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C/C++ BASIC
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free (gcc/lccwin) >$100
industry standard outdated, and hardly used
easily portable to EVERY OS Microsoft OS's
can be used for DOS, GUI >$450
AND Console mode!
support and manuals widely forums: 1
available across the internet manuals: $97
and bookstores
powerful easy to learn
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[This message has been edited by John Fergusson (edited June 23, 2003).]
[list=1][*]There are free BASICS, I choose PowerBASIC because I like it...just like someone will go out and buy VC++ from Microsoft.[*]Outdated? How so...please elaborate. Also, how can an outdated compiler save my company millions of dollars per year?[*]80% of computer platforms use a WinOS, If I only need to do WinOS stuff why do I care about the rest?[*]OK, got us on that one, but there is some mixing between PBCC/PBWIN, but in the long run this impacts me how?[*]PowerBASIC is so simple it requires only one forum but there are others as well (look a little harder)[*]Electronic help comes free with PowerBASIC when you buy it (either via mail or over the internet) I never have to leave home to get it. Plus the compiler AND the help fit on a floppy. BTW, the same help in book form is optional, [*]PowerBASIC is powerful AND easy to learn[/list=a]
Honestly and with no kidding intended, did you think your posting would have some
kind of magical effect that would swoon all the BASIC programmers over to C/C++?
All the forum members know about C/C++, but we STILL choose BASIC...
Maybe you should ask yourself why that is.
I'm a certified (as well as adept) C/C++ programmer yet still choose BASIC...Why do you think that is?
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Every day I try to learn one thing new,
but new things to learn are increasing exponentially.
At this rate I’m becoming an idiot faster and faster !!!
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George W. Bleck
Lead Computer Systems Engineer
KeySpan Corporation My Email
[This message has been edited by George Bleck (edited June 23, 2003).]
<b>George W. Bleck</b>
<img src='http://www.blecktech.com/myemail.gif'>
Heh. Troll alert! Well, let's have some fun, until this degenerates
into a complete mass of babble.
GCC, "free". What, they couldn't find anyone willing to pay for it?
"Industry standard". Which industry is that, pray tell? Will you be
urging us to switch to COBOL next? Or were you bragging that your
language was designed by a committee? It's such a shame that PowerBASIC
is "outdated and hardly used", and selling for ">$100", while the
"industry standard" has to be given away to anyone who can be persuaded
to take it. Much like Microsoft's .NET strategy, come to think of it!
("Outdated": an interesting comment from a proponent of one of the
hoariest old languages that still staggers on by.)
"Easily portable to EVERY OS". Well, I can tell you've never actually
tried that before. A look at the different sets of source code and
masses of custom #if/#endif blocks in any "portable" C program might
give you other ideas. Although, I suppose it's a shame to keep the
benefits of PowerBASIC away from both of the remaining Amiga
programmers.
"Can be used for DOS, GUI AND Console mode!" ...much like PowerBASIC
products. We're so glad to hear you're keeping up!
"Support and manuals widely available..." because no single point has
been particularly successful, I gather. BTW, manuals are $39, and
the online help contains the same information at no additional charge.
"Powerful"... How nice! I understand C even supports pointers and unions,
like PowerBASIC. But, at least C isn't "easy to learn". You must be so
proud.
Young padowan, I have programmed in C for over 20 years, myself, and
I know its limitations as well as its strengths. Take a few days to
play with PowerBASIC string and file handling, and you will never
again use C without tearing your hair and gnashing your teeth. On the
the other hand, maybe that's where Albert Einstein got his famous
hairdo-- a classic hacker's look-- what the heck, go for it!
C/C++ BASIC
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Boat anchor Has put roof over head, clothes on back
and food on table for 10+ years.
When C/C++ can at least do this, come back and we'll discuss it over a drink:
Code:
FUNCTION PBMAIN() AS LONG
DIM dwAddr AS DWORD
dwAddr = CODEPTR(MyLabel) '<--
MyLabel:
END FUNCTION
Note: Address of a label (ie. addr of next code instruction). Until it can do that (with just as much ease), your language is absolutely useless to me.
Hmm, not a single reference to John Fergusson in POFFS. *cough* troll *cough*
I did a search on monster.com for C++ which returned over 99
pages of jobs ranging from $70,000-$150,000 a year (I just looked
at the first few pages).
I then did a search for power basic, which returned 12 jobs.
After looking at the jobs, it usually matched a string such
as "Power Builder, .... Visual Basic." I further refined the
search by inclosing power basic in quotes and it resulted in
zero jobs.
I understand that if you have a small business writing custom
software for pizza restaurants or some equivalent business, then
you might do well.....the point was that you just can't get that
many jobs, for that much money.
Originally posted by John Fergusson: Ok, here's the fundamental problem:
I did a search on monster.com for C++ which returned over 99
pages of jobs ranging from $70,000-$150,000 a year (I just looked
at the first few pages).
John,
That is a very valid concern, especially for someone first learning programming,
how-ever what you might be missing is that most PB users already know how
to program in many languages, and they use PB to make that code smaller, faster &
more efficient...
and for new-comers to programming, PB is a very easy road to take
for learning windows programming, and, with the support of this forum, it's far
easier road, than any other IMO.
and then with a solid foundation established, learning any or all the others become
much, much easier...
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Wash DC Area
[This message has been edited by Brad D Byrne (edited June 27, 2003).]
Michael, haha, good catch! Although, that doesn't really
change anything, now does it?
From the The Jargon File (http://www.hack.gr/jargon/html/lexicon.html)
BASIC /bay'-sic/ n.
A programming language, originally designed for Dartmouth's experimental timesharing system in the early 1960s, which has since become the leading cause of brain damage in proto-hackers. Edsger W. Dijkstra observed in "Selected Writings on Computing: A Personal Perspective" that "It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students that have had prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration." This is another case (like Pascal) of the cascading lossage that happens when a language deliberately designed as an educational toy gets taken too seriously. A novice can write short BASIC programs (on the order of 10-20 lines) very easily; writing anything longer (a) is very painful, and (b) encourages bad habits that will make it harder to use more powerful languages well. This wouldn't be so bad if historical accidents hadn't made BASIC so common on low-end micros. As it is, it ruins thousands of potential wizards a year.
You know Frank, if you can't make any money with PB, they why are you here? What possible result are you looking for? Shall we all say, "WOW! I never knew that! I guess I'll toss all my PB stuff in the can right now and go get a C compiler before my family starves!"
You know, I can find 10x the number of jobs for nurses and medical professionals than I can for programmers. Shall we all quit what we do for a living and go get medical training?
Do you have a passion for a specific political party? How about a religion? Lets talk about one of those!
Really, a little bit of common sense can take you a long way.
Except:
...
"Then Dennis and Brian worked on a truly warped version of Pascal, called 'A'. When we found others were actually trying to create real programs with A, we quickly added additional cryptic features and evolved into B, BCPL and finally C. We stopped when we got a clean compile on the following syntax:
To think that modern programmers would try to use a language that allowed such a statement was beyond our comprehension! We actually thought of selling this to the Soviets to set their computer science progress back 20 or more years. Imagine our surprise when AT&T and other US corporations actually began trying to use Unix and C!"
...
With some 112 carefully planned library modules and executables in
Power Basic spanning over 1,180,000 lines of source, I've actually
written a cross conversion source utility to research porting the
225 functions of PB I use to C++. At about 135 of them now done,
the preliminary research shows that my project would jump ..
to over 7,000,000 lines of source.
I'm lucky, in that my entire project is carefully coded in the same
general style and syntax, top down, with a minumum of GOTO's in it.
Otherwise, that number would, I think, loom larger.
I have the personal belief that most people in the programming world
proabably could never, as a single individual, contemplate a project
of over 7,000,000 lines of source. I guarantee you a million is bad
enough, but maybe this is just an indication of how insufficient I am
in relation to what I want to accomplish.
The largest hurdle I face is more interesting though. Attempting to
add mutiple dimension variable length string arrays, complete with
automatic memory allocation, deallocation, and automatic *GARBAGE
COLLECTION* such that they may be used and even passed in UDT's has
proved a *VERY* daunting task.
Have you ever tried to accomodate DIM X$(10, 20), let alone an evem
more interesting DIM X$(-RDIM% to +RDIM%) in C/C++, where X$ is, cough,
a variable length string? If you have that kind of class, with all
the ability to create it, use it in data sharing for the equivalents
of UDT's in Watcom C++, Visual Age for C++, and GCC ...
Would you *PLEASE* have the class to post it *HERE* in this forum so
that those of us who do face working between PowerBASIC and the C/C++
world can see how to do those two little source examples in C/C++?
Feel free to post it in ASSEMBLER, if you like, you know, like in-line
so we can use that as needed in PowerBASIC. It might be more practical
to create the cross-platform way of doing this in assembly language, no?
The issue of buffer overruns in C/C++, coupled with the above also is
another reason that it sure seems a long, long way from what I know
enjoy, and even survive by now, especially with the dialect of BASIC
I have come to at least begin, I think, to understand; PowerBASIC.
That done, perhaps you'll also have the capability to compare here in
this forum, how one implements our beloved ON ERROR GOTO and the return
from that scenario for C/C++ in the easy way we have of doing that in
PowerBASIC. Especially when we consider EXIT FAR and the use of it
in deeply nested CALL's and FUNCTIONS.
Debugging those buffer overrun and memory corruption issues off in
never-never land isn't all that easy, even with the wonder we have
here, basicly speaking.
The only reason I post this in reply is that the biggest saddness I
face with PowerBASIC is that it doesn't exist as a compiler in the
operating systems I really need. I would have never been able to have
gotten this far along in my goals without Bob Zale and the crew and the
advances they have given me.
If, with a horrible saddness in my heart, I have to leave this wonderful
homeland and language that I know fairly well, for your opined land of
wonder, because Bob faces the same hurdles of expanding his product line
to platforms that I and we all do, and you alone are left to guide us,
Then ..
Perhaps you'll share your tools which would let me do all this for less
than the $99 or so that Bob shared his with me, so long ago and far away.
Else
I'm afraid your posting only amplifies my sadness..
Originally posted by Michael Mattias: monster.com
Search "BASIC"
results:"Jobs 1 to 50 of more than 5000"
Call me naive, but I'd say that makes a difference.
MCM
Obviously, it would make a HUGE difference since the word "basic"
is commonly used throughout the English language. Such as, "Basic
computer skills are a must," or "basic filing skills," etc.
Anyway, contrary to popular belief, I wasn't trolling, I just
wanted to see why people still use basic. In fact, I actually
like basic, but I've essentially been laughed at by every
programmer I've ever talked to because no one (read: no company)
takes it seriously. Go take computer science classes and tell
people that you program in basic, and see what happens .
So, I mostly just wanted ammo for when those situations arise.
I've essentially been laughed at by every programmer I've ever talked to because no one (read: no company) takes it seriously.
Don't be that pessimist! At least here in Italy, Visual BASIC is by far the most required language by companies. Certainly more required than C whatever. And many of those companies don't know about PowerBASIC, otherwise it would be required even more.
When some programmer (often a young wannabe) "laugh" at me because i program in BASIC, i just smile at him. He's not bad, simply he really needs something to laugh at . Heck, he programmed in C* all day...
Seems to me that language purity is the big purported reason why
folks scoff at Basic. But when you consider the balance of what
gets done in a program by native statements, vs. what is done
in created functions, the balance would shift to Basic flavors
being the more pure languages. C/C++ don't do an awefull lot for
you. Most everything is done by function libraries, which are all
over the map with respect to cleanliness and coherency. Basics
aren't always too much better, but always offer a lot more native
functionality, which often translates to cleaner & tighter code.
And from a programming learning perspective, C's become daunting
because sure, you learn C structure and syntax, but you still
know nothing of how to actually get anything done on any target
system. That all comes down to the most amazing array of external
libraries and OS dependancies you could imagine. So it's not
just learning C, it's also finding and learning the supporting
libraries that actually put something on the screen and interact
with the user. PowerBasic on the other hand is much closer to a
one-stop-shop. After learning PB, I am much closer to actually
getting something done. I may still incorporate further tool sets,
but at least the basics are covered.
C flavors offer in many respects a tighter, more symmetrical system
of structure, but with so little in-built functionality, many
problems bloom into complexities outside of the language itself.
Basic often solves these issues in-house, and I think that makes
for better code. Depending on the problem, of course.
I found the perspectives of the creators of Perl to be most illuminating.
The approach was to let the programmer decide how to tackle the
job, and offer him/her as many varried tools and styles as possible.
A 'non-totalitarian' language if you will. C on the other hand tends
to be rigid with respect to how we must program. Basic seems more
like Perl. In any case I think that a structured mind creates
structured code, and the language just needs to be broad enough
to accommodate. PowerBasic certainly fits the bill excellently.
To any doubters, I think you should just go ahead and pick up DJGPP
for the DOS environment. It's absolutely amazing. I was going to
use it for my survey work, and it would have been fantastic. It
handles all the stuff with grace that PBDos leaves wanting, starting
with flat memory. BUT... I would still be trying to teach myself how
how to actually do anything like collect some serial data, or plot
it on the screen, as well as deal with the bazillion little unknowns
in such a complex public domain tool with its complex public domain
libraries. Instead, I got immediately to work, and have re-written,
usually in a few hours, every program we use. No more crashes,
no more questions, and not a single add-on library yet. I will soon
persuade my survey boss to spend the $500-ish (for us Canucks) on
PB Win. I see no other way that I can actually expect to get programming
and actually get something done, as history pushes us away from our DOS
platforms.
Thanks to all the good folks at PowerBasic.
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What can go wrong will go wrong. Anything can go wrong. What hasn't?!?!
What can go wrong will go wrong. Anything can go wrong. What hasn't?!?!
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But, at least C isn't "easy to learn". You must be so
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Don't be that pessimist!
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