Oppp, one other comment, notice that the GNOME folks have addressed the virus issue in the link above. Its worth looking at.
BASIC is a "nice" language for beginners ...
by
Naum
·
· Score: 1
... not talking about the Visual Basic with the point and click form setups, the old "freeform" BASIC that came after the line oriented one (QBASIC or whatever...)...
Not sure, though, if this is such a good thing... sheesh, so many scripting languages and hacks out there... great to choose from a plethora of tools but with all these "non-native" programs, C and C++ are still kings... and, that to me, is a sad thing, as an easy to use, built in GUI (for whatever - Linux/Windows/Mac...) would be cool to develop desktop applications that didn't crash (well at least my windoughz box...) might be a "nice" thing for newbie hackers to sharpen their coding claws on...
Re:BASIC is a "nice" language for beginners ...
by
Dave+Walker
·
· Score: 1
As someone who spends 50% of each working day in a line oriented 'Basic' environment (the UniData database), I must speak up here.
GOTO's and spaghetti code are produced by the programmer, not the language. It's not hard to produce structured, easily maintained code in Basic.
C has its own GOTO, you know. Nobody forces you to use it, however!
Re:BASIC is a "nice" language for beginners ...
by
ackthpt
·
· Score: 2
Having coded in InfoBasic, Unibasic, Universe Basic and PI Open Basic, I know of which you speak.
Unfortunately, working through thousands of lines of code written in a language which makes the use of GOTO so painless, I've become a hardened cynic. It's not just the coders, but the ease with which those coders can effect an unconditional branch (guess where this comes from;) that makes the language a danger to choose for development.
Wait until we see a spec on this KBasic, whether GOTO is included.
To make Basic perfect one should:
Remove GOTO
Have Local variables
Execute fast
...
Ah hell, I'll just stick with C
-- Chief Frog Inspector
--
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Re:BASIC is a "nice" language for beginners ...
by
ackthpt
·
· Score: 1
Hmmm, Remove GOTO, Have Local variables, Execute fast.... Sounds like VB fits your definition of
perfect!
VB running under Linux... HAHAHA, oh, I nearly had tears in my eyes! That was a good one!
-- Chief Frog Inspector
--
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Re:BASIC is a "nice" language for beginners ...
by
TheAncientHacker
·
· Score: 1
Hmmm, Remove GOTO, Have Local variables, Execute fast.... Sounds like VB fits your definition of perfect!
Re:BASIC is a "nice" language for beginners ...
by
ackthpt
·
· Score: 2
Yes! It brings GOTO and spaghetti code to your next generation desktop. How else can Linux and KDE be accepted by the ignorant masses?;-)
In later future it
will also
See? They already prepare for irrational flow.;-)
-- Chief Frog Inspector
--
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Unfortuneatly not. They were intended to be squishy lemmings after I got bored one night playing Lemmings 2: Tribes. I could kill many of them with grenades or rockets. But it was so slow, and so much effort!
I wanted a quick mass holocaust style death for those lemmings.
ps. I had no idea QBasic code was so portable;) Thanks!
Re:it might not be so bad
by
jesterzog
·
· Score: 2
I can think of four: "Nothing", "Null", "Empty" and "Missing". Oh, and if you declare a variant array like this:.....
I haven't coded in VB for ages, but the three I was thinking of were null, 0, and I think an empty string translates to null in some circumstances. So I guess there's more than 6 in an ambiguous sort of way.:)
===
Re:Briefing and DeBriefing
by
ccchips
·
· Score: 1
>Why is the sky blue?
For lack of oxygen. As the distance from the earth to a given point in the atmosphere gets greater, the air becomes thinner; hence, the sky has more trouble breathing at those heights, bringing about the blue color.
It becomes black at night because there is no light with which to see the blue color.
--
--------------Rev. C.C.Chips----------------
For the real truth, visit
Let's be consistent here, folks...
by
erat
·
· Score: 3
This group says hoorah when someone wastes their time porting Linux to Palm devices (which is useless: the Palm is the LAST device that will be running Linux effectively. Devices like the iPaq, Yopy, and the soon to be released Agenda VR* are MUCH better suited for Linux use), but when a group of people seek to provide something people can actually use you thrash 'em, and it's only because of some kind of M$ association.
Come on... I'll never touch KBasic, but I think it's cool that it's being done.
In my opinion, the problems with VB viruses in Outlook, Word, Excel, et al are issues with Outlook, Word, Excel, et al, not VB. First off, there's nothing saying that apps need to support KBasic as a scripting language. Second, the apps themselves -- if written correctly -- should not allow the same idiocy that Outlook et al allowed from VB.
Besides, M$ didn't invent BASIC. They cloned it from another system (VMS? I can't remember).
So, like, chill dudes...
Re:whether or not you like this, its what Linux ne
by
Grey
·
· Score: 1
Basic is just a bad framwork for system integration stuff. True a modern desktop environment needs a scriping langage that non-programers can learn to use some-what easily.
The unix world alrady has this, it is called
Python
which is designed after a teaching language ABC,
and has the nice feature of some forcing of style,
everything is a first class object, etc. Which I
think is a good this for non-programers. (their
code will be more readable, and python code is
easier to learn how to read.) However TIMTOWTDI,
we also have Perl and scheme and tcl. Just to show my bias on what should fill the roll of VB/VBscript under
a non-programmer desktop enviorment.
But I feel that Python does the best job for
the NON-Programmer since this is/was a
design criterion for Python.
Basic has a number of bad feature and I think
we should let the pile of cruft died with windows.
-- Grey (Chris Lusena)
This is what gives VB a bad name...
by
sskiles
·
· Score: 2
Arrays. Say you've got a function which returns an array of some sort - let's say an array of variants to make it easy. How do you return an array of 0 items cleanly?
No problem. Have you thought of checking to see if the array is empty? Or raising an error in the function (seems like 0 elements would be an error condition in most cases). Or maybe using error handling...
Object-Orientation. Ever attempted type-safe inheritance or polymorphism in VB? Variants do not count.
There are some OO issues, but have you ever looked at the Implements keyword?
String Concatenation.
VB does do a poor job of string concatenation - but there are ways around that. The problem lies in the memory management involved in resizing the string. The solution is to create a fixed length string of desired size and then replace the contents of the string with your data.
...and I code in it (almost) every day.
That is a really sad statement. Maybe you should start trying to improve your skills and stop complaining. It is possible to write poor code in any language. Unfortunately, the ease of use of VB allows below average programmers to pass themselves off as lead developers when in fact they have a minimal grasp of the language. A good good developer needs to have a grasp of the the way the language operates. A good understanding and knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of any language is essential. If you don't have the patience to learn the language fully, perhaps you should switch to another language or stop calling yourself a programmer. VB has a bad reputation as it is, it doesn't any more below average programmers writing buggy apps...
Re:This is what gives VB a bad name...
by
Spiv
·
· Score: 2
No problem. Have you thought of checking to see if the array is empty? Or raising an error in the function (seems like 0 elements would be an error condition in most cases). Or maybe using error handling...
I don't think 0 items is always necessarily an error condition - there are times when it's perfectly valid to have nothing in a list or whatever
And just how do you intend to check if the array is empty, hmm? Seriously. Show me the code you have in mind. Here is the function prototype:
Function Foo() As Variant()
Show me both how to return an empty array, and also how to test for it.
After doing that, tell me how long it took you to figure out. I'd be interested to know.
[Regarding string concatenation] The solution is to create a fixed length string of desired size and then replace the contents of the string with your data.
Yes, but that's tricky to do cleanly when you don't know the size of your string until you've created it... and the point is it shouldn't be difficult in the first place in such a high-level language!
And as for your opinion me as a coder, without having seen any of my code... I much don't care. It is certainly possible to write poor code in any language, but I'd like to think that I write reasonably good code, and my friends and co-workers (who have seen my code) generally agree (at least do to my face...:-).
I have put a reasonable effort into learning VB, and how to use it most effectively. And if the flaws I've cited above were the only flaws, then it'd probably be okay, but I find the whole language has problems. Those are just a sample of the things which bug me.
I've seen this error before. A professor that I know took a picture of a sign that was in front of a hotel in Germany: "We provide excellent hospitality for our pretentious guests"
I barely survived my basic knowledge
by
Clint+Levijoki
·
· Score: 1
I started learning programming on the apple IIe, which had a basic interpreter in rom.
The only way I managed to learn C was by making a conscious effort to forget my basic knowledge.
The very fact that I had known basic before learning C made it take about 3 months longer to learn C than it really should have.
I code in Java and C++ at work now, and I'm a VERY strong believer in OOP.
I would think the code for a simple calculator would look very similar in BASIC and Python. And after writing it, you could save it in a module so you could go "import mycalc" later:)
-Spiv.
I guess I should have seen this one coming
by
Junks+Jerzey
·
· Score: 2
Hmmm...this is more evidence that Linux desktop environment authors are blindly copying everything Microsoft does. Surely there was a better choice here than BASIC. How about being a little more forward thinking than that?
The trouble with BASIC variants, including Visual BASIC and Dark BASIC and Power BASIC, is that the languages tend to grow in all directions at the same time, with whatever mish-mosh of features seem good at the moment. After a while, that's what drives people away from languages like this. You need to spend a good amount of time becoming a Visual BASIC expert, and it keeps getting more complex with each release. Eventually it's easier to go with a language with a slimmer core.
Seriously, I like the idea of having a good/great language with a kick-ass IDE. The danger is that a mediocre/bad language with a kick-ass IDE will survive because of the IDE. When the limitations of the programming language become a real problem, there will be too much time and effort invested in the project to back out. This is what happens with a lot of VB programmers; people I know who have used VB (I'm not one of them) hate it with a passion. A better approach is to develop the IDE around a good language like python (which I use all the time); everyone I know that knows python loves it, and it scales well with increasing project complexity.
Those pretty much went away with QuickBasic (one of the few things Micro$oft got right) in the mid '80s. Although, if you check closely, GOTO is available in C as well (although no one actually uses it anymore than they use it in most versions of BASIC written in the last 15 years).
So c'mon, BASIC haters, quit whining. Line-numbered, GOTO'd BASICs disappeared in the '80s. Those arguments against it disappeared years ago when GW-Basic/BasicA/Extended Color Basic died.
The only exception is HP/HT/Rocky Mountain BASIC (used for engineering test stations and the like), probably THE worst language ever produced by anybody. And, unfortunately, that one is still around.
---------------------------------------------
The end of that sig should read "If you are having problems with our products please go to Helen Waite." #$%& 120-character limit!
-- Microsoft's VP of Customer Service is Helen Waite.
If you are having problems with their products go to Helen Waite.
Why invent a new BASIC when we already have a better basic: Python?
Re:We don't need BASIC anymore
by
Enahs
·
· Score: 1
That's your opinion. In my opinion, Python sucks goat balls. I find I spend more time adding blank space between lines of codes and adding tabs in code I thought was OK. It's not intuitive at all...again, in my opinion.
-- Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
Re:We don't need BASIC anymore
by
Stele
·
· Score: 1
Well at least your signature explains your opinion.:-)
The whole reason people keep using BASIC is because people can use it.
One of the reasons Windows spread to the desktop so well is because of its wealth of applications. The biggest cause of this wealth of applications was Visual Basic-- a language/IDE that would allow even the beginning programmer to create a useful application for the everyday Joe.
As a seasoned C++ programmer, I fully agree that any BASIC variation could never perform as well as its C++ counterpart. However, as a seasoned network administrator, I can also tell you the sole reason our corporation uses Windows is because one of the critical applications is a Windows only application. While C++ and most other languages provide better performance and control than BASIC variants, a good majority of applications in use dont require such performance and control-- and having a pool of programmers that is 10x as large to choose from usually makes for a better application in the end.
Please, troll moderators, moderate correctly! The above post is Ontopic. It may be many other things, but Offtopic is not one of them.
Here, let me help you in your tasks.
This story is about KBasic, a RAD tool similar to Visual BASIC on Windows, but being developed for KDE on Linux.
My position is that if it is as similar to "Visual BASIC on Windows" as the rest of the K Desktop Environment is to the Windows Desktop Environment, then this would be a manifestly bad thing.
A programming language, originally designed for Dartmouth's experimental timesharing system in the early 1960s, which for many years was the leading cause of brain damage in proto-hackers. Edsger W. Dijkstra observed in "Selected Writings on Computing: A Personal Perspective" that "It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students that have had prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration." This is another case (like Pascal) of the cascading lossage that happens when a language deliberately designed as an educational toy gets taken too seriously. A novice can write short BASIC programs (on the order of 10-20 lines) very easily; writing anything longer (a) is very painful, and (b) encourages bad habits that will make it harder to use more powerful languages well. This wouldn't be so bad if historical accidents hadn't made BASIC so common on low-end micros in the 1980s. As it is, it probably ruined tens of thousands of potential wizards.
So, why do we need BASIC?
-- Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
One cannot deny the fact that there are plenty of programmers (like myself) and/.ers (like myself) who got their first taste of programming via basic. I mean, I still remember the exhilerating sensation of 5th grade on an Apple ][+ writing programs that *did* something (or I thought at the time!).
I guess what I'm saying is that there continues to exist a strong nostalgia for the BASIC programming language, and while I agree it encourages bad habits, the majority of people who are going to incorporate something like KBasic have all of the more conventional standards at hand.
In other words, is Joe User on his Windows ME:) box going to say, "Golly gee, I think I'm goin' to write some programs, boys!"
I'm gonna have to avoid it like the plague, else I give in to the urge I used to get in 7th grade computer class to write that irritating, short BASIC prog that looped about three thousand times before entering a Ctrl-G goto loop; something like:
10 rem Bwahahaha
20 for n=1 to 3000
30 next n
40 print (Ctrl-g)
50 goto 40
And then running it just as I got up to leave class. Especially fun to punch into about 15 computers, type RUN on all of them and then walk down the row brushing Enter keys on the way out. I do that now and my wife'll feed my my monitor. I do have to admit that I kind of miss having to change the line numbers of about 30 lines when I had to squeeze in one more damn line and I was out of available line numbers in that section of the code.;)
I do have to admit that I
kind of miss having to change the line numbers of about 30 lines when I had to squeeze in one more damn line and I was out of
available line numbers in that section of the code.;)
Heh... I remember being annoyed at GW-BASIC's RENUM command and thinking it was a tool for lesser coders who didn't plan ahead. Of course, I'm also pretty sure I actually stuck RENUM into one of my programs somewhere, so it reorganized itself during runtime...
The one thing you have to say about BASIC is that it was fun. I remember coding little games and stuff just for the fun of it. Then I went on to coding little games in C, and writing all sorts of other code in other buzzwordy languages. Yeah, it's enjoyable, but the thrill is gone most of the time.
Here's a thought. I, at least, remember the line-number BASICs with great fondness, and apparently so do a lot of us. Do you think that's because BASIC had some properties that made it fun to hack in (I do) or that it's just because most of us were pretty young when we did that and this is just your standard nostalgia?
-- TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
Here's a thought. I, at least, remember the line-number BASICs with great fondness, and apparently so do a lot of us. Do you think that's because BASIC had some properties that made it fun to hack in (I do) or that it's just because most of us were pretty young when we did that and this is just your standard nostalgia?
I remember coding in BASIC as being fun - you could just do things without the hassle of finding libraries, setting up a class structure, planning ahead... you know, all the things that a lot of other languages force you to do.
Hell, I've still probably coded more stuff in BASIC than any other language, and I haven't used it in about ten years:)
Did you ever do it on the display computers in a big department store? That was even more fun. I never used the bell... just a PRINT with something like
"YOU COULD BUY ME HERE, BUT WHY PAY $300 MORE?"
The message always lasted longer if it didn't catch the attention of the sales staff.
Boy, I'm old enough to have programmed on teletypes that had actual bells that Ctrl-G would ring. The little beeps of PC's just don't compete with a real clanging bell. I guess that I shouldn't mention that we were using HP-Basic on an HP2000 mainframe. Nothing like using a paper based terminal to make you a carefull typist!
Wasn't Dykstra (sic) responsible for the atrocity known as C++?
No that was Bjorne Stroudstup.
Dijkstra was and is a brilliant computer scientist, a winner of the Turing Award (essentially the highest award in the field), and the Dijkstra in Dijkstra's algorithm that you might have heard of if you had been listening in your Data Structures and Algorithms class. He's one of the founders of the entire field.
I do agree that his comment was a little overboard, as I think many computer programmers got their start on BASIC, but there is no justification for using it these days for anything serious.
Wasn't Dykstra responsible for the atrocity known as C++?
Really, I'm sure what Dykstra was referring to was the *old* style BASIC. Line numbers, GOTOs, etc. Blame the fact that it so closely resembles FORTRAN.
When I read this old quote again I realize, gee, Dykstra's an asshole. I would argue that anyone who got started with languages like, say, Lisp, Scheme, Smalltalk, etc. are brain-damaged beyond repair. I wouldn't trust anyone who started in a language like Lisp to write an OS for me (despite the fact (rumor?) that Boeing uses it in development of wiring systems on commercial aircraft (God help us.)
BASIC has *evolved.* Just like C++ evolved from a nice object-oriented C (which should have never happened; C is a systems-programming language that was taken way too seriously:^) into the impossible beast it is today, BASIC is actually quite nice, depending on the dialect. The GOTO in BASIC is obsolete (again, depending on the dialect.) In its place are decent while loops, subroutines, functions, and just about anything you would want in a modern programming language.
What would you prefer over a modernized BASIC? Guile?
-- Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
We don't need BASIC. It says a lot about Microsoft that BASIC was their first product and is still their core language (for example, I reckon it explains their complete inability to produce genuinely modular applications/components).
Mind you, when you're designing an accessible RAD macro-language, you don't want C, you do want something simpler. The Jargon File entry for Pascal, which spells out it's unsuitability as a general purpose language, IMO also shows why it would be a good choice for this. Delphi's ObjectPascal is a case in point.
Re:Uh Oh
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 1
That's only because you're a snob; a truly optimized version of BASIC could run very quickly when compiled, especially since the basic syntax lends itself very well to Assembler; just pass through, figure out what the variables are, make duplicates of them if they change their types (not often, but make sure A# and A$ are separate, and converted as needed), change the GOTOs to branches, and the IFs to conditional branches, blah, blah, blah...
And it begins to sound less like BASIC, and more like Perl, and eventually more like C...
I hope KBasic will really be based on Dartmouth Basic (the basic that existed before Bill Gates), and that the enhancements all the way to GUI type basic build upon the Dartmouth Standard. It would really be nice to see how Dartmouth Basic could have evolved, and, this time, Gates would truely have nothing to do with it.
Hit that nail _on_ the head.
I understood what was intended, however. After a second or two. I have to work in French or Spanish from time to time. When you have to use your functional but unpolished grasp of a foreign language, you get burned sometimes. I sympathise.
But BASIC?? Good Gawd, why?
I'd never read the Jargon File entry. Illuminating. I thought it was just me.
I worked for an outfit once that had an ERP and supply-chain mgmt. suite written in Business BASIC. It was gibberish. Calls to line numbers and A$, B$, J$, J1$, J2$..J4$ and large, flat files. It's all coming back...
I see announcements like this, and GNOME Office using GnomeBASIC for the application automation, and I can't help but wonder, why not use Perl?
Perl is already a successful open-source scripting language, and there are loads and loads of modules built to do nearly anything most users would ever want to accomplish, or at least get you most of the way there. So why go a build a whole new langauge, when extremely competent ones already exist? I hate learning new languages all the time; some convergence could go a long way, I think.
Perl has it's place but it's a monster. It's syntactic contextual hell.
I agree I don't know if we need another language. I don't think I ever code in anything called basic though. Stupid excuse but it's just so old fashined. I remember some guy showing my 6th grade class the real old basic on the apple II! (now let's see if you can guess my age:~)
I just read through the entire Python Tutorial in about 12 hours between yesterday and today. I would say I'm pretty impressed. I heard it was cool but coming from the Java world Python is SWEET! And this was after fooling around with perl for a few hours and getting nowhere. I suck at perl:~( I have not gotten to the point where I can objectively say it is will live up to first impression but I just parsed my mail spool using the build in mailbox module and created a dbm in no time flat. So far so good. PS Run the interpreter in a small window while you read. And _really_ read it. It's just not that long. You'll be kickn' perls ass in no time.
That is the key. They are trying to leverage the vast numbers of VB programmers out there and putting them on unix.
I'll bet that VB programmers might prefer creating/coding in VB on linux instead of windows. Because they won't have to deal with the instability of windows until the debug phase.
Now, you can say that you might miss a windows bug during the coding process that will really hurt at the debugging phase. That's all the more reason to test the correctness of your code every so often, for each platform you're coding. Which in this case is Unix and Windows. Nevermind the 20+ unixen out there, that's not really feasable, I understand. Although, less than 3 is ok.
Ok, so a lot of us started out in Basic. Are we still using basic? Have we moved over to more powerful languages? I know there will be people who won't go past basic. But they won't have to stay on windows because of that fact.
BTW, I've never used VB, and very little in basic.
-- There: Something at a specific location.
Their: Owned by someone.
Please make sure your english compiles.
A source code converter would be better.
by
Michael+Jennings
·
· Score: 1
It seems to me that Microsoft put efficient tools into Visual Basic because the company wants to make sure it doesn't deliver a good programming tool. It isn't Basic that people like, it is the tools available in VB.
Visual Basic is written in C and C++, I understand. Microsoft wants to make sure that its customers are not able to become good enough programmers to compete with its own products. That's why it delivers efficient tools for a ridiculously bad language.
Most people don't seem to realize that the limitations of Microsoft products are deliberate. Windows 98 crashes because there is a deliberate limitation (of 128 K memory, I understand) in GDI and User resources. Exceed those limitations, and the operating system crashes without warning. Deliberate limitations like this are the action of a monopoly wanting to insure that the customers always have a reason to upgrade.
(Run Microsoft's own Resource Meter software in Windows 98 to see the limitations in action.)
It is a challenge for open source software creators not to get involved with Microsoft's destructiveness. Possibly what is really needed here is converter to take source code from a VB program and turn it into source code in a sensible language.
If the conversion could go in both directions, the need to write in VB would completely disappear. This is the desired effect. The present plan, of providing a VB-like language in open source software has the negative effect of encouraging VB programming.
Re:A source code converter would be better.
by
Spiv
·
· Score: 2
Possibly what is really needed here is converter to take source code from a VB program and turn it into source code in a sensible language.
A difficult task, at least if you wish to make it platform independent at the same time. A lot of VB's "power" comes from it's ability to use COM stuff, which makes stuff like
Set xl = CreateObject("Excel.Application")
xl.visible = 1
possible (This pops up an Excel window, in case you couldn't guess).
But if you were prepared to shift languages but keep with win32 for simplicity's sake... I don't see any real barriers to mechanically converting VB to, say, Python. In fact, it should be dead easy - Python has all the features of VB, including COM support, plus ALOT more.
The trick would be converting it to efficient code, i.e. noticing certain idioms and converting them to Python equivalents - it'd make no sense to use the Scripting.Dictionary object in Python, for instance. The only feature of VB that I can't immediately think of a Python equivalent for is it's "With" statement... which would hardly be hard to cope with.
In fact, I'm half tempted... hmm... I just need to get some free time... [grumble grumble] Maybe someday. Or has someone already started doing this?
-Spiv.
Why wait for Kbasic.. get RapidQ!
by
cr@ckwhore
·
· Score: 1
This isn't a new idea people....
There's a package called 'RapidQ' that IMHO kicks *ss. The compiler is cross platform (Windoze,NT, Linux, Solaris, HPUX, etc..) and it can write almost everything from GUI to console to CGI. RapidQ also has the ability to build single executibles under windoze, which is a huge bonus.
There have been a lot of hybrid features added from C/C++, Perl, and Delphi implimented in RapidQ, which takes object oriented BASIC to a new level...
Check it out... I guarantee it's better than KBasic, plus it's been around a bit longer.
Get RapidQ (it's freeware)
Python.
Roll-out is just as fast if not faster than VB or any form of basic.
Its more powerful, developed by programmers for programmers. Object oriented from the get-go. And on and on.
The only thing missing for it...is a RAD/GUI dev tool. Think about. A gui dev tool like vb's...with python code running the show. Using TK....its portable to any TK platform.
I'm extremely surprised pythons imp of TK hasnt been pushed to the forefront of RAD projects for linux. That could be the thing to get all those companies that rollout small...but quick devrate inhouse programs to switch over.
Or maybe...I'm just crazy;)
Re:Geeks who cut their teeth on it malign it?
by
ameoba
·
· Score: 1
Looks like you forgot the pointer to the monestary:
Re:Geeks who cut their teeth on it malign it?
by
Spiv
·
· Score: 2
I learned programming by hacking apart games and utilities that were written in BASIC. [...] Now I'd argue that PERL would be the better choice.
Bletch!
Perl has it's uses, but to learn programming with? If you want to teach bad habits, maybe...
Don't get me wrong, Perl is really handy sometimes, but I would strongly advise against teaching people to program with it. It encourages shortcuts that make things "easy" - which is fine if you know what you're doing. A Perl hacker knows what sort of magic is going on behind the scenes. A newbie programmer doesn't.
One more reason to switch to GNOME. At least
it doesn't look like winblows and crash less
often. I got a good laugh too when I read
about this KBasic. Basic much like Cobol
should not be used as it makes it impossible
for people to learn how to program.
First off, I think it's great. Right now, the only people using Linux are programmers who've had more computers than girlfriends, so something like this is fairly useless. But, Linux is growing fast, and there will be more and more people who don't live for computers, but would like to write some quick app.
But, I was pretty sure Basic was Microsoft's property. Isn't this going to run into some type of legal trouble if it resembles the M$ creation? They didn't even try to name it differently, so I think it's likely to be a close copy in context as well.
________
Re:Geeks who cut their teeth on it malign it?
by
RenaissanceBug
·
· Score: 1
FWIW, I had access to an apple III and a commodore (as well as numerous apple ][-ish machines at school) when I was a young proto-geek, and BASIC wound up being what kept me OUT of programming... its syntax and ways of doing things seemed silly and arbitrary to me, and I wound up not doing any programming until years later when I encountered Perl, Scheme, and Java.
-- --
(if I were a bug, I would want to be a true Renaissance Bug)
Oh well; at least it will take a long time to complete...
Please, NO ONE tell them where they can find already completed code or tools to quickly finish this project! Give us time to develop a decent language as a response...
The last thing we need is a custom Macro Virus Language for Linux... --- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
-- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Re:Aaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 1
The last thing we need is a custom Macro Virus Language for Linux...
Well, that's because that sort of thinking tends to crop up more on those GUI, component-based models that imitate the market leader instead of those CLI, component-based models that design for themselves.
Actually, on our system, they're automatically backed up. And it might get root if you're good, but hopefully the sysadmin is better. However, the language *itself* shouldn't require root for its useful features. That's another obvious design flaw that makes everything so much more usable when your system isn't being hosed, apparently.
Here's Microsoft's party line on this stuff. Of course they aren't responsible for designing a system with no security at all; it's those darn 'malicious hackers'. Too bad we don't know how to fix our software to stop them; oh well.
In my opinion, this is a design flaw that should be avoided. That is all. --- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
*sigh*... here's a shorter one that is quite
pretty. I should point out though that it was written by a friend of mine, not me. I'm typing this from memory, so mistakes are possible.
' VGA Spheres by Peter Aylett
defint a-z
screen 13
randomize timer
for a = 0 to 31
palette a, a*2
palette a, a*2*&h100
palette a, a*2*&h10000
next a
do until inkey$ <> ""
x = int(rnd()*320)
y = int(rnd()*200)
c = int(rnd()*3)*32
for r = 0 to 31
circle(x,y ),r,c+32-r
circle(x,y +1),r,c+32-r
next
loop
Wow; QBASIC had a PALETTE command and a logical and operator? I never knew that, back then!
I could make *my* simple display hack a lot prettier, now! Thank your friend for me, and ask him where he was 10 years ago when I needed him!:) --- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
-- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
basic can be very powerfull
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 1
Just because college professors teach primitive stuff on basic doesn't mean thats all it can due.
Alot of young programmers do a course in basic in their freshmen year in college and move on to c++ and assume that basic is just "print hello world" or "button1=click.here" in vb but thats not true.
10 to 20 years ago when computers had alot less memory and were about as fast as a graphical calculator, the college professors moved on to c because it was alot faster and used less memory. With todays computers that is no longer an issue.
My father used to be in charge of programmers back in the 70's and 80's and he had coders who made gui's back in the mid 80's with JUST basic!
Even more impressive is that he had to manage a project in which a wharehouse wanted to bar scan the ups label on the companies products and have it automatically save the data on the mainframe. He order a dozen ups scanners but they couldnn't link or talk to the other computers.
The coder wrote a full program for the scanners IN BASIC THAT INCLUDED ASSEMBLY to read the label and then create a easy menu system for the workers and a link program to have the scanners talk to the mainframe on its cable! I bet you/.ers didn't know you can do that in basic hu.
Its true that you can not include assembly in visual basic like you could with plain Microsoft basic, but I do not you can create stacks and nodes and various other control structures so good coding is possible under vb. ALot of programmers don't research the structures so they don't use them and performance suffers but vb does have at least some basic support for highly structured programming. I bet you/.ers didn't know you can have algorithyms in vb as well.
I have seen alot of prejiduce in the nerd community. Especially towards basic and vb and even c++ from some of the c loyalists.
It seems alot of programmers learn something one way and refuse to look at anything differently. A few examples are from the comments of users about the recent gnome story abotu having the core modules of helix written in c.
I am astonished at how many c coders reffered to c as a better language then c++ when doing oo programming.
While I admit its true that oo is possible under c, but the fact of the matter is that c++ was designed to support oo programming from the ground up and c is not. At@t's cfront was just really a patch to help. c++ was developed because it was difficult to oo in c.
It seems to me that alot of the coders took c courses college and refused to change there ways. Eg Linus, Miguel from the gnome project and many others.
Try basic. Just because its easy doesn't mean it sucks or that is all it can do.
Re:basic can be very powerfull
by
Spiv
·
· Score: 2
I bet you/.ers didn't know you can have algorithyms in vb as well.
I bet you didn't know that VB is Turing-Complete, did you, huh? Or that at a fundamental level everything that can be done by VB can be done by any other Turing-Complete language? It seems to me that it is obvious that algorithms are possible in VB. Hell, they're possible in Intercal too, no doubt. It's Turing-Complete.
Try PostScript. Just because its a language for printers doesn't mean that is all it can do.
-Spiv.
PS - you seem to have problem with "prejiduce" and "loyalists", while keeping a closed mind yourself. Think of it this way: BASIC suits you, so you like it. That is fine, you are welcome to have that opinion. Why can't others believe that OO is possible or even easy to do in C, or that it may even be better to do in OO in C than C++? Just because you like BASIC, doesn't mean C is a bad choice of language for everyone else (and vice-versa, of course...).
Welcome to Slashmeat... Er, sorry, I mean Freshdot...
I don't mean to start any wars, but WHY in the name of all that's holy was this story posted on Slashdot? In the words of Dennis Miller, I don't want to get off on a rant here, but how does this qualify as "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters."? Take the first part. No disrespect to anyone who writes in BASIC, but I would wager that 90% of nerds sneer at BASIC, and those that don't would never use it anyway. (I am learning to program, and I am NOT going anywhere NEAR BASIC) Also this project is MILES from even being considered for the end user (the post on dot.kde.org says as much) so why is it being posted? Freshmeat is a MUCH more approriate forum. As for stuff that matters, the only reason I can possibly think of to post this on Slashdot is if the poster has some bias toward KDE or stands to benefit from KBasic.
it's potentially a great project, but I don't think Slashdot is the right place to announce it...
This really is the wrong approach. Although it doesn't say so on the site, my impression from previous reading ws that they're aiming for compatability with Visual Basic. Whereas they should be aiming to outdo Visual Basic. Letting Microsoft define the agenda (by copying their platform, rather than building a better one), is doomed to keep Linux users playing catch up.
I did a VB course at trade school last semester. (I come from a background of Ada, C and then Java) What I'd really like to see is a visual-basic *like* program based on Python. Python would be an asset, BASIC a hinderance to Microsoft, and as an open source product, that would really kick ass.
Dear meandering AC,
I think you must have taken a left turn at Albuquerque.
-Pete
Re:Not really true these days...
by
Paradise_Pete
·
· Score: 1
No, you can't be ancient, it is only young and illiterate fuckwits who think that "Um..." means "I disagree".
I think he meant it in a more condecending way, as in "Jeez you sure are ingnorant..."
-Pete
Haven't they heard of C# yet?
by
lars
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· Score: 2
I assume the goal of this project is to provide a tool similar to Microsoft's Visual Basic for Linux. Any other reason would not make sense. While it's certainly a good idea to attract developers from MS platforms, I don't think this is a very good idea now. 5 years ago, maybe, but it seems pretty clear to me that with the introduction of C#, Microsoft is intent on phasing out Visual Basic in the near future. They may not come out and say it directly, but it's pretty obvious that this is what will happen. Consider that VB7 will execute on the same runtime platform as C#, and share all of the libraries, including system libraries, GUI libraries (WFC), etc. and be able to seamlessly integrate with C# code. Moreover, most of these libraries were written in C#, not VB. Microsoft has overhauled the VB language to make it compatible with their new platform, making it pretty clear that VB will be a second-class citizen next to C#, which was designed as the central language for the new platform. If developers can use C#, a very Java-like language which is much nicer to use, to write programs for the Windows platform every bit as easily and quickly as if they were using VB, who on earth would want to use VB? Probably just people who ONLY know VB. Well, all the best developers will all be using C#, so the VB code-monkeys will eventually be forced to make the switch.
Re:Haven't they heard of C# yet?
by
lars
·
· Score: 2
Umm... C# is definitely not meant as a replacement for C++. Even many of the new features in DevStudio (or.net or whatever it's being called now) are written in C++. On the other hand, the VB team at Microsoft is hardly doing anything and is underfunded. Seems like a sure sign to me.
Re:Haven't they heard of C# yet?
by
leonbrooks
·
· Score: 1
Well, all the best developers will all be using C#, so the VB code-monkeys will eventually be forced to make the switch.
Just as the release of Windows 2000 has helped Linux immensely, now seems like the perfect time to offer those ex-VB-codemonkeys something better. Something that really is object oriented (ie, not a straight clone of VirusBasic). Something cross-platform, not bound to KDE, so they can start using it under Windows and then switch platforms when the platform is no longer as important.
Since BASIC is an acronym for Beginners All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, perhaps we should dream up a nice acronym for ADVANCED?
Re:Haven't they heard of C# yet?
by
TheAncientHacker
·
· Score: 1
If C# were the MS way of phasing out VB then its syntax would look like a derivative of VB rather than yet another derivative of C (like C++ and Java).
On a more rational note, why would Microsoft want to phase out the most successful developer's product in history? VB has been a huge success and continues to be. There is now more VB code out than any other language in history (including all the old mainframe code)
Now, if you were suggesting that C# was meant to replace C++ then you might be able to make a case.
But, I was pretty sure Basic was Microsoft's property
Visual Basic is Microsoft's - I'm sure they have a Trade Mark on that name. BASIC, though, is older than Microsoft (Microsoft's very first product was a version of BASIC). They didn't invent it.
-Spiv.
Re:"Linux" doesn't "need"
by
Paradise_Pete
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· Score: 1
Linux doesn't "want" or "need" things - people do those things.
Why don't they just wait another month for the StarOffice source to be released? It's got StarBasic, which is finished and works. Then they only have to clean it up a little, move the visuals to Qt/GTK, add KOM/Bonobo support... project finished a year or two faster. --
-- Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Not many of the Linux developers have never take theory classes and the most have no training in software design. Do you seriously think that the new language will be designed in a correct fashion?
Not many have never take? Your language certainly wasn't well designed.
GWBASIC IS AND WILL ALWAYS BE THE ONLY GOOD PROGRAMMING LANGAGE EVER!!!
Sure, it may have taken 200 lines of code to make a window, but rememeber the kind of satisfaction you got out of it?
Back in my day, we had to fill up 5000 lines a day, just to make minimum wage. When the non-basic programs came out, our company had to be downsized. I had my best friend. Shortly after, I had to hire someone new just to fire myself.
Bring back GWBasic!
P.S. Would anyone who actually has a copy of it email it to me? I can't seem to find it anywhere, and I'm not going to learn a new language, especially an inferior one.
This is a very good thing for Linux
by
BeanThere
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· Score: 1
So Linux has done a reasonable job up till now of attracting numerous fairly technical programmers (i.e C, C++ etc.) But there are only so many C++ programmers. As for VB programmers, well, they're a "dime a dozen" (not meant in a negative way, just that they (and delphi programmers) are somewhat more common than C++ programmers, and in general the knowledge entry level for Basic is much lower.
A "first wave" of skilled C++ programmers coming to Linux can only last so long before it peters out. So a type of VB for Linux provides an excellent way to attract a "second wave" of programmers - perhaps slightly less technical programming than C++, but still very important for many many applications (e.g. database, multimedia etc.) You have to be an extreme zealot to deny that these languages do serve a very useful purpose, and are better suited to many tasks than C++ is.
This could be an important step in getting Linux "mainstream" (assuming thats what you want.) The Linux community isn't an elitist clique. I welcome all types. If we get some VB converts, it means a whole lot more apps for Linux.
Re:Not really true these days...
by
PD
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· Score: 1
Java provides almost the power of the C++ programming language, and combines it with the ease of use of the C++ programming language.
Let's be logical - Re:BASIC???
by
ckedge
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· Score: 1
I'd like to see a real study on this.
I mean, when we're starting out, learning our first programming language, you remember, when you were 12 or 15, do we read books that teach us good software construction techniques and all about software engineering, or do we just RTFM until we can make something neat?
Is there a difference between the amount of good code construction taught in books that teach other languages as compared to Basic? So maybe it's not Basic itself, but the place and time you learn it.
I remember learning Basic on the C64. The manual didn't do anything except tell you syntax and stuff, the same went for all the best C64 Basic books available at the time. If there had been chapters on 'writing good code', 'writing re-usable code', 'writing more code faster with fewer bugs', I would have read them, and I imagine I would have taken pride in following them! Hell, it would have made life SOooo much easier (no matter what language you're starting out with). Have you ever gone back 15 years and looked at the code you wrote when you were 15? The 10-20,000 lines you wrote to create your first (simple) video game or graphics editor? I have. (shudder)
It takes time to learn good software construction techniques the hard way, and the easy way requires instruction, whether by people more experienced than you or by well written books. By the time I had learned a bit the hard way I was programming as a job, and we weren't using Basic.(*) The easy way didn't occur until I had a job with other programmers.
To refute some of the specific claims:
> writing anything longer.. is very painful
Is it because it's Basic, or because the person using it is often inexperienced and hasn't been taught any better? Because the books they learned it from didn't teach them any better? Because they didn't have anyone more experienced looking over their shoulder telling them what they need to know? (which doesn't come until later in life when you're working for someone, and then you're likely *not* using basic).
I know lots other languages which can be frustrating until you've used them for months on end. I think if I had started out with C and only Kernighan and Ritche, I'd have quit the first month. As it was I devoured every C64 Basic book I could find, and I got a lot done, and I did successfully write some nice long pieces of software. It wasn't as painful as anyone thinks. I remember having fun adding more and more and more functionality.
> it probably ruined tens of thousands of potential wizards.
It did not. It kept me interested when I was young, later on I was taught "the way", and here I am.
- CKEdge
Oh wait, except for the year I spent in California doing MS Visual Basic* for that Bank system tracking a half trillion dollars in US Domestic equities. A lot of the code I wrote was top notch, and made me proud. Clean interfaces, debugging channels, library re-use, documentation, full sub-routine headers explaining everything, flexible, expandable, optimized for speed. It didn't matter that I was using Basic, what mattered was that by that point in my life I had learned good Software Engineering, and I applied it. ( * - We used it for front ends (buh) and also back end/server process stuff. I mean hey, if you want to script something, VB was the most painless quickest way to do it.)
Now, on the other hand I'm currently working on a development project that is a mission critical piece of software (runs on the biggest servers in the most sensitive places of e-commerce and financial institutions). It's a lot of C, heirarchical configuration files, and a popular scripting language. I'm proud of the code I write. I'm terrified and horrified by the code I see some others writing. It didn't matter that they were using C or the popular OO scripting language.
When was the last time you looked? Perhaps things have changed since then. The GNU Eiffel compiler, SmallEiffel, in particular, has a reputation for producing small, fast binaries.
I realise this is not a popular opinion around here, but Visual Basic is really not a bad language. It's obviously not designed for use by seasoned coders on large projects, but as a starter language or for getting a small job done quickly...it really is excellent.
No, it isn't.
Visual Basic is a very poor language. The form editor isn't bad, the Object Browser quite handy, the IDE is so-so, but the language is terrible. Here is some food for thought:
Arrays. Say you've got a function which returns an array of some sort - let's say an array of variants to make it easy. How do you return an array of 0 items cleanly?
Object-Orientation. Ever attempted type-safe inheritance or polymorphism in VB? Variants do not count.
String Concatenation. Say you have an HTML page being generated by an ActiveX component called from ASP in IIS (apologies for the MS jargon... this really happened at my workplace though). If you are generating a table, and it has, say 20 columns by 100 rows (or in our case, sometimes more), you naturally would simply generate a big string of the HTML and pass it back to the ASP to spit out, right? But in the process of generating those 2000 table cells, you do quite a few string concatenations. Here's the problem: VB's string concatenation is O(n^2)! (as according to MS, apparently, not to mention our own testing). It can take many seconds or even minutes to spit out something that should be done in a fraction of a second. In the end we wrote a "FastString" component in C++ and used that in the VB. It instantly brought one test case down from 8.5 minutes to 2.5 seconds. Not exactly what I'd call getting a "job done quickly".
So, the obvious question: What's the alternative that's so much better, huh? As a matter of fact, I do have one in mind: Python. It does everything VB does, and much much more. The language is a lot nicer than Visual Basic. *Especially* for beginners. The in-built types are just so much more powerful. Lists and dictionaries being integral parts of the language automatically makes those simple jobs much simpler. (Yes, I realise there is Scripting.Dictionary for VB, but it's not as convenient.)
More impressively, with Python you don't hit your head against a brick wall when you decide to attempt something larger than 50 lines - it's a language that scales well between beginners *and* experts.
If you're wondering, yes I do hate VB with a vengenance, and I code in it (almost) every day. I feel qualified to rant.
They don't even know what "pretentious" means.. how do they expect to be able to write a lexer?:-)
Not really true these days...
by
sheldon
·
· Score: 3
BASIC has evolved well beyond what it first was. It has taken on aspects of other languages.
At the time Dijkstra wrote his observation BASIC didn't support user defined functions, used line numbers, and a whole lot of other ancient problems.
Visual BASIC today competes successfully against Java and has 2-3 times as many developers using it in complex projects well over 20 lines of code.
Re:Not really true these days...
by
sheldon
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· Score: 2
Visual BASIC suffers from much the same problem as Java. For certain tasks they both are very well purposed, but they are not general purpose languages.
They've both been targetted towards RAD for database applications. As such they are good for retrieving data munching on it for a bit and then displaying it to the user to do something with.
However neither is going to be used to write a new Operating System with.
Part of the whole concept of.NET is to leverage the strengths of the different languages together.
Re:Not really true these days...
by
TheAncientHacker
·
· Score: 1
Um...VB6 has been out for a long time. Perhaps you meant VB.Net (VB7). As for "Object Oriented", VB.Net is as pure an "Object Oriented" language as you'll get unless you want to go to SmallTalk-72. Alan Kay (at OOPSLA 87) said that even SmallTalk-80 isn't a true "Object Oriented" language. As for C++, Java and Delphi being "Object Oriented", can you redefine the meaning of the the number 3? (which should in a true OOP language be just an instance of class integer)
Re:Not really true these days...
by
CentrX
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· Score: 1
Visual Basic is a vastly different language from the original Basic, and it STILL sucks.
--
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." - Thomas Jefferson
Re:Not really true these days...
by
Spiv
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· Score: 2
Visual BASIC today competes successfully against Java and has 2-3 times as many developers using it in complex projects well over 20 lines of code.
Yes, and I don't much like Java either.:-P
Certainly, having user-defined functions and ditching line-numbers have improved the language immensely. It's still crap though. I've personally written thousands of lines of VB. And for most it, it felt like I was wrestling against the limitations of it to try make it do something useful. It certainly has taken on aspects of other languages. The result is an ugly, cumbersome language with very big limitations.
-Spiv.
Re:Not really true these days...
by
RickHunter
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· Score: 1
Ok, I acknowledge that BASIC might be considered as a realistic language. Unfortunately, there are already better languages available. Java's one, Python's another, and Perl's a third.
-RickHunter
Re:Not really true these days...
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 1
I've written in Visual Basic 3, 4 and 5. And all of the time spent in it I regard as wasted. Look at what Borland did with Pascal (Delphi), and if you then still can claim MS did a good job bringing VB out of the stone age I'll eat my shoe.
Even VB 6 will STILL not offer real object orientation. It will (as VB 4 and 5 have been) be object based, but not oriented. What's the difference ? Object orientation lets you extend the language (like C++, Java and Delphi allow) and object basedness only shows you where the limits lie.
If I could get a nickel for all the times I had to resort to the Windows API to get something simple done from VB, I'd be a f*cking millionaire.
I remember wanting to make a custom control with VB5, when they stated on the box you could now do that. I spent a whole day messing in VB, after which I started Delphi and wroted what I needed in about an hour or two (without having written a control in it before). Now, THAT's RAD.
Why did I write in VB ? It's like smoking. You know it's bad, but it's hard to quit. But I quit.
Re:Not really true these days...
by
zmooc
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· Score: 1
Are you willing to share with us why you don't like Java ?
-- 0x or or snor perron?!
Re:Not really true these days...
by
zmooc
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· Score: 1
thnx:)
and ofcourse: it lacks descructors #)%&#)%^
-- 0x or or snor perron?!
Re:Not really true these days...
by
Spiv
·
· Score: 2
Well, it's an order of magnitude better than VB...
I've got a few specific things I don't like about Java. It borrows heavily from C syntax, yet somehow loses alot of the terseness - which seems like the worst of both worlds. It's doesn't have templates, which severely limits it as well, IMHO.
But mainly, I just don't like the *feel* of the language. I don't enjoy programming in it, so I don't use it. It's certainly a personal thing. I do like that it has a large standard library (although some parts aren't particularly pretty). And it has other things going for it (like JPython:-), but overall, it's not my thing.
As an aside, why did the parent message to this get moderated down?
Just because you disagree with something doesn't mean it should be moderated down! I disagreed with their opinion, too. But I'd rather see you say *why* you think someone is wrong, than simply say "You're wrong" - or even worse, say it by anonymously moderating them down.
But what about Perl? I think it'll have a shallower learning curve for BASIC adopters, *and* help them on their way to learning C!
Perhaps. In some ways, Perl is like BASIC - it encourages bad habits. (That's about where the similarity stops though).
Of course, I may simply be scarred from having seen too much messy Perl code. It's certainly a powerful language, and I don't mind dabbling in it occasionally. But Python suits my style much better.
It's a personal thing. Which is why, of course, this discussion has become a language war, rather than a discussion of the topic in the story that was originally posted...
Silly developer. Don't you know the fastest way to concat big strings in VB* is to write to a file and then slurp it back in? It only took me an hour to figure out this workaround the first time I came across this.
You gotta think out of the box.:)
Ah yes. MS came so close and yet so far.
(chuckle)
(*) Yes, I'm serious. For those big 1/2-100MB strings it's 100 times as fast. Literally 100.
Yeah, except for the fact that the interpreter chokes when you don't give it the proper number of tabs (just forget copy and paste). It's annoying in emacs, it's unforgiveable in a tty mode.
-- I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Perfect, but we need one more thing!
by
leonbrooks
·
· Score: 1
We need, a VirusBASIC-to-Python translator. Yes, it will result in buckets of poor-quality Python, but it will enable heaps of VB programmers to make the Right Decision{tm}, just like that bloke's dual-boot Athlon did.
By the way, Michael Kohn already has the hardest part done, and done well. That was a hint, guys...
Hey, I thought GNOME was a GNU project, and the standard GNU scripting language is GUILE. I wasn't aware of a Basic project for GNOME. I expected it of KDE, since it's basically trying to clone Windows. But GNOME is a bold, unique project, trying to show a new way with things like CORBA. Let's stop trying to do things the Windows way, and show people a better one.
GUI IDE's are great, but we already have Glade. What we need is GUILE-GTK+ bindings and Glade-GUILE.
And yes, I started programming with BASIC, and I have used Visual Basic extensively, and boy, is it a pain. I wish my first language had been Pascal, or Java, or Python (although the latter two didn't exist).
Because Boa Constructor exists
by
leonbrooks
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· Score: 1
As is often the case with folklore, especially when an axe needs grinding, THIS IS NOT TRUE.
QuickBASIC (it was still all caps) was written in house by MS in the mid to late '80s. Versions 3 and 4 were in development simultaneously with V4 being the first one to use the threaded p-code compiler.
(I knew the guy who wrote the memory management code before he retired to Idaho - )
Before I say anything else, I'd like to point out that the folks who want to develop KBasic can do whatever they want, and we can't tell them what to do.
The fundamental question with KBasic is: which flavor of Basic will it be? Basic is even more fragmented than UNIX ever was. There are hundreds of flavors, each with its own quirks.
If KBasic is a brand-new variant with its own quirks, it will still be an interesting and somewhat valuable addition to KDE. (I'll never touch it, but there will be folks who are glad to see it.)
If KBasic and GNOME Basic are brand-new but compatible with each other, the possible benefits become much larger.
If KBasic and GNOME Basic are done in a way compatible with the Microsoft Basics, especially the embedded ones used for macros in Microsoft Office, then this will be totally cool. Anything that makes it easier to move from a Microsoft platform to free software is a Good Thing.
P.S. Modern Basic languages are far advanced past the old BASIC languages such as Applesoft BASIC. Applesoft was severely broken, and you had to fight with it to do things. If you wanted to have an IF statement with multiple lines of code after it, you had to test for the opposite and if the opposite was true, GOTO a line after the multiple lines. Not my first choice for teaching programming to high school kids, yet it was used for this in the early 80's.
steveha
-- lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Thanks for the comments on Python! I'm sitting here, Python book by my side, currently trying to learn it. Was getting disheartened but reading posts like yours fill me with confidence again.
I've done some VB coding, only small stuff (a dice roller program for AD&D'ers), but I did NOT like the language itself. I wrote that one program and never went back to to VB again. Nice to see you make the Python comparison since I'm having WAY more fun (when it's not doing my head in) learning Python than I did VB. I am really not sure of the logic of designing a VB'esque program for Linux. There are far better options than making a version of BASIC.
PS, please note that nowhere in this post did I claim Python was better than Perl, so you "Perl is better than Python" people can just go post somewhere else or something:)
Heh. This guy at work got ahold of a C64 in mint condition (unopened manuals!) and brought it in. We hooked it up to our 52" TV, which was quite a sight in itself, and all the engineers sort of congealed around it and we wrote this goofy program that "received alien transmissions from space". Unfortunately it was lost when someone tripped on the power cord, but I then ported it to a Java servlet. =)
It turned out to be our CEO's birthday and there was a party, so I hacked together a little animation program:
1 OFF = RND(4) * 15
5 GOTO 10
8 FOR I = 8 TO 0 STEP -1
9 GOTO 20
10 FOR I = 0 TO 9
20 N = 10 - I
30 FOR J = 1 TO N+OFF: PRINT " ";: NEXT J
40 FOR J = 1 TO (I*2)+1: PRINT "*";: NEXT J
50 PRINT
60 NEXT I
70 IF I > 1 THEN GOTO 8
490 IF RND(691)<.5 THEN PRINT:PRINT:PRINT " HAPPY BIRTHDAY
KIR!!!!":PRINT
494 C = RND(5) * 10
495 PRINT CHR$(150+C);
496 D = RND(6)*1000
497 FOR I=1 TO D:NEXT I
500 PRINT:PRINT:GOTO 1
It was very surreal to be coding BASIC on a C64 in the year 2000...
-- TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
I almost never write anything in BASIC unless I'm forced to, but the only fundamental thing I really have against BASIC as a language is what MS Visual BASIC has turned it into.
If KBasic avoids the same trend and doesn't do everything possible to do what learner programmers mean at the expense of language integrity, it might not be so bad... and thankfully in an open source model, there's probably not much chance of this happening.
Come to think of it, as long as it doesn't end up with six different ways to specify NULL, I probably won't be too offended by it. (Off the top of my head I can only think of 3 in VB, but someone told me there were 6.)
I knew it was something like that, but I kept thinking along the lines of a function like IsEmpty(), IsNull() and IsMissing(), but of course, Nothing being an object (or lack of, anyway) is treated slightly differently. And of course searching the MSDN for "IsNothing" didn't help...
As has been mentioned somewhere else in this discussion, there are just too many kinds of null (or whatever you want to call it) in VB. Especially as it treating an "empty" variant as an integer makes it magically seem to be 0, but treating it like a string makes it magically seem to be "".
Dammit! Somehow clicked on the anonymous button! That's what I get for posting to Slashdot having only had 5 hours sleep in the last 36 hours...
Hmm... A thought occurs. I complain about Slashdot posting this story, then contribute to the message forum devoted to the article vociferously. Methinks I'm a hypocrite. Yes. Methinks I need sleep.
Out of curiosity, why do yo say it will never get completed or be maintained? Do you assert that simply because it was written with a RAD tool it has the inherent flaw that will cause it to never be finished? Wow...I would assert the opposite on such things.
I am waiting with unaccustomed amusement when Kylix gets released and we see the flood of converted programs. Some will be good, most will be superfluous, but all will be welcome.
----------
--
----------
Twisted Little Gnome - The Podcasting Network
http://www.twistedlittlegnome.com
Thanks for the comments on Python! I'm sitting here, Python book by my side, currently trying to learn it. Was getting disheartened but reading posts like yours fill me with confidence again.
Glad to hear it!
I personally learnt Python from Programming Python, from ORA, which is a fairly good book, but I soon learnt that the Online Documentation was invaluable. Especially the Library Reference.
For those who are interested, I have a small python cgi here . Just to pretend this is on-topic... "I'd hate to write even that in VB".:)
The light coming from the Sun is made up of many colors, each of which has a different wavelength. The atmosphere affects how each color of light passes through, as the light waves encounter molecules, small water droplets and bits of dust.
Blue light has a short wavelength, and the particles in the air scatter it around, making the sky appear blue. Red light has a longer wavelength, which acts more strongly and is not scattered as much.
Sunsets are red because in the evening, the light has more atmosphere to pass through to get to your eye, and only the strong red light can make it through.
If this were true, then as the day progresses from Noon to Sunset, you should see a steady spectrum of colours appear in the sky, going from Blue to Red, as the atmosphere for the light to travel through gets densers, and only light of particular wavelength can get through.
... still has to be GFA BASIC. Such a joy to program in, even compared to modern languages, and it had a decent syntax and a full set of control structures. And I so miss the feature that allowed you to collapse an entire function into a single line in the editor...
But yeah, the point is that pretty much any procedural language can take on whatever aspects of others it wishes. Sure BASIC uses a "novice" syntax, but that's no reason why there shouldn't be an implementation that successfully integrates object orientation and other features found in C++, Delphi or Java.
Unfortunately, VB is only partly there, and a bit of a mess to boot. But there's nothing to stop KBASIC from conquering these problems and producing a clean, useful implementation of the language which can be used for modern, large projects by both people with little programming experiance and those that have been coding for years.
BASIC is not the problem, it's implementations are.
Agreed (good old Atari ST...;) ) as far as the older versions are concerned. The stuff they've been pushing out recently is crap [I don't know why I'm still getting all their betas, but I won't complain about that].
Their (yuck!) Win32 port closely resembles a (yuck!!!) VB clone, but at least it works in wine.
the point is that pretty much any procedural language can take on whatever aspects of others it wishes
without remaining compatible, though, unfortunately. More fragmentation in programming languages ("this program requires xyz's implementation of the abc compiler, version 1.23.45") is just what we need (not).
Still, KBasic is probably a good idea - it will make it much easier for VB programmers to port their stuff to real OSes.
-- This message is provided under the terms outlined at http://www.bero.org/terms.html
Geeks who cut their teeth on it malign it?
by
substrate
·
· Score: 3
I see that a lot of negative comments are being made about BASIC at this point. I don't know that I'd deploy my industrial strength e-commerce application on BASIC but I still think having BASIC around is a really good thing. A lot of people, myself included, cut our teeth and first aquired a desire to code on BASIC on our VIC 20s, Commodore 64s and Apple IIes. The easy to learn language and use language allowed many of us to learn from coding algorithms gleaned from the pages of BYTE (before it started to suck and didn't cater to the lowest common denominator it was closer to Doctor Dobb's Journal than just another IT rag).
Knowing Perl, C, C++ or the language du jour only makes you a well payed trained monkey. Understanding algorithms and how they effect efficiency is a lot more important. This can be gleaned using any language, BASIC had the advantage that it was simple to use, you didn't need to worry about syntax or memory allocation or pointers.
Maybe spending effort on a modern BASIC is misguided, but to bitch and moan about the language many geeks learned from is inane. I've thought for a while that PERL was the BASIC of the present era, I think its shameful that it's not included on every machine shipped, much like BASIC was not too long ago.
Having a BASIC or PERL that could do native GUI stuff on whatever box it exists on would be a great thing if it was shipped on every box regardless of OS. It'd get more people actually interested in computer science at an early age rather than the current state where most people seem to be in it for the money and have little or any talent.
Re:Geeks who cut their teeth on it malign it?
by
mflagg
·
· Score: 1
What about Java for your "universal" language? For most of the OS's you can get a Java enviroment. And with those enviroments you can do all those Windows, buttons, comboboxes, etc in the native GUI (AWT). There are Development Kits for MOST of the OS platforms out there and many of them are free; you just have to download them, maybe register. Not to mention that for the most part you application is all ready cross-platform straight out of the box. I know that Java does have some flaws, no access to hardware and at times speed issues, but it addresses a lot of the language problems and faults of other languages. No pointers, no memory allocation de-allocation, has strong typing, has inheritance. I'm just curious as to why hasn't anyone mentioned Java?
Re:Geeks who cut their teeth on it malign it?
by
reallocate
·
· Score: 2
People like Basic because -- for them -- thinking in Basic is easier than thinking in C, C++, Perl, etc. Get over it.
For some, it is the other way around. Get over it.
This is about computers, folks. Not the One True Faith. It is all bits in the end.
If you think the difference between Basic and, say, Perl is something that r-e-a-l-l-y matters to the future of the human race, then let me point you to a nearby monastery.
-- -- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Re:Geeks who cut their teeth on it malign it?
by
substrate
·
· Score: 1
I'm not complaining about liking or not liking BASIC. What I'm complaining about are the elitist simpletons who would like to rid the planet of BASIC despite the fact its probably what introduced them to programming. I don't care if the language is BASIC, but there is a place for some simple to use language on every machine shipped. I don't know that the visual BASIC applications even qualify as that anymore.
I learned programming by hacking apart games and utilities that were written in BASIC. I learned a lot about making code run faster through efficient algorithms the same way. Eventually I moved on to assembler and some time after that to C. I did this prior to any formal training in programming, as did a lot of other people. In a large part this was because whatever computer you bought: Commodore Pet, Vic-20, 64, Apple I, II, III, TI-99/4A, PC with MS-DOS etc. came with some form of simple programming language. It happened to be BASIC. Now I'd argue that PERL would be the better choice.
What is wrong with this?
by
JDBrechtel
·
· Score: 2
This Anti-Microsoft thing is getting a little childish now. It has it's bad points, but that doesn't mean *EVERYTHING* about it is bad, and that's exactly why most (not all) people are downing KBasic. If KBasic has anything close to as easy to use and powerful of an IDE as VB does (and FREE too!) this will really really help Linux get moreso out onto the mainstream. The people that don't want something like this to come out obviously don't ever want Linux suitable for the mainstream.
I happen to like the indentation of Python. I find it's only rarely inconvenient. Much less than people tend to think.
Any decent editor can cope with indenting and outdenting large blocks of code easily, which pretty much makes the "correct number of tabs" thing a non-issue. Or by "tty mode" did you mean pasting directly into the interpreter? What an odd thing to be doing with large sections of code.
Yup, If I had any moderator points I would have used one here. Failing that, I feel I have to comment.
Yes, BASIC is and always has been a dreadful language. It lacks beauty, it lacks elegance. That's not to say KBasic won't be fun to play with, and good luck to the guys who want to play at developing it, but Yeeurgh! No way am I going to develop in it!
Python has elegance, and beauty, and doesn't force you to turn your head inside-out like scheme does. I know some people love the spawn of
LISP, and it has elegance for sure, but I think you have to really get off on all those nested parentheses to enjoy coding in it. (It's some kind of perversion (if you ask me). (You didn't, I know))
Anyway, BASIC was always the result of an intellectual mistake - that a simplistic set of constructs would somehow make programming simpler for beginners. It doesn't - it just restricts the language to beginners.
My personal list of cool stuff a language has to have includes: inheritance, encapsulation, polymorphism, dictionaries, lists, functions as first-class objects, and clear consistent syntax. BASIC is not even close. If KBasic gets even half as close as Python then good, but still, why bother? --
Visual Basic is a very poor language... VB's string concatenation is O(n^2)!
Ouch! They must have worked very hard at Redmond to make it *that* bad, given that the obvious string concat implementation is O(n). That would make naive concatentation of N strings K characters each O(K N^3).
But that is a language implementation problem. Not a language problem per se. Nothing's to stop the KBasic team from doing better. They could do a lot better, actually: with a little thought and a little exponential overallocation in the string implementation, naive concatenation of N K-character strings would be only O(K N lg(K N)).
/A
Re:whether or not you like this, its what Linux ne
by
Orlando
·
· Score: 1
On the flip side however, such a language inevitably means the world and his dog suddenly being able to write apps easily, which in turn means a dirth of poorly designed, badly written software. Just look at 90% of apps written using VB, or 90% of the people writing VB applications.
To me this is one of the big differences between UNIX and Windows, the learning curve for UNIX is steep enough to both deter people who would never be good at it anyway, and instil a sense of 'technical maturity' and commitment to those who persevere. Sure it will take twice as long to get to the same level, but that person will be four times as useful to you at the end of it.
So you give people who have no idea how to make a decent linux/kde app, and let them churn out half-baked apps by the thousands!
Did nobody notice that the quality of most of the VB apps made on the net tend to reflect the time put into making them? Sure there are good ones, but the bad ones are VERY much that.
Don't you know the fastest way to concat big strings in VB* is to write to a file and then slurp it back in?
No, the fastest way is to use a COM component written in C that does it for you:)... we found that a speedup of 200 times was trivial to achieve (talking approx. 1.5Mb files here).
And I shudder to think of a webserver serving 100s of users at once having VB component spew files everywhere and read them back in... ugh!
-Spiv.
Re:whether or not you like this, its what Linux ne
by
kongstad
·
· Score: 2
I totally agree.
Though there can be no doubt that basic has many shortcoming compared to eg C and C++, it still doesn't mean that it could be the right tool for som developer for some jobs.
An easy language, and a good graphical developmnet environment will encourage development of small programs that scratch the itch of the average user.
Back in older times when my dad bought our first computer (commodore vic 20) I started doing Basic. This continued on the commodore 64, and on our first PC it was gwbasic.
Then I accidently stumbled accros turbo pascal 5. I tried to take a program I made in gwbasic and converted it to pascal (thank god for the excellent help function in turbo pascal), and I discovered that it ran many times as fast on pascal.
Well perhaps others will try the same. Writing
10 print "Hello world "
20 goto 10
is sure an easy concept to begin with.
Besides that for many apps it isn't necessary to have the code highly optimized.
Yes, it had a Palette command that was incredibly slow... you were much better off using:
outp &h3c8, r
outp &h3c8, g
outp &h3c8, b
outp &h3c9, index
(I think... it's been a while)
Incidentally, QBasic did have a logical and, but I didn't use it in that program... you're probably confusing the notation for hex with that. The and operator was simply "And", IIRC.
-Spiv.
Core libraries should be shared with Gnome Basic
by
-benjy
·
· Score: 3
Gnome already has a nicely designed alpha of Gnome Basic (http://www.gnome.org:65348/gb/). This is really a point where KDE and Gnome should cooperate. While they will certainly need to have different front end GUIs, a lot of the back end code can be abstracted into a library and used by both projects. Since they are constrained by a pseudo-standard set by Microsoft, it is not like they will be too inconvenienced by working together.
I hope the KDE team is willing to lend their assistance so that both projects are speeded to completion.
Now, before everyone starts screaming about viruses and the need for this, let me add another thought. At least for Gnome Basic, Michael Meeks was very conscientious about making gb have a secure sandbox from which an evil virus could not escape. The worst thing that can happen right now is DoS RAM consumption.
Also, there is an actual need for Basic in both Gnome and KDE. If we are going to capture any portion of the business users, Open Source must offer spreadsheets and word processors which are compatible with Micro$oft Basic. A large number of companies have huge collections of pre-existing documents which *must* work correctly or they will never even consider switching to Linux/BSD. Gnome Office and K Office must provide this capability before they can make serious inroads in the corporate world.
I applaud the KBasic team for their efforts and I wish them well on a successful implemntation of KBasic.
To all of you Linux Hypocrites out there who are spitting on a legitimate GNU/Free Software project, I have a few words for you. KBasic could, in fact catapult Linux onto many corporate desktops almost overnight, I would like to remind all of you that if it were not for the toolset M$ provides to actually code something for the Windows platform, I don't think that corporate America would have remained stuck in Windows for so long.
Certainly Visual Basic is is one of those tools. The bottom line in corporate America is that a button is a button and a combo box is a combo box, and a text box is a text box. Corporate America wants tools that are easy to use so they can:
1) connect to their databases
2) put stuff into them, pull stuff out of them,
3)and maybe show the user a little something along the way.
It seems like the KBasic team has the vision thing and all of you who posted negatively about a VB or Basic clone, will be kissing their feet in a few years.
Ok I admit it. My job is coding ASP based on VBScript. I love BASIC. You know why? I've never done a Computer Science degree! I taught myself and got a job out of it...the fact is BASIC does the job. I've based dozens of websites on it, and they WORK, it's that simple. You can whinge all you want about how it's unstructured, how it teaches poor programming technique, or whatever, but the fact is, at the end of the day, you can nead it into something that works very quickly, and, whats more, I can give the code to less computer literate users and they can actually work out how to modify the code to their own needs without needing to really have any programming knowledge...which they surely can't do with code like this:
$_ = $links2;
while (/[0-9]{0,3}./) {
s/[0-9]{0,3}.//;
}
(Flames about my shoddy Perl programming will be gracefully ignored; yeah I know I'm crap, like I said, I teach myself)
Ok I admit it requires a more powerful language to create powerful programs...but you don't always NEED powerful programs. You just need something that does the job, and porting a language like BASIC will hopefully do what it did for M$ - reel in a pile of "amature" programmers, greatly increasing the Linux software base, and hence increasing it's viability as a desktop OS.
-- -"I still believe in revolution; I just don't capitalize it anymore." - srini!
I think the bulk of things in NewDeal are not written in NewBasic. They certainly existed a long time before NewBasic was ready for primetime.
In the original PC-Geos (not really original if you count C64) Apps were written in assembly. Geos2/NewDeal stuff was written with a cross assembling/compiling system.
I was impressed with Geos when I had a 76k WYSIWYG word processor that did everything I wanted.
It has since suffered a little bloat (doesn't support XT's very well anymore) but is still quite impressive.
-- --
That which does not kill us has made its last mistake.
The big aim is to have a free and good programming tool.
The KBasic language is a pretentious project, so we will need a long time to make it
complete.
--
--
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
Probably too late to be noticed...
by
cr0sh
·
· Score: 2
But, as a Linux newbie who has several years experience with VB (since the 3.0 days), I think this is a step in the right direction - but not for the reasons you may think...
Forget the language - it's the IDE that I want.
This is probably the ONLY thing M$ has done right - an IDE that has a "forms" editor (to lay out your windows), an attribute settings editor (to modify controls), code editing windows (intrinsically tied to the controls*), and controls to drop on the form, to build the forms easily.
I don't know of any comparable system for Linux (now, I know I am showing my lack of Linux knowledge here - I am sure there are good IDEs, and code editors, and maybe even form layout editors for X - who knows? - I just haven't gotten to the point of investigating about them yet). I know there is some similar things for Java...
After I learned C/C++ (stronger in C than C++ - yes, amazingly I am a coder who knows about both!), I realized that what I wanted was the ability to have an IDE like VB's, but the ability to write the "glue" code in C/C++ (and glue code is what most of VB is - it is almost possible to build an app in VB, that does useful work, without writing a line of code - that isn't to say it will be a perfect app - nay, one needs to add code to add exception handling, so that one doesn't screw up a DB table or something). Such a beast has yet to appear - the closest I have seen has been some of the Java IDEs.
If this could be done - if the Linux dev community can see past it's arrogance (yes, VB is limiting in some respects, but it is also very powerful - if only in the RAD arena alone - once you know how to leverage it, it can be great for many types of applications - Quake clone? Unlikely - Frontend for data visualization - Done every day), they would realize the importance of the IDE, and not of the language (this also assumes the IDE will be extractable from the rest of the code).
(*) - This is one of the powers of the VB IDE above VisualC (and the few other IDEs for other languages/platforms). With VisualC, one must build the form(s), then build the code, then do a wierd "hooking" process to "attach" the code to the various events that the form sends out, so that when an event occurs, the code is executed (and overrides a default action). Then the programmer can compile and link the app to form an executable. I like the way VB does this - just double-click the control, select the event procedure to override, and code - then compile to "test" the app. A real RAD tool...
First QBasic Lemmings Screen Saver
by
King+of+the+World
·
· Score: 1
' tap to start the cleansing
SCREEN 13
LOCATE 8, 3: PRINT "10 Million Lemmings Can't be Wrong"
LOCATE 10, 15: PRINT "contact"
COLOR 7: LOCATE 14, 9: PRINT "tomtomdrum@yahoo.com"
COLOR 8: LOCATE 22, 23: PRINT " to quit": SLEEP 5
' OPTIONS MENU (well maybe)
gravity =.6 'gravity inflicted on the lemmings
chanceoffalling = 30 'the random odds of starting to fall, it gives a tricle effect to the jumping, the odds of falling are 1/chanceoffalling
nooflemmings = 50 'the number of lemmings on the screen at one time
SCREEN 12 'the screen mode
mx = 640 'the X axis res for the screen mode
my = 480 'the Y axis res for the screen mode
wobble = 3 'the wobble on the lemmings (left & right) as they fall, it is +- wobble each side in pixels
bloodcolour = 4 'the colour of the lemming mush
bloodrange = 5 'the amount lemming mush width to be left when a lemming dies. in a pyramid shape
' END OF (GA?) MENU
' MAIN PROGRAM
RANDOMIZE TIMER
DIM a(nooflemmings, 1, 1), b(mx)
FOR i = 1 TO nooflemmings
a(i, 0, 0) = INT(RND * mx) + 1
a(i, 1, 0) = -5
NEXT i
' tap to start the cleansing
' QBasic Lemmings screen saver version 1.1 for slashdot.
' -- fixed stupid greater/less than signs in code
SCREEN 13
LOCATE 8, 3: PRINT "10 Million Lemmings Can't be Wrong"
LOCATE 10, 15: PRINT "contact"
COLOR 7: LOCATE 14, 9: PRINT "tomtomdrum@yahoo.com"
COLOR 8: LOCATE 22, 23: PRINT "<ESC> to quit": SLEEP 5
' OPTIONS MENU (well maybe)
gravity =.6 'gravity inflicted on the lemmings
chanceoffalling = 30 'the random odds of starting to fall, it gives a tricle effect to the jumping, the odds of falling are 1/chanceoffalling
nooflemmings = 50 'the number of lemmings on the screen at one time
SCREEN 12 'the screen mode
mx = 640 'the X axis res for the screen mode
my = 480 'the Y axis res for the screen mode
wobble = 3 'the wobble on the lemmings (left & right) as they fall, it is +- wobble each side in pixels
bloodcolour = 4 'the colour of the lemming mush
bloodrange = 5 'the amount lemming mush width to be left when a lemming dies. in a pyramid shape
' END OF (GA?) MENU
' MAIN PROGRAM
RANDOMIZE TIMER
DIM a(nooflemmings, 1, 1), b(mx)
FOR i = 1 TO nooflemmings
a(i, 0, 0) = INT(RND * mx) + 1
a(i, 1, 0) = -5
NEXT i
Thanks! That looks pretty cool when bilinearly filtered and scaled to 640x480 in DOSEMU.:)
Incidentally, those lemmings look sorta like penguins, and they can run on Linux! Coincidence? I think not...
SCREEN 13
FOR I = 0 TO 319
FOR J = 0 TO 199
PSET (I, J), I OR J
NEXT J
NEXT I
REM P.S. Boy, the standard DOS color palette bites! --- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
-- pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Re:Ever heard of MFC wizard?
by
cr0sh
·
· Score: 2
To be honest, the last I saw of this was in version 4.2 - I have not seen what is in the current version of VisualC. But can you simply click on say a text box, (or pop the wizard) and have a new method of Text1_Change() appear?
Might have to investigate it further (though I am doing less and less on my doze box as time goes by - been having a real fun time lately patching my kernel to 2.2.14 to get my Zip drive working properly)...
Wheel? Sounds like a good idea, let's invent it!
by
JohnZed
·
· Score: 2
Arrgh! There are already a bunch of great form/UI designers for Qt/KDE, like QtDesigner from TrollTech (GPL). Why recreate one of these? QtDesigner is all XML-output-based, so you could certainly use that. There's already QtDesigner-python module (http://www.thekompany.com/projects/pykde/?dhtml_o k=1) that could be a basis. Plus, QtEz and the KDevelop dialog designer have good starts as well.
Anyways, of course they have a right to do whatever they want with their free time, but I hope that all the designers are aware of the great choices out there.
Really, the key to Visual Basic is that you can easily add a new widget (component, VBX, whatever) and have it integrate smoothly into the designer. Without that feature, these GUI designers are really just going to be toys, sadly.
--JRZ
An excellent BASIC resource
by
Prolog-X
·
· Score: 1
If you need information about any dialect of BASIC, check out Neozones. Although the main topic of Neozones seems to be QBasic, the forum users know various BASIC dialects and are very helpful.
Have you seen BASIC lately? The current Microsoft product, Visual Basic, deserves all the abuse that it gets. It's a tortured inconsistent waste of time designed to trap programers into a never ending quest to make it work. Each new version breaks previous work, the functions are poorly documented and enormously frustrating. The computer has the information you want, but you can't get at it! Typical of MS products, the interface is poor, information is hidden, and you are always dependent on MS for more. The biggest joke of all is that it is much easier to directly manipulate the Windows API with C than it is to use VB or that other beast MSFC. The whole, "this is an easy way to make great looking code" sales line is a big lie. Don't even mention VBA to me.
I cut my teeth on BASIC by accident of fate. It was easy to impliment on small computers with limited resources. I had a great time working with a Timex Sinclair, but I would never force that on anyone today. Why do that when all reasonable OSs ship with a complete set of superior compilers?
Nor would I pain someone with VB. Why do people think C is not for beginners? Learning C was both informative and empowering. It was not difficult, except that I had to cast asside some bad habits. A simple subset of C is just as easy to learn as BASIC, but the concepts are much more usefull.
I wish the folks at KDE all the best, but I question the ultimate usefulness of the effort.
The member list. Read down at the bottom, at the "Additional thanks to" section. Or rather read the BLANK space there.
Yes my fellow working class GNULIX user, those bastard capitalists programmers list only themselves as creating KBasic. I ask you - should not the man who created thier keyboards be listed too? Or the workers at the powerplant who provide the electricity needed for them to program? Or even Ivan who runs the breadstore down the road for providing nourishment to the programmers?
I also see they have released this software under the GPL. Blasphemy! Marx is spinning in his grave at this. How can the bourgeoisie release such foul capitalist inspired code under the sacred socialist liscence - the GPL?
Yes my fellow men, abandon KBasic as you would abandon your class in society. As you would embrace Lenin, embrace the One True BASIC - GWBASIC!
I probably *will* try out KBasic, at least. BASIC doesn't resemble the teaching language that Dykstra railed against way back when. Gee, he did a *much* better job of writing an elegant language.:^)
-- Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
Forget the bullshit features !!
by
kazzuya
·
· Score: 1
This damned software world is filled with races to features. We are copying MS Windows' enough.
Forget those bullshit features.. make the code smaller not bigger !
Maybe, do some research on how to revolutionize the ComputerHuman interface. Instead of adding crap to your GUI why don't you try to make computers usable to "my grand mother" ?
The only people using basic are
a) Those who write or maintain Windows gui/components/ASP
b) Those without the balls to learn Java
If they wanted to do something useful, they would write a Java IDE. But that has already been done by Forte/Sun. It seems all KDE wants to do is make linux into a Windows clone, or create a sandbox for newbies.
Now I'm not criticising basic. It had its day a couple of years back in Office 97 and VB5, but you have to move with the times and cross platform, OO is the way forward.
Re:Nobody needs basic any more
by
bero-rh
·
· Score: 2
The only people using basic are
a) Those who write or maintain Windows gui/components/ASP
They're all potential users of real OSes who just haven't used them yet.;)
Actually I know some people who match this description and who would move to a real OS if they didn't have to rewrite all their stuff in a totally different language.
Rewriting 20000 lines of BASIC code in C, C++ or Java is not exactly a fast or interesting job.
b) Those without the balls to learn Java
While there's no really working free JDK (kaffe still isn't there, probably some time in the future...), there are other reasons not to do Java.
If they wanted to do something useful, they would write a Java IDE
Plus a free JVM and JDK... Without these, a Java IDE is pretty much useless.
It seems all KDE wants to do is make linux into a Windows clone
No way. KDE doesn't have a bluescreen module, a "send-everything-to-microsoft"-feature (aka windowsupdate.microsoft.com), useless drive letters,...
KDE is just trying to make the transition from a broken OS to a real OS as easy as possible, which is a good thing.
Basic is definitely not the greatest programming languages, but basic variants are still quite easy to get for people who haven't done programming before (and who don't want to be serious programmers).
-- This message is provided under the terms outlined at http://www.bero.org/terms.html
Re:Nobody needs basic any more
by
Wesley+Felter
·
· Score: 1
Even people in category A will probably start switching to C# pretty soon; it has most of the advantages of Java but also integrates with that Windows thing that so many people are addicted to. So long-term I think a gc# compiler that is supported by KDE Studio might be a better choice.
I am waiting for a Visual Intercal developement appl. I bet the graphical representation of the stuff will not be a 2d view but a 1d wiev (1d as in a line - like a tape - like the turing machine - for full compatibility:)
--
-- 1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq
Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
Pleasink to be stoppink gettink ideas from UserFriendly
Reminds me of ...
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 1
About 10 years ago I came across a shareware
program for MSDOS. It was written in some
version of MS Basic. It had a very fancy
graphical interface, and pull down help menus.
What did the program do? Well, you entered
the temperature in a little box and clicked
on Fahrenheit or Celsius. Wow, a program that
converted temperatures! And the registration
fee was only $15!
I don't think any of the current languages are truly brilliant. There should be a language that combines the best of Basic, Fortran, Forth, and the newer structured languages with a combination of its own syntax.
Because it's a scripting language... quick and dirty. Really only for making short programs. Designed to be used by people who can't (or won't) ever write real programs, more than by actual coders.
And not really that bad... I hear that people who use Perl get brain-damaged also!
--
If you are modding me down because you disagree with me, use the "Flamebait" category, not the "Troll" one.
Re:Excellent
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 1
I agree completely, but you forgot a few more things!:)
Inconsistent syntax: have you ever tried to type the following:
if x = NULL then
VB uses = for comparisons as well as assigning variables. This might be good for someone who has never programmed before in their life, but it's more important to have a good compiler that spots when = is used improperly.
VB does NOT have garbage collection! The only language I'm aware of other than C that has this problem. And there are different ways to free different items. Fundamental types don't have to be freed. Objects must be freed EVERY time you use them, i.e. you do manual reference counting. There is a special function to free arrays, cuz arrays aren't objects in VB.
You'd be surprised to see how many VB coders aren't even aware that they should be setting everything = to Nothing.
Aside from Python, I'd like to suggest Smalltalk and Eiffel. I'm not aware of a better beginner language than Smalltalk, although the development tools tend to be a little flaky. Eiffel is probably the most powerful OO language around, with an incredibly clean and consistent syntax.
I don't really understand why Xbasic is being ignored...
http://www.maxreason.com/software/xbasic/xbasic.ht ml
It's already released under the GPL, has an IDE and forms designer, and is very similar to the old MS Basic PDS implementations in syntax.
Anyone care to clue me in as to why?
They admit they are lame like that? That's a little too open.
(not an insult)
portentious?
--
--
--
blinko - "the nail that sticks up gets hammered down"
Excellent
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 1
This is great news. KDE is obviously keen on making big strides into the corporate world.
I realise this is not a popular opinion around here, but Visual Basic is really not a bad language. It's obviously not designed for use by seasoned coders on large projects, but as a starter language or for getting a small job done quickly...it really is excellent.
As far as I'm concerned it is a true scripting language, unlike unholy messes like Perl - and I'm a 5 year expert in the language in a corporate environment supporting 3000 users.
As you note, VB is a bad language for string manipulation (it sorely needs an efficient string concatenation operator), which is one of the many reasons I avoid VB for my web work (the main one being that I prefer my servers to be running UNIX, as God intended).
Your other points are the kind of annoyances that you can find in any language. Python treats indentation as syntax. TCL has all those uplevel constructs. Perl is hard to read. Lots of languages don't have strong variable types. For what it's worth, my least favorite thing about VB is that arrays are zero-based by default but collections are one-based (it means I have to write a wrapper for all of my collection objects--gross).
Whatever. The perfect all-purpose language hasn't been written. Just because a language has some stupid things in it doesn't make it ipso facto a terrible language, as your post seems to imply (i.e., VB does the following stupid things, therefore VB is a stupid language).
Your assertion that VB is useless for anything larger than 50 lines is demonstratably false. Here at the shop, we have a VB COM library that's around 100,000 lines of code (it's an object wrapper for some high-performance numerical optimization routines that were written in C and C++). Yes, we could have done the wrapper in C++, but it would have been a waste of time (the runtime inefficiencies introduced by VB are negligible--we tested against a limited C++ implementation for comparison), and the amount of code necessary to write this library in C++ would have been much, much larger (at least 2x to 3x--Visual C++ is not a terse language in which to write a COM library). The library is rock-solid, by the way.
As for KBasic, I'm not sure the UNIX world needs another language for creating simple GUI apps (the effort would probably be better spent in improving the development environments for some existing languages). The UNIX world especially doesn't need a new language that requires yet another interpreter to be installed on the target machine.
Python is almost as bad a C! Basic is meant to be just that: BASIC. Very simple. It should take about 10 lines of code for a simple calculator, not almost 100... At one point, I was working on a C-based Basic interpreter on sourceforge (although it was called qtbasic, as originally I was going to use QT, being as I'm more familiar with it, however, I decided to use glib for it's module capabilities - allowing the language to be easily extended), however, my new job doesn't really let me have much extra time on the side.:(
-- Define sqrt(x) as something really evil like (x / rand()), and bury it deep in a shared include somewhere.
Briefing and DeBriefing
by
grovertime
·
· Score: 1
my understanding is that KBasic allows for a complete BASIC to KDE with solid IDE w/ a form designer and a complete binding to KDE style controls for html, etc....all the KDE features. who is behind this? is this a gnu project? why is the sky blue? how come mommy and daddy make so much noise some nights? help me, i'm scared.
Give them a break , maybe with such a tight IDE and an easy to use/learn language we can provide a learning/productive tool for the script kiddies.
Just imagine what wonders they will bring to our KDE desktops.
Reading the site seems to indicate a functional but unpolished grasp of English. Their claim that the project is "pretentious" smacks of a trasnlation problem.
Here's definition number one of pretentious from dictionary.com: "Claiming or demanding a position of distinction or merit, especially when unjustified."
So I can easily see how this might be mistaken for "difficult" or "involved" by a non native speaker. Especially given the, ahem, high quality of cross-language dictionaries in the world.;) --
"Do you seriously think that the new language will be designed in a correct fashion?"
Yes, I do.
Not many of the Linux developers have never take theory classes and the most have no training in software design.
Michael Meeks is heading the Gnome Basic project project. He has a rather nice Engineering degree from Downing College at Cambridge University. In addition to having a piece of paper, he actually knows his stuff and has worked in the industry on real time AV editing and playback systems (something you hardly do with a "let's-hack-something-together" attitude).
Why the hell make it KDE specific?
by
vik
·
· Score: 1
Once again we see an application created from scratch with the built-in limitation that only KDE users are going to be able to use it.
Why not make it generic? Eh? Come on, why not?
It increases the user base, and the potential number of contributors.
I am sure the first public beta will be codenamed KBill.
Quick tip: Don't write device drvers in it.
by
MadChicken
·
· Score: 1
Sheesh, people... have any opf you ever written a custom accounting system? i.e. something the accountants want to completely redo every year because they forgot how their GL works? This is something you want in a high-level language, not in C++ or Befunge or whatever.
VB is made for in-house and custom apps, and it allows them to be done fairly quickly (though we did the aforementioned accounting system in Clipper... it was very refreshing.)
I'm hearing stuff like "line numbers" and "macro viruses"... what kind of reality do you live in? Maybe, just maybe there's a market for this? Personally, I can't wait for Kylix...
-- SYS 64738
NO CARRIER
Flamebait? Why ARE you trying to destroy linux?
by
Arker
·
· Score: 1
Not the best written post by an means, but it certainly isn't flamebait. The poster is just asking the question I know a lot of us are thinking. A couple of amok moderators here that need to read the guidelines again (and be slapped down hard on meta-mod as well.)
Basic is a brain-damaging product that's directly responsible for the mental handicapping of a good number of once-promising programmers. A lot of people find the IDE to be handy, I do not, but for those who do there are already clones of it out to handle real programming languages. Python, for instance, is comparable to VB for ease of learning and rapidity of development, but without the brain damage and limitations. Deliberately porting such an inferior product should raise some eyebrows and some questions. Moderating people down for asking those questions is wrong.
-- =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Why not make something that some people want?
by
Lerc
·
· Score: 1
There are are a lot of comments here from people who are commenting about the various properties(good or bad) of BASIC. These are being used as arguments for or against development of KBasic.
Surely the only thing that should really matter is whether or not people want such a thing. Presumeably if people are writing this thing there are at least some who want it.
If you don't like BASIC don't use it. It is very simple to do, but why complain when you hear that other people are making it possible for themselves to use BASIC?
-- --
That which does not kill us has made its last mistake.
whether or not you like this, its what Linux needs
by
ZxCv
·
· Score: 4
There is a lot of reason why Linux can and should replace Windows as a desktop OS. For many, this is already the case-- but for most, this is far from the case. One of the major things holding Linux back as a desktop OS is the lack of a solid, gui-based BASIC language to create apps for it. Historically, Visual Basic was one of the key elements in spreading Windows to so many desktops-- such a vast range of programmers, from basic beginners to advanced gurus, could use it to create apps that anyone could use. The abundance of applications written for Windows is basically the sole reason anyone I know uses Windows. The ability to create applications with the same speed and BASIC language syntax as Windows programmers enjoy would be a great boost to spreading Linux (and even other UNIX OS's) to the desktop.
Ok, before anyone jumps to any rash conclusions or gets into state of nastiness...the Gnome project is up the same mischief.....I wonder if this is really good for the linux X-windows environment? It seems to be the trend.
http://www.gnome.org:65348/gb/
On the plus side, contemporary Linux developers will garner some hard-core experience dealing with the wickedness that comes with churing out your own language. I have already taken Theory of Automata and Compiler Theory and found that more than a little challenging. I think it will be a good warm-up for something better.
VB on linux and Linux in VC++
by
Cire+LePueh
·
· Score: 2
It fits...I mean if LynuxWorks is going to sell a product for VC++ users to "leverage Visual C++ to develop Linux software." Then why shouldn't linux have a tool to attract VB programmers to Linux' to program M$ VBA apps.
Slashdot Mirror
Oppp, one other comment, notice that the GNOME folks have addressed the virus issue in the link above. Its worth looking at.
... not talking about the Visual Basic with the point and click form setups, the old "freeform" BASIC that came after the line oriented one (QBASIC or whatever ...) ...
Not sure, though, if this is such a good thing ... sheesh, so many scripting languages and hacks out there ... great to choose from a plethora of tools but with all these "non-native" programs, C and C++ are still kings ... and, that to me, is a sad thing, as an easy to use, built in GUI (for whatever - Linux/Windows/Mac ...) would be cool to develop desktop applications that didn't crash (well at least my windoughz box ...) might be a "nice" thing for newbie hackers to sharpen their coding claws on ...
AZspot
Unfortuneatly not. They were intended to be squishy lemmings after I got bored one night playing Lemmings 2: Tribes. I could kill many of them with grenades or rockets. But it was so slow, and so much effort!
I wanted a quick mass holocaust style death for those lemmings.
ps. I had no idea QBasic code was so portable ;) Thanks!
--Giving to trolls for the benefit of us all
I haven't coded in VB for ages, but the three I was thinking of were null, 0, and I think an empty string translates to null in some circumstances. So I guess there's more than 6 in an ambiguous sort of way. :)
===
>Why is the sky blue?
For lack of oxygen. As the distance from the earth to a given point in the atmosphere gets greater, the air becomes thinner; hence, the sky has more trouble breathing at those heights, bringing about the blue color.
It becomes black at night because there is no light with which to see the blue color.
--------------Rev. C.C.Chips---------------- For the real truth, visit
This group says hoorah when someone wastes their time porting Linux to Palm devices (which is useless: the Palm is the LAST device that will be running Linux effectively. Devices like the iPaq, Yopy, and the soon to be released Agenda VR* are MUCH better suited for Linux use), but when a group of people seek to provide something people can actually use you thrash 'em, and it's only because of some kind of M$ association.
Come on... I'll never touch KBasic, but I think it's cool that it's being done.
In my opinion, the problems with VB viruses in Outlook, Word, Excel, et al are issues with Outlook, Word, Excel, et al, not VB. First off, there's nothing saying that apps need to support KBasic as a scripting language. Second, the apps themselves -- if written correctly -- should not allow the same idiocy that Outlook et al allowed from VB.
Besides, M$ didn't invent BASIC. They cloned it from another system (VMS? I can't remember).
So, like, chill dudes...
Basic has a number of bad feature and I think we should let the pile of cruft died with windows.
Grey (Chris Lusena)
Arrays. Say you've got a function which returns an array of some sort - let's say an array of variants to make it easy. How do you return an array of 0 items cleanly?
...and I code in it (almost) every day.
No problem. Have you thought of checking to see if the array is empty? Or raising an error in the function (seems like 0 elements would be an error condition in most cases). Or maybe using error handling...
Object-Orientation. Ever attempted type-safe inheritance or polymorphism in VB? Variants do not count.
There are some OO issues, but have you ever looked at the Implements keyword?
String Concatenation.
VB does do a poor job of string concatenation - but there are ways around that. The problem lies in the memory management involved in resizing the string. The solution is to create a fixed length string of desired size and then replace the contents of the string with your data.
That is a really sad statement. Maybe you should start trying to improve your skills and stop complaining. It is possible to write poor code in any language. Unfortunately, the ease of use of VB allows below average programmers to pass themselves off as lead developers when in fact they have a minimal grasp of the language. A good good developer needs to have a grasp of the the way the language operates. A good understanding and knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of any language is essential. If you don't have the patience to learn the language fully, perhaps you should switch to another language or stop calling yourself a programmer. VB has a bad reputation as it is, it doesn't any more below average programmers writing buggy apps...
I've seen this error before. A professor that I know took a picture of a sign that was in front of a hotel in Germany: "We provide excellent hospitality for our pretentious guests"
I started learning programming on the apple IIe, which had a basic interpreter in rom.
The only way I managed to learn C was by making a conscious effort to forget my basic knowledge.
The very fact that I had known basic before learning C made it take about 3 months longer to learn C than it really should have.
I code in Java and C++ at work now, and I'm a VERY strong believer in OOP.
Allow me to introduce you to... fte! (the Folding Text Editor). It has some other nice features too...
-Spiv.
Python is almost as bad as C?
I'd say Python is much more like BASIC than C - it has a very friendly syntax - and even an interactive mode!
>>> print "Hello World!"
Hello World!
>>> 6 * 9
54
I would think the code for a simple calculator would look very similar in BASIC and Python. And after writing it, you could save it in a module so you could go "import mycalc" later :)
-Spiv.
Hmmm...this is more evidence that Linux desktop environment authors are blindly copying everything Microsoft does. Surely there was a better choice here than BASIC. How about being a little more forward thinking than that?
The trouble with BASIC variants, including Visual BASIC and Dark BASIC and Power BASIC, is that the languages tend to grow in all directions at the same time, with whatever mish-mosh of features seem good at the moment. After a while, that's what drives people away from languages like this. You need to spend a good amount of time becoming a Visual BASIC expert, and it keeps getting more complex with each release. Eventually it's easier to go with a language with a slimmer core.
Are you using the same VB that I'm using?
-Spiv.
Basic BAD, python GOOD.
Basic BAD, python GOOD.
Basic BAD, python GOOD.
There now, was that so bad? :-)
Seriously, I like the idea of having a good/great language with a kick-ass IDE. The danger is that a mediocre/bad language with a kick-ass IDE will survive because of the IDE. When the limitations of the programming language become a real problem, there will be too much time and effort invested in the project to back out. This is what happens with a lot of VB programmers; people I know who have used VB (I'm not one of them) hate it with a passion. A better approach is to develop the IDE around a good language like python (which I use all the time); everyone I know that knows python loves it, and it scales well with increasing project complexity.
Mike
Those pretty much went away with QuickBasic (one of the few things Micro$oft got right) in the mid '80s. Although, if you check closely, GOTO is available in C as well (although no one actually uses it anymore than they use it in most versions of BASIC written in the last 15 years).
So c'mon, BASIC haters, quit whining. Line-numbered, GOTO'd BASICs disappeared in the '80s. Those arguments against it disappeared years ago when GW-Basic/BasicA/Extended Color Basic died.
The only exception is HP/HT/Rocky Mountain BASIC (used for engineering test stations and the like), probably THE worst language ever produced by anybody. And, unfortunately, that one is still around.
---------------------------------------------
The end of that sig should read "If you are having problems with our products please go to Helen Waite." #$%& 120-character limit!
Microsoft's VP of Customer Service is Helen Waite. If you are having problems with their products go to Helen Waite.
Why invent a new BASIC when we already have a better basic: Python ?
The whole reason people keep using BASIC is because people can use it.
One of the reasons Windows spread to the desktop so well is because of its wealth of applications. The biggest cause of this wealth of applications was Visual Basic-- a language/IDE that would allow even the beginning programmer to create a useful application for the everyday Joe.
As a seasoned C++ programmer, I fully agree that any BASIC variation could never perform as well as its C++ counterpart. However, as a seasoned network administrator, I can also tell you the sole reason our corporation uses Windows is because one of the critical applications is a Windows only application. While C++ and most other languages provide better performance and control than BASIC variants, a good majority of applications in use dont require such performance and control-- and having a pool of programmers that is 10x as large to choose from usually makes for a better application in the end.
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
Please, troll moderators, moderate correctly! The above post is Ontopic. It may be many other things, but Offtopic is not one of them.
Here, let me help you in your tasks.
This story is about KBasic, a RAD tool similar to Visual BASIC on Windows, but being developed for KDE on Linux.
My position is that if it is as similar to "Visual BASIC on Windows" as the rest of the K Desktop Environment is to the Windows Desktop Environment, then this would be a manifestly bad thing.
Got it?
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
what would be more logical than to complement a bloated and poorly designed user interface with a bloated and poorly designed programming language?
-- Rolf Lindgren, cand.psychol
So, why do we need BASIC?
Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
That's only because you're a snob; a truly optimized version of BASIC could run very quickly when compiled, especially since the basic syntax lends itself very well to Assembler; just pass through, figure out what the variables are, make duplicates of them if they change their types (not often, but make sure A# and A$ are separate, and converted as needed), change the GOTOs to branches, and the IFs to conditional branches, blah, blah, blah...
And it begins to sound less like BASIC, and more like Perl, and eventually more like C...
I hope KBasic will really be based on Dartmouth Basic (the basic that existed before Bill Gates), and that the enhancements all the way to GUI type basic build upon the Dartmouth Standard. It would really be nice to see how Dartmouth Basic could have evolved, and, this time, Gates would truely have nothing to do with it.
Hit that nail _on_ the head. I understood what was intended, however. After a second or two. I have to work in French or Spanish from time to time. When you have to use your functional but unpolished grasp of a foreign language, you get burned sometimes. I sympathise. But BASIC?? Good Gawd, why? I'd never read the Jargon File entry. Illuminating. I thought it was just me. I worked for an outfit once that had an ERP and supply-chain mgmt. suite written in Business BASIC. It was gibberish. Calls to line numbers and A$, B$, J$, J1$, J2$..J4$ and large, flat files. It's all coming back...
----- "to a dog, every day is Saturday..."
Or emacs' hideshow-mode.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
I see announcements like this, and GNOME Office using GnomeBASIC for the application automation, and I can't help but wonder, why not use Perl?
Perl is already a successful open-source scripting language, and there are loads and loads of modules built to do nearly anything most users would ever want to accomplish, or at least get you most of the way there. So why go a build a whole new langauge, when extremely competent ones already exist? I hate learning new languages all the time; some convergence could go a long way, I think.
It seems to me that Microsoft put efficient tools into Visual Basic because the company wants to make sure it doesn't deliver a good programming tool. It isn't Basic that people like, it is the tools available in VB.
Visual Basic is written in C and C++, I understand. Microsoft wants to make sure that its customers are not able to become good enough programmers to compete with its own products. That's why it delivers efficient tools for a ridiculously bad language.
Most people don't seem to realize that the limitations of Microsoft products are deliberate. Windows 98 crashes because there is a deliberate limitation (of 128 K memory, I understand) in GDI and User resources. Exceed those limitations, and the operating system crashes without warning. Deliberate limitations like this are the action of a monopoly wanting to insure that the customers always have a reason to upgrade.
(Run Microsoft's own Resource Meter software in Windows 98 to see the limitations in action.)
It is a challenge for open source software creators not to get involved with Microsoft's destructiveness. Possibly what is really needed here is converter to take source code from a VB program and turn it into source code in a sensible language.
If the conversion could go in both directions, the need to write in VB would completely disappear. This is the desired effect. The present plan, of providing a VB-like language in open source software has the negative effect of encouraging VB programming.
There's a package called 'RapidQ' that IMHO kicks *ss. The compiler is cross platform (Windoze,NT, Linux, Solaris, HPUX, etc..) and it can write almost everything from GUI to console to CGI. RapidQ also has the ability to build single executibles under windoze, which is a huge bonus.
There have been a lot of hybrid features added from C/C++, Perl, and Delphi implimented in RapidQ, which takes object oriented BASIC to a new level...
Check it out... I guarantee it's better than KBasic, plus it's been around a bit longer. Get RapidQ (it's freeware)
Regards
--cr@ckwhore
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
are you 12? You are a fucking moron. Nothing you said was original or even relevant. I repeat. You are a 12 year old.
Python. Roll-out is just as fast if not faster than VB or any form of basic. Its more powerful, developed by programmers for programmers. Object oriented from the get-go. And on and on. The only thing missing for it...is a RAD/GUI dev tool. Think about. A gui dev tool like vb's...with python code running the show. Using TK....its portable to any TK platform. I'm extremely surprised pythons imp of TK hasnt been pushed to the forefront of RAD projects for linux. That could be the thing to get all those companies that rollout small...but quick devrate inhouse programs to switch over. Or maybe...I'm just crazy ;)
Looks like you forgot the pointer to the monestary:
http://www.perlmonks.org.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
Bletch!
Perl has it's uses, but to learn programming with? If you want to teach bad habits, maybe...
Don't get me wrong, Perl is really handy sometimes, but I would strongly advise against teaching people to program with it. It encourages shortcuts that make things "easy" - which is fine if you know what you're doing. A Perl hacker knows what sort of magic is going on behind the scenes. A newbie programmer doesn't.
-Spiv.
One more reason to switch to GNOME. At least
it doesn't look like winblows and crash less
often. I got a good laugh too when I read
about this KBasic. Basic much like Cobol
should not be used as it makes it impossible
for people to learn how to program.
You think the earth is flat too?
Please go to a science section in a book store and educate yourself.
If you want kids to be able to learn how to
,python
program you must not let them do basic.
Do Fortran, Pascal, Delphi, C, perl
or C++.
But, I was pretty sure Basic was Microsoft's property. Isn't this going to run into some type of legal trouble if it resembles the M$ creation? They didn't even try to name it differently, so I think it's likely to be a close copy in context as well.
________
FWIW, I had access to an apple III and a commodore (as well as numerous apple ][-ish machines at school) when I was a young proto-geek, and BASIC wound up being what kept me OUT of programming... its syntax and ways of doing things seemed silly and arbitrary to me, and I wound up not doing any programming until years later when I encountered Perl, Scheme, and Java.
-- (if I were a bug, I would want to be a true Renaissance Bug)
No
Oh well; at least it will take a long time to complete...
Please, NO ONE tell them where they can find already completed code or tools to quickly finish this project! Give us time to develop a decent language as a response...
The last thing we need is a custom Macro Virus Language for Linux...
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
"Ambitious", even "over-ambitious"?
or, given the tenor of the response, "foolish".
*sigh*... here's a shorter one that is quite pretty. I should point out though that it was written by a friend of mine, not me. I'm typing this from memory, so mistakes are possible.
' VGA Spheres by Peter Aylettdefint a-z
screen 13
randomize timer
for a = 0 to 31
palette a, a*2
palette a, a*2*&h100
palette a, a*2*&h10000
next a
do until inkey$ <> ""
x = int(rnd()*320)
y = int(rnd()*200)
c = int(rnd()*3)*32
for r = 0 to 31
circle(x,y ),r,c+32-r
circle(x,y +1),r,c+32-r
next
loop
Wow; QBASIC had a PALETTE command and a logical and operator? I never knew that, back then!
:)
I could make *my* simple display hack a lot prettier, now! Thank your friend for me, and ask him where he was 10 years ago when I needed him!
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Just because college professors teach primitive stuff on basic doesn't mean thats all it can due.
/.ers didn't know you can do that in basic hu.
/.ers didn't know you can have algorithyms in vb as well.
Alot of young programmers do a course in basic in their freshmen year in college and move on to c++ and assume that basic is just "print hello world" or "button1=click.here" in vb but thats not true.
10 to 20 years ago when computers had alot less memory and were about as fast as a graphical calculator, the college professors moved on to c because it was alot faster and used less memory. With todays computers that is no longer an issue.
My father used to be in charge of programmers back in the 70's and 80's and he had coders who made gui's back in the mid 80's with JUST basic!
Even more impressive is that he had to manage a project in which a wharehouse wanted to bar scan the ups label on the companies products and have it automatically save the data on the mainframe. He order a dozen ups scanners but they couldnn't link or talk to the other computers.
The coder wrote a full program for the scanners IN BASIC THAT INCLUDED ASSEMBLY to read the label and then create a easy menu system for the workers and a link program to have the scanners talk to the mainframe on its cable! I bet you
Its true that you can not include assembly in visual basic like you could with plain Microsoft basic, but I do not you can create stacks and nodes and various other control structures so good coding is possible under vb. ALot of programmers don't research the structures so they don't use them and performance suffers but vb does have at least some basic support for highly structured programming. I bet you
I have seen alot of prejiduce in the nerd community. Especially towards basic and vb and even c++ from some of the c loyalists.
It seems alot of programmers learn something one way and refuse to look at anything differently. A few examples are from the comments of users about the recent gnome story abotu having the core modules of helix written in c.
I am astonished at how many c coders reffered to c as a better language then c++ when doing oo programming.
While I admit its true that oo is possible under c, but the fact of the matter is that c++ was designed to support oo programming from the ground up and c is not. At@t's cfront was just really a patch to help. c++ was developed because it was difficult to oo in c.
It seems to me that alot of the coders took c courses college and refused to change there ways. Eg Linus, Miguel from the gnome project and many others.
Try basic. Just because its easy doesn't mean it sucks or that is all it can do.
I don't mean to start any wars, but WHY in the name of all that's holy was this story posted on Slashdot? In the words of Dennis Miller, I don't want to get off on a rant here, but how does this qualify as "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters."? Take the first part. No disrespect to anyone who writes in BASIC, but I would wager that 90% of nerds sneer at BASIC, and those that don't would never use it anyway. (I am learning to program, and I am NOT going anywhere NEAR BASIC) Also this project is MILES from even being considered for the end user (the post on dot.kde.org says as much) so why is it being posted? Freshmeat is a MUCH more approriate forum. As for stuff that matters, the only reason I can possibly think of to post this on Slashdot is if the poster has some bias toward KDE or stands to benefit from KBasic.
it's potentially a great project, but I don't think Slashdot is the right place to announce it...
---
This really is the wrong approach. Although it doesn't say so on the site, my impression from previous reading ws that they're aiming for compatability with Visual Basic. Whereas they should be aiming to outdo Visual Basic. Letting Microsoft define the agenda (by copying their platform, rather than building a better one), is doomed to keep Linux users playing catch up.
I did a VB course at trade school last semester. (I come from a background of Ada, C and then Java) What I'd really like to see is a visual-basic *like* program based on Python. Python would be an asset, BASIC a hinderance to Microsoft, and as an open source product, that would really kick ass.
Believe with me, my saplings.
I think you must have taken a left turn at Albuquerque.
-Pete
I think he meant it in a more condecending way, as in "Jeez you sure are ingnorant..."
-Pete
I assume the goal of this project is to provide a tool similar to Microsoft's Visual Basic for Linux. Any other reason would not make sense. While it's certainly a good idea to attract developers from MS platforms, I don't think this is a very good idea now. 5 years ago, maybe, but it seems pretty clear to me that with the introduction of C#, Microsoft is intent on phasing out Visual Basic in the near future. They may not come out and say it directly, but it's pretty obvious that this is what will happen. Consider that VB7 will execute on the same runtime platform as C#, and share all of the libraries, including system libraries, GUI libraries (WFC), etc. and be able to seamlessly integrate with C# code. Moreover, most of these libraries were written in C#, not VB. Microsoft has overhauled the VB language to make it compatible with their new platform, making it pretty clear that VB will be a second-class citizen next to C#, which was designed as the central language for the new platform. If developers can use C#, a very Java-like language which is much nicer to use, to write programs for the Windows platform every bit as easily and quickly as if they were using VB, who on earth would want to use VB? Probably just people who ONLY know VB. Well, all the best developers will all be using C#, so the VB code-monkeys will eventually be forced to make the switch.
Visual Basic is Microsoft's - I'm sure they have a Trade Mark on that name. BASIC, though, is older than Microsoft (Microsoft's very first product was a version of BASIC). They didn't invent it.
-Spiv.
Well, my car needs new brakes.
-Pete
Why don't they just wait another month for the StarOffice source to be released? It's got StarBasic, which is finished and works. Then they only have to clean it up a little, move the visuals to Qt/GTK, add KOM/Bonobo support ... project finished a year or two faster.
--
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Not many have never take? Your language certainly wasn't well designed.
-Pete
Not quite. Microsoft didn't create QuickBasic (or it's trimmed down cousin, QBasic). They bought it from another company.
-Spiv.
GWBASIC IS AND WILL ALWAYS BE THE ONLY GOOD PROGRAMMING LANGAGE EVER!!!
Sure, it may have taken 200 lines of code to make a window, but rememeber the kind of satisfaction you got out of it?
Back in my day, we had to fill up 5000 lines a day, just to make minimum wage. When the non-basic programs came out, our company had to be downsized. I had my best friend. Shortly after, I had to hire someone new just to fire myself.
Bring back GWBasic!
P.S. Would anyone who actually has a copy of it email it to me? I can't seem to find it anywhere, and I'm not going to learn a new language, especially an inferior one.
Twitter.com/TrentonHyatt
So Linux has done a reasonable job up till now of attracting numerous fairly technical programmers (i.e C, C++ etc.) But there are only so many C++ programmers. As for VB programmers, well, they're a "dime a dozen" (not meant in a negative way, just that they (and delphi programmers) are somewhat more common than C++ programmers, and in general the knowledge entry level for Basic is much lower.
A "first wave" of skilled C++ programmers coming to Linux can only last so long before it peters out. So a type of VB for Linux provides an excellent way to attract a "second wave" of programmers - perhaps slightly less technical programming than C++, but still very important for many many applications (e.g. database, multimedia etc.) You have to be an extreme zealot to deny that these languages do serve a very useful purpose, and are better suited to many tasks than C++ is.
This could be an important step in getting Linux "mainstream" (assuming thats what you want.) The Linux community isn't an elitist clique. I welcome all types. If we get some VB converts, it means a whole lot more apps for Linux.
Java provides almost the power of the C++ programming language, and combines it with the ease of use of the C++ programming language.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
I'd like to see a real study on this.
I mean, when we're starting out, learning our first programming language, you remember, when you were 12 or 15, do we read books that teach us good software construction techniques and all about software engineering, or do we just RTFM until we can make something neat?
Is there a difference between the amount of good code construction taught in books that teach other languages as compared to Basic? So maybe it's not Basic itself, but the place and time you learn it.
I remember learning Basic on the C64. The manual didn't do anything except tell you syntax and stuff, the same went for all the best C64 Basic books available at the time. If there had been chapters on 'writing good code', 'writing re-usable code', 'writing more code faster with fewer bugs', I would have read them, and I imagine I would have taken pride in following them! Hell, it would have made life SOooo much easier (no matter what language you're starting out with). Have you ever gone back 15 years and looked at the code you wrote when you were 15? The 10-20,000 lines you wrote to create your first (simple) video game or graphics editor? I have. (shudder)
It takes time to learn good software construction techniques the hard way, and the easy way requires instruction, whether by people more experienced than you or by well written books. By the time I had learned a bit the hard way I was programming as a job, and we weren't using Basic.(*) The easy way didn't occur until I had a job with other programmers.
To refute some of the specific claims:
> writing anything longer .. is very painful
Is it because it's Basic, or because the person using it is often inexperienced and hasn't been taught any better? Because the books they learned it from didn't teach them any better? Because they didn't have anyone more experienced looking over their shoulder telling them what they need to know? (which doesn't come until later in life when you're working for someone, and then you're likely *not* using basic).
I know lots other languages which can be frustrating until you've used them for months on end. I think if I had started out with C and only Kernighan and Ritche, I'd have quit the first month. As it was I devoured every C64 Basic book I could find, and I got a lot done, and I did successfully write some nice long pieces of software. It wasn't as painful as anyone thinks. I remember having fun adding more and more and more functionality.
> it probably ruined tens of thousands of potential wizards.
It did not. It kept me interested when I was young, later on I was taught "the way", and here I am.
- CKEdge
Oh wait, except for the year I spent in California doing MS Visual Basic* for that Bank system tracking a half trillion dollars in US Domestic equities. A lot of the code I wrote was top notch, and made me proud. Clean interfaces, debugging channels, library re-use, documentation, full sub-routine headers explaining everything, flexible, expandable, optimized for speed. It didn't matter that I was using Basic, what mattered was that by that point in my life I had learned good Software Engineering, and I applied it. ( * - We used it for front ends (buh) and also back end/server process stuff. I mean hey, if you want to script something, VB was the most painless quickest way to do it.)
Now, on the other hand I'm currently working on a development project that is a mission critical piece of software (runs on the biggest servers in the most sensitive places of e-commerce and financial institutions). It's a lot of C, heirarchical configuration files, and a popular scripting language. I'm proud of the code I write. I'm terrified and horrified by the code I see some others writing. It didn't matter that they were using C or the popular OO scripting language.
eiffel is a great language, but i have never seen a decent compiler for it - free or commecial they all produce huge unoptimised code
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enterfornone - logging in for a change
No, it isn't.
Visual Basic is a very poor language. The form editor isn't bad, the Object Browser quite handy, the IDE is so-so, but the language is terrible. Here is some food for thought:
Arrays. Say you've got a function which returns an array of some sort - let's say an array of variants to make it easy. How do you return an array of 0 items cleanly?
Object-Orientation. Ever attempted type-safe inheritance or polymorphism in VB? Variants do not count.
String Concatenation. Say you have an HTML page being generated by an ActiveX component called from ASP in IIS (apologies for the MS jargon... this really happened at my workplace though). If you are generating a table, and it has, say 20 columns by 100 rows (or in our case, sometimes more), you naturally would simply generate a big string of the HTML and pass it back to the ASP to spit out, right? But in the process of generating those 2000 table cells, you do quite a few string concatenations. Here's the problem: VB's string concatenation is O(n^2)! (as according to MS, apparently, not to mention our own testing). It can take many seconds or even minutes to spit out something that should be done in a fraction of a second. In the end we wrote a "FastString" component in C++ and used that in the VB. It instantly brought one test case down from 8.5 minutes to 2.5 seconds. Not exactly what I'd call getting a "job done quickly".
So, the obvious question: What's the alternative that's so much better, huh? As a matter of fact, I do have one in mind: Python. It does everything VB does, and much much more. The language is a lot nicer than Visual Basic. *Especially* for beginners. The in-built types are just so much more powerful. Lists and dictionaries being integral parts of the language automatically makes those simple jobs much simpler. (Yes, I realise there is Scripting.Dictionary for VB, but it's not as convenient.)
More impressively, with Python you don't hit your head against a brick wall when you decide to attempt something larger than 50 lines - it's a language that scales well between beginners *and* experts.
If you're wondering, yes I do hate VB with a vengenance, and I code in it (almost) every day. I feel qualified to rant.
[breathes deeply]
Ahhh.... that's better.
-Spiv.
They don't even know what "pretentious" means.. how do they expect to be able to write a lexer? :-)
BASIC has evolved well beyond what it first was. It has taken on aspects of other languages.
At the time Dijkstra wrote his observation BASIC didn't support user defined functions, used line numbers, and a whole lot of other ancient problems.
Visual BASIC today competes successfully against Java and has 2-3 times as many developers using it in complex projects well over 20 lines of code.
exhibit a: PHP
No, I did not read the f***ing article!
As an aside, why did the parent message to this get moderated down?
Just because you disagree with something doesn't mean it should be moderated down! I disagreed with their opinion, too. But I'd rather see you say *why* you think someone is wrong, than simply say "You're wrong" - or even worse, say it by anonymously moderating them down.
-Spiv.
Perhaps. In some ways, Perl is like BASIC - it encourages bad habits. (That's about where the similarity stops though).
Of course, I may simply be scarred from having seen too much messy Perl code. It's certainly a powerful language, and I don't mind dabbling in it occasionally. But Python suits my style much better.
It's a personal thing. Which is why, of course, this discussion has become a language war, rather than a discussion of the topic in the story that was originally posted...
-Spiv.
you'd think they'd pick a decent, modern and relatively clean language like Python, Pike or, a bit more esoterically, Ruby...
Silly developer. Don't you know the fastest way to concat big strings in VB* is to write to a file and then slurp it back in? It only took me an hour to figure out this workaround the first time I came across this.
You gotta think out of the box. :)
Ah yes. MS came so close and yet so far.
(chuckle)
(*) Yes, I'm serious. For those big 1/2-100MB strings it's 100 times as fast. Literally 100.
Yes, I believe I can die now. ACK!
I hereby leave my keyboard to the king of chedder, cmdrtaco. cough.
Yeah, except for the fact that the interpreter chokes when you don't give it the proper number of tabs (just forget copy and paste). It's annoying in emacs, it's unforgiveable in a tty mode.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
We need, a VirusBASIC-to-Python translator. Yes, it will result in buckets of poor-quality Python, but it will enable heaps of VB programmers to make the Right Decision{tm}, just like that bloke's dual-boot Athlon did.
By the way, Michael Kohn already has the hardest part done, and done well. That was a hint, guys...
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
GUI IDE's are great, but we already have Glade. What we need is GUILE-GTK+ bindings and Glade-GUILE.
And yes, I started programming with BASIC, and I have used Visual Basic extensively, and boy, is it a pain. I wish my first language had been Pascal, or Java, or Python (although the latter two didn't exist).
Simple, really, isn't it? (-:
Oh, and see here for details.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
here
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
As is often the case with folklore, especially when an axe needs grinding, THIS IS NOT TRUE.
QuickBASIC (it was still all caps) was written in house by MS in the mid to late '80s. Versions 3 and 4 were in development simultaneously with V4 being the first one to use the threaded p-code compiler.
(I knew the guy who wrote the memory management code before he retired to Idaho - )
The fundamental question with KBasic is: which flavor of Basic will it be? Basic is even more fragmented than UNIX ever was. There are hundreds of flavors, each with its own quirks.
If KBasic is a brand-new variant with its own quirks, it will still be an interesting and somewhat valuable addition to KDE. (I'll never touch it, but there will be folks who are glad to see it.)
If KBasic and GNOME Basic are brand-new but compatible with each other, the possible benefits become much larger.
If KBasic and GNOME Basic are done in a way compatible with the Microsoft Basics, especially the embedded ones used for macros in Microsoft Office, then this will be totally cool. Anything that makes it easier to move from a Microsoft platform to free software is a Good Thing.
P.S. Modern Basic languages are far advanced past the old BASIC languages such as Applesoft BASIC. Applesoft was severely broken, and you had to fight with it to do things. If you wanted to have an IF statement with multiple lines of code after it, you had to test for the opposite and if the opposite was true, GOTO a line after the multiple lines. Not my first choice for teaching programming to high school kids, yet it was used for this in the early 80's.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
I've done some VB coding, only small stuff (a dice roller program for AD&D'ers), but I did NOT like the language itself. I wrote that one program and never went back to to VB again. Nice to see you make the Python comparison since I'm having WAY more fun (when it's not doing my head in) learning Python than I did VB. I am really not sure of the logic of designing a VB'esque program for Linux. There are far better options than making a version of BASIC.
PS, please note that nowhere in this post did I claim Python was better than Perl, so you "Perl is better than Python" people can just go post somewhere else or something:)
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It turned out to be our CEO's birthday and there was a party, so I hacked together a little animation program:
1 OFF = RND(4) * 15
5 GOTO 10
8 FOR I = 8 TO 0 STEP -1
9 GOTO 20
10 FOR I = 0 TO 9
20 N = 10 - I
30 FOR J = 1 TO N+OFF: PRINT " ";: NEXT J
40 FOR J = 1 TO (I*2)+1: PRINT "*";: NEXT J
50 PRINT
60 NEXT I
70 IF I > 1 THEN GOTO 8
490 IF RND(691)<.5 THEN PRINT:PRINT:PRINT " HAPPY BIRTHDAY KIR!!!!":PRINT
494 C = RND(5) * 10
495 PRINT CHR$(150+C);
496 D = RND(6)*1000
497 FOR I=1 TO D:NEXT I
500 PRINT:PRINT:GOTO 1
It was very surreal to be coding BASIC on a C64 in the year 2000...
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
I almost never write anything in BASIC unless I'm forced to, but the only fundamental thing I really have against BASIC as a language is what MS Visual BASIC has turned it into.
If KBasic avoids the same trend and doesn't do everything possible to do what learner programmers mean at the expense of language integrity, it might not be so bad... and thankfully in an open source model, there's probably not much chance of this happening.
Come to think of it, as long as it doesn't end up with six different ways to specify NULL, I probably won't be too offended by it. (Off the top of my head I can only think of 3 in VB, but someone told me there were 6.)
===
Isn't it obvious?
Language wars, of course! Just look at all the flamin^Wdiscussion it's generating!
-Spiv.
Out of curiosity, why do yo say it will never get completed or be maintained? Do you assert that simply because it was written with a RAD tool it has the inherent flaw that will cause it to never be finished? Wow...I would assert the opposite on such things.
I am waiting with unaccustomed amusement when Kylix gets released and we see the flood of converted programs. Some will be good, most will be superfluous, but all will be welcome.
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Twisted Little Gnome - The Podcasting Network http://www.twistedlittlegnome.com
Glad to hear it!
I personally learnt Python from Programming Python, from ORA, which is a fairly good book, but I soon learnt that the Online Documentation was invaluable. Especially the Library Reference.
For those who are interested, I have a small python cgi here . Just to pretend this is on-topic... "I'd hate to write even that in VB". :)
-Spiv.
>why is the sky blue?
The light coming from the Sun is made up of many colors, each of which has a different wavelength. The atmosphere affects how each color of light passes through, as the light waves encounter molecules, small water droplets and bits of dust.
Blue light has a short wavelength, and the particles in the air scatter it around, making the sky appear blue. Red light has a longer wavelength, which acts more strongly and is not scattered as much.
Sunsets are red because in the evening, the light has more atmosphere to pass through to get to your eye, and only the strong red light can make it through.
... still has to be GFA BASIC. Such a joy to program in, even compared to modern languages, and it had a decent syntax and a full set of control structures. And I so miss the feature that allowed you to collapse an entire function into a single line in the editor...
But yeah, the point is that pretty much any procedural language can take on whatever aspects of others it wishes. Sure BASIC uses a "novice" syntax, but that's no reason why there shouldn't be an implementation that successfully integrates object orientation and other features found in C++, Delphi or Java.
Unfortunately, VB is only partly there, and a bit of a mess to boot. But there's nothing to stop KBASIC from conquering these problems and producing a clean, useful implementation of the language which can be used for modern, large projects by both people with little programming experiance and those that have been coding for years.
BASIC is not the problem, it's implementations are.
Your memory serves you well. It was "if a=5 AND b=2 then x=4"
--Giving to trolls for the benefit of us all
Knowing Perl, C, C++ or the language du jour only makes you a well payed trained monkey. Understanding algorithms and how they effect efficiency is a lot more important. This can be gleaned using any language, BASIC had the advantage that it was simple to use, you didn't need to worry about syntax or memory allocation or pointers.
Maybe spending effort on a modern BASIC is misguided, but to bitch and moan about the language many geeks learned from is inane. I've thought for a while that PERL was the BASIC of the present era, I think its shameful that it's not included on every machine shipped, much like BASIC was not too long ago.
Having a BASIC or PERL that could do native GUI stuff on whatever box it exists on would be a great thing if it was shipped on every box regardless of OS. It'd get more people actually interested in computer science at an early age rather than the current state where most people seem to be in it for the money and have little or any talent.
This Anti-Microsoft thing is getting a little childish now. It has it's bad points, but that doesn't mean *EVERYTHING* about it is bad, and that's exactly why most (not all) people are downing KBasic. If KBasic has anything close to as easy to use and powerful of an IDE as VB does (and FREE too!) this will really really help Linux get moreso out onto the mainstream. The people that don't want something like this to come out obviously don't ever want Linux suitable for the mainstream.
I happen to like the indentation of Python. I find it's only rarely inconvenient. Much less than people tend to think.
Any decent editor can cope with indenting and outdenting large blocks of code easily, which pretty much makes the "correct number of tabs" thing a non-issue. Or by "tty mode" did you mean pasting directly into the interpreter? What an odd thing to be doing with large sections of code.
-Spiv.
Are you sure?
I could've *sworn* I saw the copyright to another company in QuickBasic. I'll admit I didn't check, just relying upon memory, so I could be wrong.
Oh well. It happens. Apologies for the mis-information.
-Spiv.
Yes, BASIC is and always has been a dreadful language. It lacks beauty, it lacks elegance. That's not to say KBasic won't be fun to play with, and good luck to the guys who want to play at developing it, but Yeeurgh! No way am I going to develop in it!
Python has elegance, and beauty, and doesn't force you to turn your head inside-out like scheme does. I know some people love the spawn of LISP, and it has elegance for sure, but I think you have to really get off on all those nested parentheses to enjoy coding in it. (It's some kind of perversion (if you ask me). (You didn't, I know))
Anyway, BASIC was always the result of an intellectual mistake - that a simplistic set of constructs would somehow make programming simpler for beginners. It doesn't - it just restricts the language to beginners.
My personal list of cool stuff a language has to have includes: inheritance, encapsulation, polymorphism, dictionaries, lists, functions as first-class objects, and clear consistent syntax. BASIC is not even close. If KBasic gets even half as close as Python then good, but still, why bother?
--
-- What do you need?
-- Gnus. Lots of Gnus.
Ouch! They must have worked very hard at Redmond to make it *that* bad, given that the obvious string concat implementation is O(n). That would make naive concatentation of N strings K characters each O(K N^3).
But that is a language implementation problem. Not a language problem per se. Nothing's to stop the KBasic team from doing better. They could do a lot better, actually: with a little thought and a little exponential overallocation in the string implementation, naive concatenation of N K-character strings would be only O(K N lg(K N)).
/A
On the flip side however, such a language inevitably means the world and his dog suddenly being able to write apps easily, which in turn means a dirth of poorly designed, badly written software. Just look at 90% of apps written using VB, or 90% of the people writing VB applications.
To me this is one of the big differences between UNIX and Windows, the learning curve for UNIX is steep enough to both deter people who would never be good at it anyway, and instil a sense of 'technical maturity' and commitment to those who persevere. Sure it will take twice as long to get to the same level, but that person will be four times as useful to you at the end of it.
orlando...
-= This is a self-referential sig =-
So you give people who have no idea how to make a decent linux/kde app, and let them churn out half-baked apps by the thousands!
Did nobody notice that the quality of most of the VB apps made on the net tend to reflect the time put into making them? Sure there are good ones, but the bad ones are VERY much that.
No, the fastest way is to use a COM component written in C that does it for you :)... we found that a speedup of 200 times was trivial to achieve (talking approx. 1.5Mb files here).
And I shudder to think of a webserver serving 100s of users at once having VB component spew files everywhere and read them back in... ugh!
-Spiv.
I totally agree.
Though there can be no doubt that basic has many shortcoming compared to eg C and C++, it still doesn't mean that it could be the right tool for som developer for some jobs.
An easy language, and a good graphical developmnet environment will encourage development of small programs that scratch the itch of the average user.
Back in older times when my dad bought our first computer (commodore vic 20) I started doing Basic. This continued on the commodore 64, and on our first PC it was gwbasic.
Then I accidently stumbled accros turbo pascal 5. I tried to take a program I made in gwbasic and converted it to pascal (thank god for the excellent help function in turbo pascal), and I discovered that it ran many times as fast on pascal.
Well perhaps others will try the same. Writing
10 print "Hello world "
20 goto 10
is sure an easy concept to begin with.
Besides that for many apps it isn't necessary to have the code highly optimized.
Yes, it had a Palette command that was incredibly slow... you were much better off using:
outp &h3c8, r
outp &h3c8, g
outp &h3c8, b
outp &h3c9, index
(I think... it's been a while)
Incidentally, QBasic did have a logical and, but I didn't use it in that program... you're probably confusing the notation for hex with that. The and operator was simply "And", IIRC.
-Spiv.
Now, before everyone starts screaming about viruses and the need for this, let me add another thought. At least for Gnome Basic, Michael Meeks was very conscientious about making gb have a secure sandbox from which an evil virus could not escape. The worst thing that can happen right now is DoS RAM consumption.
Also, there is an actual need for Basic in both Gnome and KDE. If we are going to capture any portion of the business users, Open Source must offer spreadsheets and word processors which are compatible with Micro$oft Basic. A large number of companies have huge collections of pre-existing documents which *must* work correctly or they will never even consider switching to Linux/BSD. Gnome Office and K Office must provide this capability before they can make serious inroads in the corporate world.
I applaud the KBasic team for their efforts and I wish them well on a successful implemntation of KBasic.
To all of you Linux Hypocrites out there who are spitting on a legitimate GNU/Free Software project, I have a few words for you. KBasic could, in fact catapult Linux onto many corporate desktops almost overnight, I would like to remind all of you that if it were not for the toolset M$ provides to actually code something for the Windows platform, I don't think that corporate America would have remained stuck in Windows for so long.
Certainly Visual Basic is is one of those tools. The bottom line in corporate America is that a button is a button and a combo box is a combo box, and a text box is a text box. Corporate America wants tools that are easy to use so they can:
1) connect to their databases
2) put stuff into them, pull stuff out of them,
3)and maybe show the user a little something along the way.
It seems like the KBasic team has the vision thing and all of you who posted negatively about a VB or Basic clone, will be kissing their feet in a few years.
Once again, good luck to the KBasic team.
I'm still working on a clever footer.
Ok I admit it. My job is coding ASP based on VBScript. I love BASIC. You know why? I've never done a Computer Science degree! I taught myself and got a job out of it...the fact is BASIC does the job. I've based dozens of websites on it, and they WORK, it's that simple. You can whinge all you want about how it's unstructured, how it teaches poor programming technique, or whatever, but the fact is, at the end of the day, you can nead it into something that works very quickly, and, whats more, I can give the code to less computer literate users and they can actually work out how to modify the code to their own needs without needing to really have any programming knowledge...which they surely can't do with code like this:
/) { //;
$_ = $links2;
while (/[0-9]{0,3}.
s/[0-9]{0,3}.
}
(Flames about my shoddy Perl programming will be gracefully ignored; yeah I know I'm crap, like I said, I teach myself)
Ok I admit it requires a more powerful language to create powerful programs...but you don't always NEED powerful programs. You just need something that does the job, and porting a language like BASIC will hopefully do what it did for M$ - reel in a pile of "amature" programmers, greatly increasing the Linux software base, and hence increasing it's viability as a desktop OS.
-"I still believe in revolution; I just don't capitalize it anymore." - srini!
See http://www.newdealinc.com/ for more.
-bugg
--
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
But, as a Linux newbie who has several years experience with VB (since the 3.0 days), I think this is a step in the right direction - but not for the reasons you may think...
Forget the language - it's the IDE that I want.
This is probably the ONLY thing M$ has done right - an IDE that has a "forms" editor (to lay out your windows), an attribute settings editor (to modify controls), code editing windows (intrinsically tied to the controls*), and controls to drop on the form, to build the forms easily.
I don't know of any comparable system for Linux (now, I know I am showing my lack of Linux knowledge here - I am sure there are good IDEs, and code editors, and maybe even form layout editors for X - who knows? - I just haven't gotten to the point of investigating about them yet). I know there is some similar things for Java...
After I learned C/C++ (stronger in C than C++ - yes, amazingly I am a coder who knows about both!), I realized that what I wanted was the ability to have an IDE like VB's, but the ability to write the "glue" code in C/C++ (and glue code is what most of VB is - it is almost possible to build an app in VB, that does useful work, without writing a line of code - that isn't to say it will be a perfect app - nay, one needs to add code to add exception handling, so that one doesn't screw up a DB table or something). Such a beast has yet to appear - the closest I have seen has been some of the Java IDEs.
If this could be done - if the Linux dev community can see past it's arrogance (yes, VB is limiting in some respects, but it is also very powerful - if only in the RAD arena alone - once you know how to leverage it, it can be great for many types of applications - Quake clone? Unlikely - Frontend for data visualization - Done every day), they would realize the importance of the IDE, and not of the language (this also assumes the IDE will be extractable from the rest of the code).
(*) - This is one of the powers of the VB IDE above VisualC (and the few other IDEs for other languages/platforms). With VisualC, one must build the form(s), then build the code, then do a wierd "hooking" process to "attach" the code to the various events that the form sends out, so that when an event occurs, the code is executed (and overrides a default action). Then the programmer can compile and link the app to form an executable. I like the way VB does this - just double-click the control, select the event procedure to override, and code - then compile to "test" the app. A real RAD tool...
I support the EFF - do you?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
' tap to start the cleansing
.6 'gravity inflicted on the lemmings
SCREEN 13
LOCATE 8, 3: PRINT "10 Million Lemmings Can't be Wrong"
LOCATE 10, 15: PRINT "contact"
COLOR 7: LOCATE 14, 9: PRINT "tomtomdrum@yahoo.com"
COLOR 8: LOCATE 22, 23: PRINT " to quit": SLEEP 5
' OPTIONS MENU (well maybe)
gravity =
chanceoffalling = 30 'the random odds of starting to fall, it gives a tricle effect to the jumping, the odds of falling are 1/chanceoffalling
nooflemmings = 50 'the number of lemmings on the screen at one time
SCREEN 12 'the screen mode
mx = 640 'the X axis res for the screen mode
my = 480 'the Y axis res for the screen mode
wobble = 3 'the wobble on the lemmings (left & right) as they fall, it is +- wobble each side in pixels
bloodcolour = 4 'the colour of the lemming mush
bloodrange = 5 'the amount lemming mush width to be left when a lemming dies. in a pyramid shape
' END OF (GA?) MENU
' MAIN PROGRAM
RANDOMIZE TIMER
DIM a(nooflemmings, 1, 1), b(mx)
FOR i = 1 TO nooflemmings
a(i, 0, 0) = INT(RND * mx) + 1
a(i, 1, 0) = -5
NEXT i
1
FOR i = 1 TO nooflemmings
CIRCLE (a(i, 0, 0), a(i, 1, 0)), 3, 2
PAINT (a(i, 0, 0), a(i, 1, 0)), 0, 2
CIRCLE (a(i, 0, 0), a(i, 1, 0)), 3, 0
CIRCLE (a(i, 0, 0), a(i, 1, 0) - 4), 1, 0
PSET (a(i, 0, 0), a(i, 1, 0) - 4), 0
LINE (a(i, 0, 0) - 2, a(i, 1, 0) + 4)-(a(i, 0, 0) + 2, a(i, 1, 0) + 4), 0
PSET (a(i, 0, 0) - 3, a(i, 1, 0) + 1), 0
PSET (a(i, 0, 0) + 3, a(i, 1, 0) + 1), 0
IF INT(RND * chanceoffalling) + 1 = 1 AND a(i, 1, 0) = -5 THEN a(i, 1, 0) = 20
IF a(i, 0, 0) mx THEN a(i, 0, 0) = a(i, 0, 0) - mx
IF a(i, 1, 0) > b(a(i, 0, 0) + d) + my AND a(i, 0, 0) > bloodrange AND a(i, 0, 0) 0 THEN a(i, 1, 1) = a(i, 1, 1) + gravity
a(i, 1, 0) = a(i, 1, 0) + a(i, 1, 1)
a(i, 0, 0) = a(i, 0, 0) + INT(RND * (wobble * 2)) - wobble
CIRCLE (a(i, 0, 0), a(i, 1, 0)), 3, 1
PAINT (a(i, 0, 0), a(i, 1, 0)), 11, 1
CIRCLE (a(i, 0, 0), a(i, 1, 0) - 4), 1, 12
PSET (a(i, 0, 0), a(i, 1, 0) - 4), 14
LINE (a(i, 0, 0) - 2, a(i, 1, 0) + 4)-(a(i, 0, 0) + 2, a(i, 1, 0) + 4), 12
PSET (a(i, 0, 0), a(i, 1, 0) + 4), 0
PSET (a(i, 0, 0) - 3, a(i, 1, 0) + 1), 12
PSET (a(i, 0, 0) + 3, a(i, 1, 0) + 1), 12
NEXT i
'UPDATE NO'OF DEAD LEMMINGS
LOCATE 1, 1: COLOR 15: PRINT "Number of lemmings have killed while running this program:"; numberofdead
LOCATE 1, 20: COLOR 7: PRINT "you"
'i'm allowed to use a GOTO... er, try and stop me!
IF INKEY$ CHR$(27) THEN GOTO 1
'end credits
CLS
PRINT "Released under the GPL"
PRINT
PRINT
LOCATE 15, 1
PRINT "press any to key to resume reality..."
COLOR 0
END
--Giving to trolls for the benefit of us all
To be honest, the last I saw of this was in version 4.2 - I have not seen what is in the current version of VisualC. But can you simply click on say a text box, (or pop the wizard) and have a new method of Text1_Change() appear?
Might have to investigate it further (though I am doing less and less on my doze box as time goes by - been having a real fun time lately patching my kernel to 2.2.14 to get my Zip drive working properly)...
I support the EFF - do you?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Arrgh! There are already a bunch of great form/UI designers for Qt/KDE, like QtDesigner from TrollTech (GPL). Why recreate one of these? QtDesigner is all XML-output-based, so you could certainly use that. There's already QtDesigner-python module (http://www.thekompany.com/projects/pykde/?dhtml_o k=1) that could be a basis. Plus, QtEz and the KDevelop dialog designer have good starts as well.
Anyways, of course they have a right to do whatever they want with their free time, but I hope that all the designers are aware of the great choices out there.
Really, the key to Visual Basic is that you can easily add a new widget (component, VBX, whatever) and have it integrate smoothly into the designer. Without that feature, these GUI designers are really just going to be toys, sadly.
--JRZ
If you need information about any dialect of BASIC, check out Neozones. Although the main topic of Neozones seems to be QBasic, the forum users know various BASIC dialects and are very helpful.
I cut my teeth on BASIC by accident of fate. It was easy to impliment on small computers with limited resources. I had a great time working with a Timex Sinclair, but I would never force that on anyone today. Why do that when all reasonable OSs ship with a complete set of superior compilers?
Nor would I pain someone with VB. Why do people think C is not for beginners? Learning C was both informative and empowering. It was not difficult, except that I had to cast asside some bad habits. A simple subset of C is just as easy to learn as BASIC, but the concepts are much more usefull.
I wish the folks at KDE all the best, but I question the ultimate usefulness of the effort.
No.
Practice random senselessness and act kind of beautiful.
I'm sure you're saying "Oh komrad faeryman! Why not?"
The member list. Read down at the bottom, at the "Additional thanks to" section. Or rather read the BLANK space there.
Yes my fellow working class GNULIX user, those bastard capitalists programmers list only themselves as creating KBasic. I ask you - should not the man who created thier keyboards be listed too? Or the workers at the powerplant who provide the electricity needed for them to program? Or even Ivan who runs the breadstore down the road for providing nourishment to the programmers?
I also see they have released this software under the GPL. Blasphemy! Marx is spinning in his grave at this. How can the bourgeoisie release such foul capitalist inspired code under the sacred socialist liscence - the GPL?
Yes my fellow men, abandon KBasic as you would abandon your class in society. As you would embrace Lenin, embrace the One True BASIC - GWBASIC!
Thank you.
With love,
,
faeryman
I probably *will* try out KBasic, at least. BASIC doesn't resemble the teaching language that Dykstra railed against way back when. Gee, he did a *much* better job of writing an elegant language. :^)
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
This damned software world is filled with races to features. We are copying MS Windows' enough.
Forget those bullshit features.. make the code smaller not bigger !
Maybe, do some research on how to revolutionize the ComputerHuman interface. Instead of adding crap to your GUI why don't you try to make computers usable to "my grand mother" ?
Just to clarify, by parent I mean the message with cid=21. Apologies for the ambiguity.
-Spiv.
a) Those who write or maintain Windows gui/components/ASP
b) Those without the balls to learn Java
If they wanted to do something useful, they would write a Java IDE. But that has already been done by Forte/Sun. It seems all KDE wants to do is make linux into a Windows clone, or create a sandbox for newbies.
Now I'm not criticising basic. It had its day a couple of years back in Office 97 and VB5, but you have to move with the times and cross platform, OO is the way forward.
I am waiting for a Visual Intercal developement appl. I bet the graphical representation of the stuff will not be a 2d view but a 1d wiev (1d as in a line - like a tape - like the turing machine - for full compatibility :)
--
1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
KDE team, read my lips:
Pleasink to be stoppink gettink ideas from UserFriendly
I love Linux. No nickels. No dimes.
I don't think any of the current languages are truly brilliant. There should be a language that combines the best of Basic, Fortran, Forth, and the newer structured languages with a combination of its own syntax.
Everything is but a number spoken by itself.
And not really that bad... I hear that people who use Perl get brain-damaged also!
If you are modding me down because you disagree with me, use the "Flamebait" category, not the "Troll" one.
I agree completely, but you forgot a few more things! :)
Inconsistent syntax: have you ever tried to type the following:
if x = NULL then
VB uses = for comparisons as well as assigning variables. This might be good for someone who has never programmed before in their life, but it's more important to have a good compiler that spots when = is used improperly.
VB does NOT have garbage collection! The only language I'm aware of other than C that has this problem. And there are different ways to free different items. Fundamental types don't have to be freed. Objects must be freed EVERY time you use them, i.e. you do manual reference counting. There is a special function to free arrays, cuz arrays aren't objects in VB.
You'd be surprised to see how many VB coders aren't even aware that they should be setting everything = to Nothing.
Aside from Python, I'd like to suggest Smalltalk and Eiffel. I'm not aware of a better beginner language than Smalltalk, although the development tools tend to be a little flaky. Eiffel is probably the most powerful OO language around, with an incredibly clean and consistent syntax.
I expect that the locusts will be returning any day now.
I don't really understand why Xbasic is being ignored...t ml
http://www.maxreason.com/software/xbasic/xbasic.h
It's already released under the GPL, has an IDE and forms designer, and is very similar to the old MS Basic PDS implementations in syntax. Anyone care to clue me in as to why?
>The KBasic language is a pretentious project,
WTF?
They admit they are lame like that? That's a little too open.
(not an insult)
portentious?
--
--
blinko - "the nail that sticks up gets hammered down"
This is great news. KDE is obviously keen on making big strides into the corporate world.
I realise this is not a popular opinion around here, but Visual Basic is really not a bad language. It's obviously not designed for use by seasoned coders on large projects, but as a starter language or for getting a small job done quickly ...it really is excellent.
As far as I'm concerned it is a true scripting language, unlike unholy messes like Perl - and I'm a 5 year expert in the language in a corporate environment supporting 3000 users.
INTERACTIVE
great comedy company.
Give them a break , maybe with such a tight IDE and an easy to use/learn language we can provide a learning/productive tool for the script kiddies.
Just imagine what wonders they will bring to our KDE desktops.
Reading the site seems to indicate a functional but unpolished grasp of English. Their claim that the project is "pretentious" smacks of a trasnlation problem.
;)
Here's definition number one of pretentious from dictionary.com: "Claiming or demanding a position of distinction or merit, especially when unjustified."
So I can easily see how this might be mistaken for "difficult" or "involved" by a non native speaker. Especially given the, ahem, high quality of cross-language dictionaries in the world.
--
Behold the Power of Cheese!
Yes, I do.
Not many of the Linux developers have never take theory classes and the most have no training in software design.
Michael Meeks is heading the Gnome Basic project project. He has a rather nice Engineering degree from Downing College at Cambridge University. In addition to having a piece of paper, he actually knows his stuff and has worked in the industry on real time AV editing and playback systems (something you hardly do with a "let's-hack-something-together" attitude).
Once again we see an application created from scratch with the built-in limitation that only KDE users are going to be able to use it.
:v)
Why not make it generic? Eh? Come on, why not?
It increases the user base, and the potential number of contributors.
How hard can it be?
Vik
I am sure the first public beta will be codenamed KBill.
Sheesh, people... have any opf you ever written a custom accounting system? i.e. something the accountants want to completely redo every year because they forgot how their GL works? This is something you want in a high-level language, not in C++ or Befunge or whatever.
VB is made for in-house and custom apps, and it allows them to be done fairly quickly (though we did the aforementioned accounting system in Clipper... it was very refreshing.)
I'm hearing stuff like "line numbers" and "macro viruses"... what kind of reality do you live in? Maybe, just maybe there's a market for this? Personally, I can't wait for Kylix...
SYS 64738 NO CARRIER
Not the best written post by an means, but it certainly isn't flamebait. The poster is just asking the question I know a lot of us are thinking. A couple of amok moderators here that need to read the guidelines again (and be slapped down hard on meta-mod as well.)
Basic is a brain-damaging product that's directly responsible for the mental handicapping of a good number of once-promising programmers. A lot of people find the IDE to be handy, I do not, but for those who do there are already clones of it out to handle real programming languages. Python, for instance, is comparable to VB for ease of learning and rapidity of development, but without the brain damage and limitations. Deliberately porting such an inferior product should raise some eyebrows and some questions. Moderating people down for asking those questions is wrong.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
There are are a lot of comments here from people who are commenting about the various properties(good or bad) of BASIC. These are being used as arguments for or against development of KBasic.
Surely the only thing that should really matter is whether or not people want such a thing. Presumeably if people are writing this thing there are at least some who want it.
If you don't like BASIC don't use it. It is very simple to do, but why complain when you hear that other people are making it possible for themselves to use BASIC?
-- That which does not kill us has made its last mistake.
What is the shortest article in terms of characters ever posted to Slashdot? Is this it?
Interactive Visual Medical Dictionary
There is a lot of reason why Linux can and should replace Windows as a desktop OS. For many, this is already the case-- but for most, this is far from the case. One of the major things holding Linux back as a desktop OS is the lack of a solid, gui-based BASIC language to create apps for it. Historically, Visual Basic was one of the key elements in spreading Windows to so many desktops-- such a vast range of programmers, from basic beginners to advanced gurus, could use it to create apps that anyone could use. The abundance of applications written for Windows is basically the sole reason anyone I know uses Windows. The ability to create applications with the same speed and BASIC language syntax as Windows programmers enjoy would be a great boost to spreading Linux (and even other UNIX OS's) to the desktop.
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
Ok, before anyone jumps to any rash conclusions or gets into state of nastiness...the Gnome project is up the same mischief.....I wonder if this is really good for the linux X-windows environment? It seems to be the trend.
http://www.gnome.org:65348/gb/
On the plus side, contemporary Linux developers will garner some hard-core experience dealing with the wickedness that comes with churing out your own language. I have already taken Theory of Automata and Compiler Theory and found that more than a little challenging. I think it will be a good warm-up for something better.
It fits...I mean if LynuxWorks is going to sell a product for VC++ users to "leverage Visual C++ to develop Linux software." Then why shouldn't linux have a tool to attract VB programmers to Linux' to program M$ VBA apps.
Maybe they have the translation dead on...
A VB like IDE/Language may very well be pretentious.