the majority of it's users are using it to develop applications (professional applications like the stuff Paul does at his Reelmedia site) because the main focus of development for Fred is the application building features. Blitz* has a lot more people using it to make games.. so therefore its developers are going to want to improve the game making command set because there is a large demand for it. Show me a commercial quality application written in BlitzPlus (not a game).. I'm pretty sure you won't be able to. So you really can't compare the two.. go ahead and try to but this is just my opinion and I have stuck by this for a long time.

Blitz* (plus, 3d) = directed towards game development with poor application creating features
PureBasic = directed towards application development with a very capable 2D command set and a very YOUNG 3D command set.

there is nothing wrong with using 2 different languages for two different tasks.. just don't say that one is better than the other in general because each of these languages excel in there own way.

*edit*

I might of rambled on.. so if anything is irrelevant just ignore (but do read .

[PB]

> I fear that PB's days are numbered if some MAJOR changes aren't made in
> a very short time!

I think the point of your post (besides being a possible plug for Blitz) is that
PureBasic doesn't progress as fast as you'd like. If that's all you're worried
about, then by all means use another language. All good things take time,
and perhaps your needs are too fast to wait for PureBasic. But that doesn't
mean that PureBasic will "die" -- it's not a product that Fred relies on to live,
which means it'll always exist and progress as long as he's happy with it.
A product can only die off if the programmer relies on it, which, thankfully,
Fred doesn't.

[Inner]

actually PB I disagree with you, PB update time is better than Blitz, I can't remember when I last updated blitz, sometime in 2003-mid/late I think, it memory recalls correctly I download a PB update only resently, however this is pointless since, both applications will have there own programmers and therefore there own faults to fix, and features to add, and each programmer has his way of doing things.

[techjunkie]

there is nothing wrong with using 2 different languages for two different tasks.. just don't say that one is better than the other in general because each of these languages excel in there own way.)

I totaly agree!!!

I use PureBasic for lot of applications and games, Blitz for some and MS Developer Studio for some.

Right now I'm doing an application with several streaming MediaPlayers - sure it could be done in Blitz and Pure with lot of work, but I'll do it in Visual C++ - it's faster and simpler this time.

If people just shout "one language", they haven't understand what all are about... What language to use depends on, timeframe, type of project, budget, speed, people involved (if you are a team)...

[techjunkie]

update time is better than Blitz, I can't remember when I last updated blitz, sometime in 2003-mid/late I think

This is true - but it has changed... The update time was better a year ago for Blitz...

This is the big problem for "small languages" I think... They totally depends on one person... In Blitz case Mark had problem with the people selling Blitz and his mother died in January. Of course this affects the updates and the future of the language...

When I worked with an electronic system for an aircraft, we had three "key people" - those guys where forbidden to take the same flight, go in the same car, bus and so on...

So we better lock Fred in a closet and never let him out!!! *LOL*

[PB]

> actually PB I disagree with you, PB update time is better than Blitz

I was thinking more of the "big things" being updated (longs/doubles,
bigger strings, etc). For these, I can wait, because I know the wait
will be more than worth it. And I know Fred is dedicated to this
language more than any other programming language I've seen.

[techjunkie]

it's not a product that Fred relies on to live

Ohhh shit - I didn't know that... Is he doing all the work in his spare time? You must be joking?!?

WOW! I'm impressed... but it has two sides as everything - that means he is not fully dedicated to Pure... Hmmmm - to bad... I would love if the "Pure team" could live on their work...

It's simple math really I'll guess - how many PureBasic is sold? 2.000? 5.000?

What does he live of? *curious*

[proforma]

I wouldn't worry too much about BlitzMax if I were you.

BlitzMax was announced in 2001 and to be released in September 2002. Well its 2004 and he just got finished with 80 percent of the compiler alone (this currently supports Windows and Macintosh ONLY, yes thats right no Linux version yet).

Well as you can see there is no 2D or 3D support yet, so its going to be awhile when he finally releases a version of BlitzMax with 2D support ONLY. 3D support will come, but its a long way off.

In all that time he was supposed to be working on BlitzMax, he came out with only two updates to Blitz 3D (in 2003) and two updates for BlitzPlus in 2003 and no updates for Maplet since its been released (Released August 2002).

So my big question is what has he been doing with all of that time?

Many people were saying that he is working on BlitzMax and thats why there were not that many if any updates for anything else, boy were they wrong.

Plus we don't know about if there is a future or not with Blitz Plus or Blitz 3D and if there is a future for both of those, BlitzMax is sure going to be expensive.

If I was a blitz user I would be really upset right now.

[PB]

> Is he doing all the work in his spare time?

As far as I last knew, yes. Not sure if things have changed, or if PureBasic
has become a full-time project for him. Only Fred can answer that.

> that means he is not fully dedicated to Pure

On the contrary, I think it bodes better for Pure's future. If he was living
off Pure, then it runs the risk of becoming a project of labour and not love.
And anytime labour comes into something, there's a risk of abandoning it.
There's also the danger of the company going bust, leaving us with nothing.
I don't want to say anything more, because I might be way off-base here,
but last I knew was all that I've just said.

[techjunkie]

If I was a blitz user I would be really upset right now.

Well, he had a lot of trouble with the guys how sold it... but if you make a bad contract so... and then his mother had cancer - I'll guess this affected his work...

Hmmm - updates of Blitz is nothing if you compare with Jamagic - THERE you have bad updates... and you really can't do anything with it... It took ONE year before they had a stable version - still, it's to slow for doing something serious in...

[proforma]

If I was a blitz user I would be really upset right now.

Well, he had a lot of trouble with the guys how sold it... but if you make a bad contract so... and then his mother had cancer - I'll guess this affected his work...

Hmmm - updates of Blitz is nothing if you compare with Jamagic - THERE you have bad updates... and you really can't do anything with it... It took ONE year before they had a stable version - still, it's to slow for doing something serious in...

Well with BlitzMax, it should have affected maybe six months, but not three years of work. Even right now, he is working on code for Blitz3D and isn't working on BlitzMax as much. He should be putting all effort towards BlitzMax right now instead of doing work on blitz 3d which sounds like its not dying any time soon, so BlitzMax must really have a higher price because of that.

It doesn't seem that BlitzMax is all that its been cracked up to be and thats a big huge disapointment. We know its not going to launch with 3D and just 2D only and we know he isn't working on 2D yet even. So its going to take probably 5 more months to get 2D done and thats if he stops working on Blitz 3D.