I've been following the PowerBASIC roadmap thread which has
exposed two views:
1.) The one from those who need info about future version of PowerBASIC
2.) The one from those who are quite happy to wait in the knowledge
that PowerBASIC will do "the right thing".
I'd like to address view 2:
Firstly I love the compiler - small, fast tight code are the operative
words - this, I hope will be maintained across future releases.
PBDLL 6.0 and PBCC 20 were IMO very good releases in terms of speed
, code size and inline assembler.
However I consider the introduction of TCP and DDT as a mistake. Don't get me wrong, I think TCP support is
crucial and DDT a time-saver.
My gripe is that this functionality would have been better exposed
as libraries and include files wrapping around functionality which
is exposed by the operating systems. In the case of TCP having
comprehensive wrapper functions in include files/modules would have
made the very large existing code base which is available at large
easier to grasp and extend.
Of course, nothing prevents me from doing that, and in fact this is
what I've done since I like to have more control over the winsock implementation.
My gripe is that, IMO, PB should concentrate on adding intrinsic
capability to PowerBASIC instead of wrappers around existing OS
services in BASIC syntax.
Instead of new features, I'd like an extension to the language:
- Structured Exception Handling to replace BASIC's ancient ON
ERROR GOTO model (okay structured exception handling IS part of
the OS - the only way to use it gracefully is with an extension
to PowerBASIC)
and an extension to the compiler:
- The possibility to produce LIB files as well as EXEs and DLLs
- The inclusion of a macro pre-processor OR the ability to flag
functions as INLINE
and last but not least
- PowerBASIC for Linux.
These are the big four - which, again IMO, would make any upgrade to
the compiler worth buying. I hope that at least a couple of these
additions will be included in the next PB upgrade.
I won't open the pandora's box of OOP which, although I consider it
as very important, always raises big uproar.
To finish: PowerBASIC rules, thanks for a great compiler
Cheers
Florent Heyworth
------------------
exposed two views:
1.) The one from those who need info about future version of PowerBASIC
2.) The one from those who are quite happy to wait in the knowledge
that PowerBASIC will do "the right thing".
I'd like to address view 2:
Firstly I love the compiler - small, fast tight code are the operative
words - this, I hope will be maintained across future releases.
PBDLL 6.0 and PBCC 20 were IMO very good releases in terms of speed
, code size and inline assembler.
However I consider the introduction of TCP and DDT as a mistake. Don't get me wrong, I think TCP support is
crucial and DDT a time-saver.
My gripe is that this functionality would have been better exposed
as libraries and include files wrapping around functionality which
is exposed by the operating systems. In the case of TCP having
comprehensive wrapper functions in include files/modules would have
made the very large existing code base which is available at large
easier to grasp and extend.
Of course, nothing prevents me from doing that, and in fact this is
what I've done since I like to have more control over the winsock implementation.
My gripe is that, IMO, PB should concentrate on adding intrinsic
capability to PowerBASIC instead of wrappers around existing OS
services in BASIC syntax.
Instead of new features, I'd like an extension to the language:
- Structured Exception Handling to replace BASIC's ancient ON
ERROR GOTO model (okay structured exception handling IS part of
the OS - the only way to use it gracefully is with an extension
to PowerBASIC)
and an extension to the compiler:
- The possibility to produce LIB files as well as EXEs and DLLs
- The inclusion of a macro pre-processor OR the ability to flag
functions as INLINE
and last but not least
- PowerBASIC for Linux.
These are the big four - which, again IMO, would make any upgrade to
the compiler worth buying. I hope that at least a couple of these
additions will be included in the next PB upgrade.
I won't open the pandora's box of OOP which, although I consider it
as very important, always raises big uproar.
To finish: PowerBASIC rules, thanks for a great compiler
Cheers
Florent Heyworth
------------------
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