Other Basic?

[KingDavid]

What other forms of basic do you guys use or have, besides VB and QB?


http://pages.cthome.net/xx/e.htm
http://www.freebyte.com/programming/...s/envelop.html
http://www.blitzbasic.com/
http://www.xbasic.org/
http://www.darkbasic.com/

[Paul282]

It's been a while since I was back here.

You missed PowerBasic
http://www.powerbasic.com/

if you can imagine the ANSI C version of Basic, this'd be it.

Small stand alone code (10k exe) , Pointers, inline assembly, create win32 dlls, threads, etc.

Drawbacks:

No OO in the current version
GUI takes a bit more work, you have to get your hands on some of the free tools to get GUI's working properly.

Don't use VB much now, certainly won't bother with .Net! I wanted a lower level language, not a higher level one.

....the whole site is not user friendly, and a lot of the posts are slagging off at other people and promoting other Basic dialects.

Paul

You are missed in the Chit Chat forum l expect you to make amends within the week!!!!!!!!!!!!! Else will ban all imports of whisky to Japan.

[Paul282]

Hey Jethro,

Long time no hear from. I don't spend much time at VB world now because I don't use VB anymore. I most probably will be again because VB is great for in-house development involving teams of developers.

I'm playing with a few projects to write some shareware and VB's no good, run times too big, too many annoying depenandancies so I spend most of my time with powerbasic. It's a great way to learn more about the API too. I'm sure that next time I need to use VB again I'll be a lot better off with the API knowedge.

Don't think I'll bother with .NET though. I think that there are better things to spend my time learning.

Let the whiskey flow!

Paul

Currently reviewing Delphi as a replacement for VB due to single exe distribution and an end to dll hell. Also it don't hurt that Borland have just released Kyrix, with a nifty translator between Windows and Linux.

It would appear that Linux is now kicking some serious butt in the server market...a number of clients have enquiried about this option.

[Paul282]

Delphi is okay because you can static link but the exe's are still quite big as are BCB.

I prefer BASIC syntax which is why I went to powerbasic, it's not really for everyone though as the GUI does take more work.

Any language with pointers thought lets you really speed the app up quite a bit where is where VB fails

I'm just glad I got rid of my BASIC blues

hmmmm linux support would be nice though, I'm not too good with linux and I'd be lost without the win32 API.

What does linux use for system calls?

There are any number of third party products too make life easier, but if you need anything exotic you have to get in and hack the kernel, (which is both a strength and a possible huge danger).

Who puts out PowerBasic? Is this the Power Builder sort of stuff?

[Paul282]

I always thought that there was some sort of system call method in Linux... well, I'm not really that up on it.

Powerbasic is not like powerbuilder, it's a lot like C with basic synatx, you can use normal SDK win32 programming styles or use their proprietary DDT system for faster GUIs. The compiler is great, you can utilise all of the pointer arithmatic methods for speeding up arrays etc plus a stand alone GUI app is about 10-20K unless there are a lot of dialogs and resources.

You can use resource and dialogs created in Borland C++ or VC++ and write proper win32DLLS.

It's very complimentary to VB, some areas VB is better for with OCX access to ODBC etc but I'm a big fan.

Take a look at their forum and see the sort of coding being used

http://www.powerbasic.com/support/forums/Ultimate.cgi

[anoop007]

Hey Jethro is your post count falling?

[Jethro]

Every now and again 40 or so disappear, l think it's due to people deleting thread in Chit Chat or Feedback.

Either that or it's a plot by James

[sail3005]

I didn't think chit chat or forum feedback counted anyway?

[Jethro]

Originally posted by sail3005
I didn't think chit chat or forum feedback counted anyway?

Not to your post count, but if some one deletes a thread you posted too it reduces your count. I figure maybe this is happening.

...but....

Sometimes the count is also going up fractionally, figure some one in the office is too lazy to create their own log in so are using mine.,

[sail3005]

That is kind of stupid. But i guess that explains why people keep loosing posts.

[sail3005]

Yeah, if someone deleted the post race, many people would have 0 posts! Luckily i have never posted there!

[sail3005]

What is BBC basic?

[parksie]

The version of BASIC that came with the BBC...

[sail3005]

OK, well, sorry if i sound stupid but what is the BBC? Not the broadcasting company right?

[parksie]

Yep. The BBC Microcomputer was designed and manufactured by Acorn Computers (RIP ) for use in the BBC...it was the only tender submitted to have anything like the capabilities required of it, and it's design was sketched out on scrap paper and pizza boxes

Believe it or not, it was used to do TV graphics

[sail3005]

Wow, interesting. Thanks for the info!

[parksie]

Somewhere I have a BBC B (the later version of the BBC), and a BBC Master Series (even later, with 2 ROM cartridge sockets) They go with my Music 500 synthesiser...lovely bit of kit.

See http://www.aquitaine.demon.co.uk/ for more info

[Jethro]

Originally posted by parksie
Somewhere I have a BBC B (the later version of the BBC), and a BBC Master Series (even later, with 2 ROM cartridge sockets) They go with my Music 500 synthesiser...lovely bit of kit.

See http://www.aquitaine.demon.co.uk/ for more info

Ah the days of Sinclair, Z80 Z81 Spectrum etc

Choice of multiple OSs

and wait for it...the incrediably excellant


AMIGA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[sail3005]

Wow. My oldest computer is a packard bello POS. One of my dads friends had this really really old timeX laptop from the early 80's thoguh!

[parksie]

I also have 2 Electrons Including a Plus 1, which has ROM cartridge slots

Isn't it weird...I'm only 17 and here I am getting dreamy eyed about ROM cartridges and text-based games!

[parksie]

http://www.gondolin.org.uk/hchof/rev...-electron.html

[Jethro]

your geek is showing Parksie. Do you actually use the BBC...and for current consumption they only came as a sort of integrated keyboard thingy. You added your own TV Monitor and storage device

[parksie]

I have the Beeb packed neatly away in a storeroom, and the master is still attached to the TV in my bedroom. I hijacked some ROM chips out of an Electron ADFS ROM expander so I have 800K 3.5" floppies used on it now...and I have the Music 500 plugged in and working The Elite disk is not far away...

I also managed to get a 20mb MFM/ST506 hard disk working with it as well

There ya go...blatant geekness

[Jethro]

NO one is ever going to need 20 megs....at least not till this startup calling Microsoft get going. Am hearing horrible tales of bloated OSs etc.

Back in the dim dark ages, wrote a tic tac toe game for the Z81. Even managed to sell a few copies around Uni on C60 tapes. Was going to use C90, but l didn't want to put a man on the moon

[parksie]

Never used a Z80/Z81. My cousin's got a Spectrum, though (5 years older than me).

[Jethro]

The Z80 and Z81 were Clive Sinclairs first attempts at a home PC. Little Black boxes which plugged into your TV and whioch you could connect a tape player too.

Surprisingly they used the Z80 and Z81 chips. Must have taken many a night to come up with the computer names.

The Spectrum had......*shock*.....colour.

There was a later machine from the Sinclair stables as well, forget what it was called. This one came with it's very own odd integrated business apps - Word processor, spreadsheet, graphics, database. And too this stage the weirdest storage device ever invented.

Unfortunatly Phantomd and myself got our first job in IT...yes some idiot decided we knew what we were talking about.....hmmm writing a lay-by system on a Apple II with a CPM addin board so we could use VisiCalc...the grandfather of Spreadsheets.

Of course at Uni they used IBM PCs, which at the time we thought would never overtake the Apple machine

[Paul282]

But Jethro, could it match the TRS-80 for RAW speed

ever see CoCo magazine with it's tips for basic etc?

very fun

[Jethro]

... would suggest going the upgrade path to 64k ram. I know this is over-kill, and no one will ever need that amount of ram, but it does give speed improvement for multiple apps running against the separate CPUS.

Hey...any of you guys remember that weird Llama game some bloke came up with in England. I mean the guy was just obsessed with the concept of Llamas. Maybe too much if ya know what l mean.

[sail3005]

Well, the sims from the sim city games worshiped lamas...Wonder if there is a connection?

[Jethro]

Can feel a whole new addin for the game coming on....The Blowup Llame store, called "Llamas R Us" of course.

[1 is a prime!]

Anyone wanting a major "Speccy" nostalgia-fest, go to:

http://www.void.jump.org/index.html

The site is called World Of Spectrum, and it is GREAT!
...of the Windows Emulators, the ZX-32 is spot on!

(And if anyone thinks they're good enough, I'd happily agree to a Chuckie Egg showdown!)

Sinclair released the Z80/Z81, followed by (I think) the ZX81, then the Spectrum range (16K, 32K, 48K, 128K (+, +2, +2A, +2B and +3)), before releasing the SAM (which was supposed to be good but never really took off), and then attempting to release a PC(!) type machine! (Not to mention the AMAZING C5!)

Steve.

P.S. Archemedes Elite and an Arch. emulator can be had from:

http://archieemu.cjb.net/

May need to visit here for "bits":
http://www.redsquirrel.fsnet.co.uk/

Not sure where you can get the ROMS from these days though. (I have copies though!)

[sail3005]

thats pretty interesting thanks

[parksie]

Damn this was another of my 4am threads or some other ridiculous time I decided to reply to it

I couldn't be bothered to copy the ROMs from mine so I just downloaded them

[sail3005]

the calculator roms? where did you get them? they are getting harder and harder to find.

[parksie]

RISC OS ROMs.

[sail3005]

oh ok, never mind then

[BillGleeson]

We've got a Mainframe terminal emulator program here at work called Extra.

It uses something it calls Extra Basic, which seems to have a lot of VB functionality, but also interacts with the Mainframe window. (Sessions, custom toolbars, hotspots, HostSettleTime etc) Kinda like a version of VB for Word maybe? But it's not as up to date as my Access 97 VBA version.

Makes me feel lucky I am coding in Basic and not mainframe COBOL, but not lucky enough to work in REAL VB