Just curious, and maybe this has been brought up before.
Fred, how the next short break you have, you post some of your past 'history' and the trials and tribulations of authoring PB?
Maybe besides some history, you could re-hash what your current thoughts are on the 'vision' thing, and where you'd like to see PB in 2 years?
How about a thread on.. Fred?
> I guess a lot of people really could give a darn about Fred
You mean couldn't give a darn (sorry to correct you).
Anyway, the votes for Yes are higher than No, so it appears that most
people here do give a darn about Fred. So what's the problem?
> All that really matters is Fred can give someone -now-.
> Sounds like real respect all right.
Do we have to learn the history of K-Mart just because we're awaiting the
next 15% off sale? I think you're being a bit harsh on some of us.
You mean couldn't give a darn (sorry to correct you).
Anyway, the votes for Yes are higher than No, so it appears that most
people here do give a darn about Fred. So what's the problem?
> All that really matters is Fred can give someone -now-.
> Sounds like real respect all right.
Do we have to learn the history of K-Mart just because we're awaiting the
next 15% off sale? I think you're being a bit harsh on some of us.
Last edited by PB on Tue Mar 09, 2004 8:53 am, edited 1 time in total.
Harsh?
More like disappointed that 40%+ aren't interested in some more background on PB. I would have thought that many here would be interested in how to actually take a software product/hobby/passion from an idea to reality. A number of people want Fred to add everying but the kitchen sink to PB, want this or that specialized feature included because they think its important, and/or have dreams of writing something moderately successful with Fred's creation.
Aside from that, the back-end stuff of dealing with 900(?) or so customers, and all the business 'stuff' might have been interesting or useful to anyone making a first rate applicaiton.
It -is- about respect though. Considering the extreme effort Fred puts in regularly with his regular updates, and the time that entails from his personal life, I do find it rather self-centered to not take a simple opportunity to show that one might appreciate the man behind the product, and let him give us the benefit of his wisdom and experience.
If you equate Fred's work with K-Mart products, then I'm even more disappointed. That in itself is a 'harsh' put down in a class of its own.
More like disappointed that 40%+ aren't interested in some more background on PB. I would have thought that many here would be interested in how to actually take a software product/hobby/passion from an idea to reality. A number of people want Fred to add everying but the kitchen sink to PB, want this or that specialized feature included because they think its important, and/or have dreams of writing something moderately successful with Fred's creation.
Aside from that, the back-end stuff of dealing with 900(?) or so customers, and all the business 'stuff' might have been interesting or useful to anyone making a first rate applicaiton.
It -is- about respect though. Considering the extreme effort Fred puts in regularly with his regular updates, and the time that entails from his personal life, I do find it rather self-centered to not take a simple opportunity to show that one might appreciate the man behind the product, and let him give us the benefit of his wisdom and experience.
If you equate Fred's work with K-Mart products, then I'm even more disappointed. That in itself is a 'harsh' put down in a class of its own.
As some of you are interested, I took some time to resume in a few words how all started and how I have ended up like with the current developper tool you're using. And sorry for my poor english 
The background of PureBasic...
Let's take a time-machine to get back at the very start of my development cycle. I started programming in 1994, when I decided than playing on the Amiga was damn cool, so programming it would be even cooler. I bought the famous BlitzBasic 2 package, an all-in-one programming langage for the Amiga, which had an excellent reputation, due to the newly games which was just out: SkidMarks. The learning curve was fast, and quickly I get a little shoot-em-up running, following closely by a top-view car game (ATR like for those which can remember this great Team17 title). As I didn't have a graphician to help, the gfx was really bad, and the game was therefore not very fun to play
. Anyway, may be it was the time to try doing some applications. And at this time, a very important factor was arisen: Internet. Before Internet, you needed to buy magazine with coverdisk to have new software or extension, but with Internet (and especially 'aminet') all was here online, available at any time. I get in touch with several people by mail and IRC so I started to develop a little DirectoryOpus like application, named F-Bench (similar to MidnightCommander tool), still in Blitz. I made some great progress on the application side, and then a database manager (F-Base) is born, quickly followed by TheBoss, a powerful application launcher. Being on the BlitzBasic user mailing list, I quickly hit many limitation of the language at this time and slowly learned the 68000 assembler, to have a chance to improve the BlitzBasic command set (all commands had to be done in assembler at this time). It was quite painful, as I didn't have access to many good documentation and the forums has you know them wasn't existing (yes, Google wasn't working either 
. So the NCS (NewCommandSet package) has been developped, step by step and thanks to the very positive answers/mails I got, I continued it during a year. It consumed all my free time (and countless nights of debugging) but it was really fun. It was incredible how many things could be done on an old 68000 processor if all was correctly coded.
During this time, the powerpc cards for the Amiga was sold and it was a very promizing alternative to the 68000. It was very fast, at a relatively cheap price compared to high-end 680x0 processors (68050). And then, some people wanted to have a native version of BlitzBasicII on PowerPC, but we all knew than the development was hold and would never be continued for the Amiga. So it was a room for a new langage which would be a the logic continuation of the Blitz with support of 680x0 and PowerPC processor. The early design and the first line of PureBasic started in 1998. The main differences against normal compiler was the integration of a Virtual Processor (which actually use the 680x0 assembly mnemonics) right from the beginning to allow different kind of assembly (or any langage in fact) output without changing the compiler core. Starting from this point, all went very fast. I was fully dedicated to the compiler programming and learned a lot during all this time (especially the C langage, to have a portable compiler). First version of PureBasic was out on Amiga and (even if it was deadly bugged) had an integrated and OS compliant editor, debugger and an huge internal commandset, you guess it, directly took from the NCS package. My studies went very well and I learned different other (completely new to me) language like C++ and JAVA which gave me a good overview of the actual languages available and then I could take better decisions about the whole design of PureBasic. During the fourth year of Computer Science diploma, the Amiga was considered like a dead plateforms and all my friends couldn't understand than I won't do a Windows version of PureBasic. As I tell to all of them it would be a piece of cake to do the porting, I had to prove it. So I started to learn DirectX and WinAPI programming, completely in ASM, and these time, it was really hard. The x86 is a nightmare when coming from the 68000 (all the notation is reversed, very few register, no complex address mode etc...) but finally I got something working in about 3 months of work. Just after this, I created the french company which handle PureBasic: Fantaisie Software. A friend did the web site, and we were ready to go further.
Starting from this point, more and more people tested and used PureBasic for Windows and I get once more many encouraging mails which pushed me ahead. At the same time, I learned the indepth of the WinAPI and DirectX and this have given what you all know. You can check the History file in the help to see how much it has grown since, and what I can tell is it's not a standalone man work. A lot of people like Andre, Danilo, Fr34k, Roger (and all the one listed in the Credit section) helped me to improve PureBasic. The linux version was a logic choice, as it shares the same Virtual Processor than the Windows one (x86) and 'only' the libraries had to be rewritten. So I learned GDK/GTK and SDL, the other libs used are standard C one.
Here we are
It took me quite a while to write all this and I hope it answers your questions. Feel free to ask if you need more details.
And... Thanks to all of you who made PureBasic a living language !
Fred.
The background of PureBasic...
Let's take a time-machine to get back at the very start of my development cycle. I started programming in 1994, when I decided than playing on the Amiga was damn cool, so programming it would be even cooler. I bought the famous BlitzBasic 2 package, an all-in-one programming langage for the Amiga, which had an excellent reputation, due to the newly games which was just out: SkidMarks. The learning curve was fast, and quickly I get a little shoot-em-up running, following closely by a top-view car game (ATR like for those which can remember this great Team17 title). As I didn't have a graphician to help, the gfx was really bad, and the game was therefore not very fun to play
. Anyway, may be it was the time to try doing some applications. And at this time, a very important factor was arisen: Internet. Before Internet, you needed to buy magazine with coverdisk to have new software or extension, but with Internet (and especially 'aminet') all was here online, available at any time. I get in touch with several people by mail and IRC so I started to develop a little DirectoryOpus like application, named F-Bench (similar to MidnightCommander tool), still in Blitz. I made some great progress on the application side, and then a database manager (F-Base) is born, quickly followed by TheBoss, a powerful application launcher. Being on the BlitzBasic user mailing list, I quickly hit many limitation of the language at this time and slowly learned the 68000 assembler, to have a chance to improve the BlitzBasic command set (all commands had to be done in assembler at this time). It was quite painful, as I didn't have access to many good documentation and the forums has you know them wasn't existing (yes, Google wasn't working either . So the NCS (NewCommandSet package) has been developped, step by step and thanks to the very positive answers/mails I got, I continued it during a year. It consumed all my free time (and countless nights of debugging) but it was really fun. It was incredible how many things could be done on an old 68000 processor if all was correctly coded.During this time, the powerpc cards for the Amiga was sold and it was a very promizing alternative to the 68000. It was very fast, at a relatively cheap price compared to high-end 680x0 processors (68050). And then, some people wanted to have a native version of BlitzBasicII on PowerPC, but we all knew than the development was hold and would never be continued for the Amiga. So it was a room for a new langage which would be a the logic continuation of the Blitz with support of 680x0 and PowerPC processor. The early design and the first line of PureBasic started in 1998. The main differences against normal compiler was the integration of a Virtual Processor (which actually use the 680x0 assembly mnemonics) right from the beginning to allow different kind of assembly (or any langage in fact) output without changing the compiler core. Starting from this point, all went very fast. I was fully dedicated to the compiler programming and learned a lot during all this time (especially the C langage, to have a portable compiler). First version of PureBasic was out on Amiga and (even if it was deadly bugged) had an integrated and OS compliant editor, debugger and an huge internal commandset, you guess it, directly took from the NCS package. My studies went very well and I learned different other (completely new to me) language like C++ and JAVA which gave me a good overview of the actual languages available and then I could take better decisions about the whole design of PureBasic. During the fourth year of Computer Science diploma, the Amiga was considered like a dead plateforms and all my friends couldn't understand than I won't do a Windows version of PureBasic. As I tell to all of them it would be a piece of cake to do the porting, I had to prove it
. So I started to learn DirectX and WinAPI programming, completely in ASM, and these time, it was really hard. The x86 is a nightmare when coming from the 68000 (all the notation is reversed, very few register, no complex address mode etc...) but finally I got something working in about 3 months of work. Just after this, I created the french company which handle PureBasic: Fantaisie Software. A friend did the web site, and we were ready to go further.Starting from this point, more and more people tested and used PureBasic for Windows and I get once more many encouraging mails which pushed me ahead. At the same time, I learned the indepth of the WinAPI and DirectX and this have given what you all know. You can check the History file in the help to see how much it has grown since, and what I can tell is it's not a standalone man work. A lot of people like Andre, Danilo, Fr34k, Roger (and all the one listed in the Credit section) helped me to improve PureBasic. The linux version was a logic choice, as it shares the same Virtual Processor than the Windows one (x86) and 'only' the libraries had to be rewritten. So I learned GDK/GTK and SDL, the other libs used are standard C one.
Here we are
It took me quite a while to write all this and I hope it answers your questions
. Feel free to ask if you need more details.And... Thanks to all of you who made PureBasic a living language !
Fred.
-
Num3
- PureBasic Expert
- Posts: 2812
- Joined: Fri Apr 25, 2003 4:51 pm
- Location: Portugal, Lisbon
- Contact:
So many memories 
...
Remember all that, even you on Blitz Mailing List...
Bought it for the same reason, lot's of good code made with it!
NewCommandSet was quite a big improvement for Blitz, and i watched the first post of a new language behing made
Damn i was just 17 back then, and you're already graduating
(now i know how hold you are muahahaha
)
Life sure is strange... 9 years later, in dispear, looking for a decent programming language, i typed in google a very old memory 'Purebasic' and it was the best thing that happened... Never thought it would be here today, with all the potential and power it has!
Thanks Fred for making your idea come true, and keep up dreaming
...Remember all that, even you on Blitz Mailing List...
Bought it for the same reason, lot's of good code made with it!
NewCommandSet was quite a big improvement for Blitz, and i watched the first post of a new language behing made
Damn i was just 17 back then, and you're already graduating
(now i know how hold you are muahahaha
)Life sure is strange... 9 years later, in dispear, looking for a decent programming language, i typed in google a very old memory 'Purebasic' and it was the best thing that happened... Never thought it would be here today, with all the potential and power it has!
Thanks Fred for making your idea come true, and keep up dreaming
Fred,
thanks for taking your time to write such a in deph history of you and how PB was born.
Maybe you should add your comment into the history section of the PB help files...
thanks for taking your time to write such a in deph history of you and how PB was born.
Maybe you should add your comment into the history section of the PB help files...
Last edited by fsw on Sat Mar 13, 2004 3:24 am, edited 1 time in total.
Actually that is a good point. I accept the lion's share of the blame for making the second option impishly irrisistable.Dare2 wrote:The poll questions might have a lot to do with that. 40% of people couldn't resist the phrasing of the second question.More like disappointed that 40%+ aren't interested in some more background on PB
So the whole thing is YOUR FAULT and your should apologise immediately to Fred.
Just Kidding
