Could FB be to WIN what PERL is to Linux?

[urger]

Could FB be to WIN what PERL is to Linux?

I think it could be.
PERL was originaly meant as a "glue language", allowing a person to get into the OS but also be (relativly) easy to code. Thanks to FB's API accsess, I think FB could become the glue language for Windows. It does just about (emphsis on just about, there are some thing that can't be done I sure) anything now. It's fast. It compiles quick and it already has a sizeable support community. FB is roughly were PERL (or PYTHON for that matter) was when it was at the state of development FB is.

As further evidence I point to my own programming. Yesturday I needed to write a program that would dl a webpage, parse the data, and spit back how instances of a certain string were used. Rather then using PERL as normal, I wrote it in FB. It was longer then the PERL app, but not by much, 4 lines. (comments not counted in either case)

I think FB is going to bigger then any of us originally imagined.

[adosorken]

I foresaw FB as the true successor to QB when v1c made the original announcement. I knew he had the skill and the ability to transform this community from simple forum-loafers and occasional code-pounders back into a community of coders and developers, the way it used to be. But I think FB will go beyond even what I envisioned, and for that I'm glad.

[Aquarius]

I suck at programming, but I think FreeBasic is the best thing in BASIC history since QB 4.5.

It's because:

- 99% compatiblity with QBasic syntax
- no memory limits
- powerful libraries
- available on Windows/Linux/DOS
- free and open source

Now it's like any other modern high level language. Thanks God, I've never managed to learn C/C++

I think Victor saved (Q)Basic from slow death

[adosorken]

Indeed. Have you seen what other BASICs have become? It's frightening. VB.net is now so far removed from BASIC it's not even funny, and other BASICs are either horribly mangled (LibertyBasic), follow incorrect conventions (DragonBasic), or just completely suck (Cheesecake BASIC). FB gives us back what we were starting to lose: BASIC itself.

[aetherfox]

I definately agree that the scope of fb is far beyond this community. In time to come, I am sure someone will come along and see the aboslute amazing job that victor has done and offer him a top job.

Think about it: Single handedly vic has written a compiler that rivals the speed of some famous C++ compilers, has awesome compatibility with BASIC, and on top of that, he fixes bugs as soon as they are thrown to him. The work he does surpasses the support and quality offered by the majority of major corporations. I hope someday someone will come and see him for who he is; though I hope he doesn't forget to update fb

[retsyo]

In fact, is there somebody who wants to write a detail tut on how to translate C/C++ header and VB declaration into fbc one? That may be esay for many of you, but not for user like me who seldom handle this advance topic before.
I (always) want to glue python to fbc. So that at least I can do "world"*3="worldworldworld" in fbc. I am a python user, so it is intuitionistic. in C, 'w'*3=357, but who will do multiplication on a char, since its result is out of [0~255]! I only find people does subtration: 'w'-'c' and nobody write "world"*5 in C.

[Jofers]

Excuse me, you all have a little brown something on your nose there...

A nice compiler indeed, but I'm pretty sure batch, and more recently vbscript are still the glue languages of Windows, due to their "works out of the box" nature.

[urger]

A nice compiler indeed, but I'm pretty sure batch, and more recently vbscript are still the glue languages of Windows, due to their "works out of the box" nature.

They are still the glue languages right now, but FB, I think ought replace them. The combination of multiplatformness (is that a word?) and ease of use make it a far superior product.

[adosorken]

Bah, shove it banana-lover (yeah you, Jofers the chimp )

LSS is going to start developing commercial software in addition to our freeware software. FB will be a major player in that move. VB never afforded us the opportunity to make efficient standalone software, and I have always been opposed to the bloatware that is VC++ (and don't even get me started on Dev-C++). Although I know v1ctor and lillo don't ask for this, we will be paying royalties for sales of our commercial products.

[v3cz0r]

At the moment FB is more oriented to game coding, as most headers translated are for that kind of production, but when say, db/xml/gui libraries are ported and a visual-tool like Nek is writing get released, more people will start using it for other kinds of apps, i guess -- it must get more stable first too and get some real documentation.

Without a community like this one FB wouldn't get anywhere, i saw many projects that ended for lack of feedback/support, i got more than i expected, i only have to thank you guys.

The team has also lillo, DrV and Sterling, without them there would be no ports, no gfx and FB would be pretty boring.. and it's so much better when we don't work alone -- there's always someone else to blame, j/k ;)

Without the hard work done by people like Nek, fsw, Edmond (not listed in the readme file, sorry.. fixed), Rel, Marzec, Matthias, plasma, Eric and Blitz that had the boring-and-error-prone task of translating the headers, FB wouldn't be useful for writing anything, but simple tests.

And thanks to everyone else that is telling about FB to other people on message boards, reporting bugs, creating web sites and making it easier to use, writing docs and making editors like Von's FBIDE, i really appreciate it.


retsyo: translating headers from C isn't really a simple task, i will write a text soon explaining how to "convert" most of C declarations to FB -- C++ classes can't be used without wrappers, what makes it way more complex to do.