FreeBASIC

[JRS]

It seems the FreeBASIC maintainer has moved on. It might be a good time for the remaining FB user base to consider migrating to OxygenBasic.

The PowerBASIC folks should have already migrated after the author died 5 years ago. I really don't see Drake Software doing anything but retaining the asset hoping for a buyer and make a profit from Vivian's fire sale of PowerBASIC.

[Charles Pegge]

Hi John,

Yes, I've been following DKL's thread:

Currently inactive
http://freebasic.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=25691

FreeBasic is very good at what it does, ( it takes less than 2 seconds to compile Oxygenbasic ), but there appears to be a sharp decline of interest in the BASIC language itself. If it remains an elderly and impoverished cousin of C++, the prospects are not good. What it needs is an infusion of new concepts to bring it into the 21st century, while maintaining ease of use for non-professional programmers.

I think its worth following the latest thinking in the C++ community. Much of this lecture by Bjarne Stroustrup goes over my head but I get the gist of it: simplification of source code to improve readability and reliability; the development of highly standardised generics; the abandoning of ad-hoc preprocessor macros; built-in support for parallel processing. We can take some of this on board.

Bjarne Stroustrup - Keynote Meeting C++ 2016: What C++ is and what it will become
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvUL0Y2bpyc

[Kuron]

Less romantic historians would point out that FB has been dead for a LONG time.

When Bob died and left his company in bad hands with absolutely no direction, many people followed my advice and moved to PureBasic.  The majority of those that made the switch are still happily plugging along with PureBasic which routinely sees free updates, supports 64bit and the three major OSes.

It would appear some of Bob's users decided to adopt FB.   Not a bad thing as Paul Squires is the single best thing to ever happen to the FB community.  However, for an open source project to live and grow, it needs somebody competent to be working on it and maintaining it (which it has not had for years).  The biggest strike against FB is not supporting MacOS.  Nowadays for any language to get accepted and widely used it needs to support the three major OSes:  Windows, Linux, MacOS.  FB used to be a blast and have a large dedicated gaming community.  But that was around 10 years ago.

I am patiently waiting for FBSL to get back on its feet, so I can download it and get to work on some new projects as that is my language of choice.  I still hold out hope that it will see MacOS support in my lifetime.

[Aurel]

first mr.Kuron ( that sounds very ugly on my home language  )
OBJECTION !

Less romantic historians would point out that FB has been dead for a LONG time.[/color]
This is not true ,if that is true then there we can still we have old FB version from 10 years ago?

When Bob died and left his company in bad hands with absolutely no direction, many people followed my advice and moved to PureBasic.  The majority of those that made the switch are still happily plugging along with PureBasic which routinely sees free updates, supports 64bit and the three major OSes.
what a heck PowerBasic author dead have with FreeBasic ...beep..beep 
followed your advice ....  give me a break
don't put yourself so high...please !
Pure Basic is nice language but is not really BASIC then programming language with small elements of BASIC.
It is popular in France and Germany and some other part of Europe.
 

It would appear some of Bob's users decided to adopt FB.   Not a bad thing as Paul Squires is the single best thing to ever happen to the FB community.  However, for an open source project to live and grow, it needs somebody competent to be working on it and maintaining it (which it has not had for years).  The biggest strike against FB is not supporting MacOS.  Nowadays for any language to get accepted and widely used it needs to support the three major OSes:  Windows, Linux, MacOS.  FB used to be a blast and have a large dedicated gaming community.  But that was around 10 years ago.

MacOs is not very much popular Os in Europe or is not very much used in Europe.
Linux heh...it looks that he loose battle with Windows( unfortunately lot of unfinished potential- for Desktop OS)

I am patiently waiting for FBSL to get back on its feet, so I can download it and get to work on some new projects as that is my language of choice.  I still hold out hope that it will see MacOS support in my lifetime.
Hmm in my opinion better than thinBasic  but never very much popular between basic programmers.
reason..probably with free-non -free licence ...or something like that .

[Kuron]

Aurel, in stepping up to flex his insecurities, has reminded us one of the reasons Oxygen does not have a larger user base.

MacOs is not very much popular Os in Europe or is not very much used in Europe.

In the Sculley years, Macs were actually more popular among the creative demographic in Europe than in the USA.  When Jobs returned and brought NeXT technology with him, Macs were pretty equal in Europe and the USA among creative professionals.  Cook has largely destroyed the creative's use of Macs with going for looks over performance and targeting the coffee-house crowd.  Still, there is a dedicated group of creative professionals that are still using Macs world-wide and that (along with the creative's using Windows) is the demographic many of us have to target.

[JRS]

My personal goal for the remainder of this year is to finish C BASIC. I want to use Script BASIC to translate C code into C BASIC .  I have a good start and it would be a shame not to finish it.

[Arnold]

I agree with Charles: the interest in using BASIC has been lost in general. Probably in schools BASIC is not taught any more. If I visit a bookstore, I will find books about C, C++, Java, Python, Ruby, Php, Matlab, R, Arduino, maybe a book about Lisp or Visual Basic NET. Even Perl has more followers than BASIC. There are so many languages for many purposes available these days. And it is like in sports. There are some organizations with a lot of passive members and therefore earn a lot of money, and many clubs with members which do their sport for fun and for their health.

I myself am happy with Oxygenbasic which helped me to learn more about how other programming languages work and which helps me to train my brain cells a little bit (due to a generously helpful coach). And as this is a very flexible language for many possible applications perhaps the user base will get a little bit larger some day.

[Aurel]

well look
when i first time tried o2 i was thinking that nothing work..
but when i see and study some Cherles and Peter Wirbelauer examples..
(where is that guy ? )
i was figured what is this all about .. 
so  for Free Basic ,well i also think that FreeBasic is very well language
/Oxygen is compiled with FB / -which means powerful
Package in which comes FB is not very much beginner or user friendly(no editor)
also if you ask me too much command line switches 
FB members talking about anything more than about FB ,
babeling how python,scratch or other are fancy or great will not improve current
things in FB.

[JRS]

BASIC for me is about getting the job done without having to recreate the wheel with framework code just to get started., It's also about code readability.

[JRS]

I think users would have more interest in ThinBasic if Eros would port it to OxygenBasic. It would give O2 a good test and encourage PowerBASIC users to give O2 a serious look. Charles and Eros work well together and would help keep BASIC alive.

Just being free of all the PowerBASIC restrictions of not allowing direct use of PB functions would be motivation enough to make  the move.

[Aurel]

it seems to me that some of them put his hope in JoseRoca cWindow includes and
PaulSquirk ..damn squrikie ..squak... sh**
i forget name winFB or something ..
Also it looks that PowerBasic users migrate to PureBasic
probably because they don't like open source Free Basic..
ahh who care....anyone with 'grain of salt in brain' should try Oxgen 

[JRS]

BASIC is still popular as ASP.NET and VBA in Microsoft Office products. I don't see much action with BASIC in other environments.

My hope is I can create some interest in using Script BASIC as a replacement for Node.js. My goal is to provide both traditional CGI and asynchronous I/O web applications.

[edcronos]

Hi, first of all, I'm sorry, I'm from Brazil and I'm using a translator.

I believe that the biggest problem of the BASIC language is the lack of rigid standardization
this de-stimulates new developers by not knowing what the future will be and fear of having to rewrite everything they've done
the thinbasic creator himself has withdrawn goto and gosub by personal considerations
Modes of declaring and using variables change considerably, arrays ...
things that should have a fixed base do not talk between the various versions

without firm bases, can not build large structures
I think BASIC could be saved with a union of the still lovers of that language

[Charles Pegge]

Hi Eduardo,

Welcome to the forum!

OxygenBasic supports goto, gosub..ret, and line numbers too

It also supports 'C' syntax to facilitate the use of C headers, and porting of C code.

I think it might be possible to standardise Basic as a scripting language, but Basic compilers need to follow C/C++ very closely.

[edcronos]

hi Charles Pegge
thank you

I think that who insists with the basic is because it does not like the () {}; C
I know it has goto and gosub, but even C took out the gosub,
the problem as I said, is the basis that instead of the developers add resources they try to implement their own concepts by removing or changing what already exists

I have been following the forum for some years even though I have not been participating
I realized that you try to be as democratic as possible in this matter adding resources and not limiting your own taste

for me it is difficult to understand this war between languages, being that in a context only differ in their features and facilities because in the end they will be translated to the same machine code

BASIC has salvation?
I think so, because it is an easy language to learn and implement and can be as fast as C depending only on the compiler, but it will depend more on the passion of one. "Unless, you're rich in $$"

I even imagined creating a group on the face, but I do not get along with social networking, so I dropped it at the very beginning
https://www.facebook.com/Programming-in-BASIC-768714663280647/

the vba of the mainly excel office package still has a wide range of users despite the abandonment of ms, many are even programmers of other languages,
perhaps bringing the Oxygen closer to that follow-up that, although limited, can bring a massive interest back into language.