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QB successors
#11
Hey SMC. I tried the latest Blitz demo today. It does seem very good, almost fun - I can see why you like it.

I've been playing with that free Ebasic compiler. I'm quite impressed with the package - it seems to be the most complete free basic compiler release out there.  (The compiler is free, but they want people to pay to read their programming forum?). 
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#12
hehehe... stick em where it hurts. :p

I also liked the QB ide. I used that thing for hours on end. Ahhh... the good old days. And even if it's discontinued, I still like FBIDE. Smile Emergence BASIC looks really interesting, but I've got a lot of FB projects that demand my attention. I'm sure i'll give it a whirl sonner or later though. Wink
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#13
(09-14-2007, 11:57 PM)Dav link Wrote:  (The compiler is free, but they want people to pay to read their programming forum?).

Hmm, I didn't check their forums out.  Maybe they're taking a redhat route, give the software away and sell service.  Anyway I think it's cool they're giving such an advanced compiler away for free.
Formerly C of FreeBASIC.net
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#14
(09-16-2007, 07:41 AM)SMC link Wrote:Hmm, I didn't check their forums out.  Maybe they're taking a redhat route, give the software away and sell service.  Anyway I think it's cool they're giving such an advanced compiler away for free.

Yeah, I also think it's a cool thing to do, giving away a solid compiler.  I don't think of this compiler as a QB successor though -- it's just not Basic enough for me -- but it's a good tool to keep & use.  I have already made a couple of small apps with it.  Btw, the CodingMonkeys forums has a good Ebasic forum, and Ibasic too (Ibasic & Ebasic are almost 100% compatablie).
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#15
Yea, I agree.  It's definitely a programmer's basic.  I've never heard of Ibasic, I'll have to look it up with the codemonkey's forum.  Thanks.
Formerly C of FreeBASIC.net
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#16
Hmm, it's hard to define a successor to QBasic, it having just an intepretter and all. I wouldn't call <= VB6, FreeBASIC, RealBASIC or any other similar projects successors really. </pedantic>

Now, I personally think FB is an excellent successor to QuickBASIC; I don't care if it will never compile 100% QB code. It still keeps pretty much all of the clunky and ugly syntax (unfortunately), plus it adds a plethora of new features. I haven't messed with <= VB6 very much, but from what I've seen it is also a fine replacement for QB - (I'm also a big fan of doing away with all the 'quirk' parts of the language, like VB.NET did).

Of course backwards-compatibility is not high on my list of requirements. When I wrote most of my QB code, I never used implicit variable declaration/type deduction, type suffixes and the like, so most of my old QB code compiles/runs in FB since v.15 (when I first discovered FB). I haven't found it difficult to port code that uses segments/offsets either, maybe I'm just a lucky bastard..

(09-03-2007, 02:43 PM)MystikShadows link Wrote:But PB is a compiled language, not pseudo compiled / interpreted like QB's language is, so it wasn't that obvious to make as good an IDE as QB.  Same thing for freebasic.  You'd almost have ot write a freebasic interpreter and that interpreter would have to follow FB's syntax closely on every release of Freebasic.  So to make that interpreter, might be a good idea to wait until the language is stable enough  (as in doesn't get changed anymore from a language perspective) then it might be possible to make an IDE that can work with the language atleast some.   
A full-fledged interpretter isn't necessary for things like Visual Studio's Intellisense™ and whatnot; QBASIC.EXE has very little "real-time editing info", I think it just keeps track of line-by-line syntax and variable/procedure references, IIRC (which is made easier by the fact that only procedures open new scopes; it's fairly accurate, but buggy), what could be integrated into a text editor fairly easily; variable/procedure references might be tricky - or not, now that periods are disallowed in identifiers (-lang fb) - but line-by-line syntax checking seems like it would be easy to support, and I don't think virtually any of the 'inherited' language from QB is going to change any time soon (much to my dismay).

Things like capitalization, spacing - style issues - are fluff that can be easily supported. Debugging would be a bit more involved, plus there are already excellent GUIs available for that (for free).

I guess if you need an IDE that supports that stuff (many QBers I chat with can't live without one for some reason, and believe me Visual Studio is my favorite when writing C++ code), then someone's just going to have to make/modify one already.
stylin:
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#17
IDE never mattered to me in the whole issue of the language. It was the libraries and lack of the requirement of low-level commands that made me like QuickBASIC, and the only real programming language that I was ever decent at. FreeBASIC lacks libraries like Future.library - it's more like C, explaining why I wasn't as good at it. Hell, I don't even bother with compiled applications anymore. I've moved on the PHP editing it with gVim and Dreamweaver. The language is rather simple, works at a high level, and uses a web browser as a crutch so I don't have to worry about setting up buffers and all these things to do rather simple things.

FreeBASIC, despite it not really being my cup of tea, is the best successor I've seen.
[Image: 1403.png]
^ Infrosoft
http://www.thecodeyouneed.us.to/ - A wiki of source code, mostly in PHP and FreeBASIC
http://www.osadvocacy.uk.to/ - Your opinion matters no matter your OS
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#18
For those who don't check the news area here, the QB64 project looks very promising. It's an attempt at making a QBasic compatible compiler.  Here's the forum link dedicated to the project:
http://www.network54.com/Forum/585676/

I've played around with the demos the author has relased. The sample programs included (some from the 9-liner challege ran here) do compile and run well on my system, and the compiled EXE's are reportedly Vista compatible (I don't do Vista yet so I can't confirm that here).

- Dav
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#19
I got a Vista theme for XP. I call it Windows XP: Vista Edition. Big Grin

On topic, I think FB is the best "modern replacement" or "modern equivelent" of QB. It's slow move towards a C-like syntax is putting me off, however. I probably won't test anything else as my real life is taking more and more of my time and I really don't have it in me to dedicate time to typing code.

Which is probably why I have scrapped all my game ideas with the exception of BrainFreeze, and my IRC bot RedBall which is very slowly becoming what I want it to be.
Screwing with your reality since 1998.
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#20
Get justbasic - it has all the qb commands but you can also put in windows and stuff
http://www.justbasic.com/
WHILE RPG$ <> "complete" : make up silly excuses :WEND
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