PowerBasic - Things to be aware of!

[Mike Trader]

Having been a PowerBasic user for ten years I feel its time to make a few comments about the product that most people coming to it for the first time are probably not aware of.

Since the product positions itself as a VB replacement that runs 20x faster etc etc etc I think its only fair that unsuspecting Vb users know the full story of what to expect from PowerBasic and the owner.

Aside from the technical issues, the biggest concern I have for new users is the heavy moderation of the user forums, including deletion of posts critical of PB (factual and substantiated or not), banning of users that make such errors of judgement and a customer relations policy that can only be described as abusive.

I have tolerated this situation because like so many unsuspecting newbies, I did not come across it until I had put hundreds of hours of learning into the product. The first time I was banned I figured I just must have screwed up in some way I did not understand.

I have refrained from recounting my personal experience in any detail as your mileage may vary, but it is very clear that the owner will refuse to sell you product as "punishment" for criticizing him or PB and you will meet with less than friendly "customer support" should you dare to call.

Since my personal information including full name and address gathered at time of purchase, were given to a third party (an admin at another site) as proof that my handle is not my real name, you may conclude that PB's privacy policy is construed as: "Personal information gathered may be used against you by the owner if and when he feels like it."

Recently I have been banned again for daring posts like these:
http://www.powerbasic.com/support/pb...t=35934&page=4
or perhaps this:
http://www.powerbasic.com/support/pb...ad.php?t=35768


Coupled with things like this:
http://www.powerbasic.com/support/pb...ad.php?t=35253
and comments like this
http://www.jose.it-berater.org/smffo...p?topic=1558.0
http://www.jose.it-berater.org/smffo...p?topic=1562.0

All of a sudden my nick has "come to their attention" as not being my actual name, despite the fact that I hashed this out on the phone with the owner three years ago when he agreed to let me continue using my nick after I bought more product.

The Forum used to be a great resource, but after years of heavy handed culling, all the good developers have left. I have had it too.

Many people have been subjected to this treatment
http://www.freebasic.net/forum/viewt...=10567&start=0

I have often wondered why the PB forums require your FULL REAL NAME. In this latest round, I discovered that they will stop at nothing to harass anyone deemed to be "disruptive"

Users of the PB forum should be aware that they will be REQUIRED to use their full real name, like it or not.
I choose not to use my full real name because some of my competitors and customers could very easily find their way to compilable source code from my name. That simply doesn't make a lot of sense in my business, even if the risk is low that they would be bothered to act on it.

I have heard the argument that PB would suffer from anonymous mud slinging if they did not have this policy. There are a hundred ways to validate a forum member that do not require the broadcasting of their full real name. I think its a little more sinister than that.

My FULL REAL NAME and ADDRESS were sent to the admin of another site, that also recently instituted this policy. I was banned from posting on that site too. Obviously your personal information can expect NO privacy at PowerBASIC!


PB behaves in some odd ways, most noteably in its use of the FPU for DWORD unsigned integer calculations.
After a long thread on the subject the owner finally stated:
Now, I understand that some compilers and interpreters take short-cuts in some situations, but we try to avoid that at PowerBASIC.

If you multiply 3 billion by 3, then divide that result by 3, the correct answer is 3 billion, not 136,688,469.
Bob Zale
PowerBASIC Inc.
http://www.powerbasic.com/support/pb...ad.php?t=35375

Since overloading an integer is fundamental to Encryption algos in most languages, this presents a unique problem in PB.
http://www.powerbasic.com/support/pb...ad.php?t=35407

Then there is the issue of a QUAD 64 bit signed integer value being returned on the FPU stack unlike most popular languages.

Additionally, most string functions are relatively slow and only
handles the English alphabet, a-z.
http://www.powerbasic.com/support/fo...ML/003534.html

In this thread, some very proficient users wrote a function to convert a string to a number. A simple version using pointers yeilded 370 clock cycles compared to 5200 for the built in PB version. Using ASM that was reduced to 90 Clks.
http://www.powerbasic.com/support/fo...ML/014510.html
Allthough PB supports ASM (not the full instruction set) it seems that it is not used in the built in functions of the compiler itself.


This thread was deleted
http://www.powerbasic.com/support/fo...-5-000273.html
Because a PB Staff member, Dave Navvaro states:
"we will have a compiler for Linux some time this year"

The original thread is here http://web.archive.org/web/200305220...-5-000273.html here
It should be noted that despite the alleged "No Vaporware" Policy, a Linux compiler has never materialized.


If anyone wants to challenge any of these comments please feel free to do so. I will be happy to provide evidence for any of it.