Article: QuickBASIC lives on with QB64

[FellippeHeitor]

A lot of fresh eyes on QB64 today with this article:
https://hackaday.com/2018/02/22/quickbasic-lives-on-with-qb64/

[Pete]

Plenty of the "days of old" arguments about BASIC in the replies, too.

From the author's point of view:

"Being able to take a disk with BASIC code I wrote on a DOS 386 in the early 90’s and turn it into a Linux binary in 2018 is a pretty neat accomplishment, and I salute the QB64 development team for making it possible. I won’t be writing any new code in the language, and I don’t suggest you do either, but it was a lot of fun being able to revisit this period in my life and drag it kicking and screaming into the modern era."

So the shortcoming is the author failed to visit the new commands, GL integration, memory expansion limits, etc. Sigh.

Very nice the .ORG site was mentioned, considering the .Net site is down. Talk about timing.

Pete :)

[FellippeHeitor]

Originally the article only pointed to [abandoned, outdated and now likely malicious qb64 dot net website - don’t go there], even though it has already been down a while today. I and others came along in the comments to indicate qb64.org as the alternative and then the author updated the links a few hours later.

I'm yet to check the page view/download count of the past 24 hours but I have reasons to believe it will be quite high, especially if the total Twitter notifications I've been getting since that was published is anything to go by.

[Pete]

Well I wonder what that will article will stir up?

doppler had a nice reply...

doppler says:   
February 22, 2018 at 2:13 pm

"Before you might complain qb64 does not have all the same debugging tools as qb45 did. Look for VWATCH and use it too. Since the board was reset it might be awhile before VWATCH shows up. QB64 is so much more than a BAS to C spewer. All the extensions added to QB64 make a worth while second look. Hell you can even make windows system calls. Like file attributes, mod date/archive/create date/flags.

BTW, latest version of QB64 will take qb45 tokenized files and load them. No need to save them as TEXT."
---------------------------

Is he right about being able to run tokenized qb files? I saved almost everyone of mine as text, but I bet I had one or two in tonken form. No biggie, just curious. It seemed like a lot of work to figure out how to uncode them.

Hey, why when you bought the domain from Bill the forum admin position didn't come along with it. It's weird the way it's set up.

Pete

[FellippeHeitor]

I just went there and thanked doppler for the mention to vWATCH. @doppler, thanks again!

Tokenized code was cracked by qarnos and his code had been dormant in the wiki for years (http://qb64.org/wiki/Tokenized_Code). We finally took his offer and added it officially to QB64 in version 1.2 (https://github.com/Galleondragon/qb64/commit/e6a265f0e4c3174dfde187a5ba194b2fd0be1e04).

Odin isn't a singularity and his actions aren't single handed. The three of us democratically agree upon things (and make compromises on others).

[Pete]

Actually, you could have thanked doppler here. He's a member now. Speaking of which, I saw your reply over there:

"Thanks for the mention <3 "

So it's sure is a shame that place doesn't have real smilies, like we have here... well, you see where I'm going with this, right? I know, Bill is just too cranky, hey maybe if they were called frownies? Luke, well without him the dishes around here wouldn't get clean but I would think you would be in support of emoticons to brighten the place up a little. Anyway, not trying a divide and concur here, I just miss my smilies. It's hard enough to multiply, I only have one kid. I've talked to the wife about having a second but she said giving me a second is what got us the first one. Oh well.

Pete [Suffering from ASWS... Acute Smiley Withdrawal Syndrome.]

[doppler]

I finally figured out the new address, board reset new-ish look.  Yikes, someone figured out my non-de-plume posting name at hackaday.

I could not let a half-way finished article on hack-a-day, go with out commenting.  (I will give credit it was a longer article than normal)  Especially since QB64 is so much more than qb45 ever was.  There is a new learning curve with QB64, but any half-assed programmer can figure it out.

I would love to see, better interfacing to windows system calls.  Right now it's a lot of structures and statics.  Hard to follow unless you've had windows call experience.  It more of wishful thinking on my part.  It would take a lot of effort to create.

 

[Pete]

Hi doppler,

Glad you have us on your radar! Oh boy, I've got to hire new material people. Anyway...

Actually, this is not a new board, it is a different site entirely. [abandoned, outdated and now likely malicious qb64 dot net website - don’t go there] just crashes a lot. This ,org site was originally created to put up when the .net site went down. I think I, and others at Network54 and the .net site, convinced the Three Amigos here to keep this place up for good this time. Hopefully [abandoned, outdated and now likely malicious qb64 dot net website - don’t go there] will be back soon. When the .net site goes down it takes awhile to get fixed. The time it takes to fix it is also related to why we cannot expect some of the additions  you mentioned to be developed, what I term as a wish list. The owner of the .net site is no longer actively developing QB64. He rarely frequents the forum, and has to be emailed when it goes down. It goes down due to server capacity, something about the builds overloading it, so old builds need to be removed to free up space. I think I have that right, anyway, it just isn't a priority to the developer anymore. By the way, the developer of QB64, Rob,  put this BASIC to C++ translator project and forum together as a solo mission. He spent over 10 years of his time on it. He has far less time now to continue it further. He might surprise us, but I think for now his intention is to maintain it and allow others to contribute to advancing it. The problem with getting others to work on it is the way it was put together. Rob admits he wishes he could rewrite it. I know how he feels. I put together 14 programs in QuickBASIC to run my office. That was back in 1990. I used those programs to help beta test QB64. I was able to join all 14 of them into one 80,000+ line program. That was pretty neat, but if I had to get others to work on it, they'd get lost in the code. So here is the trade off. If only one person is working on a bigger than life project, he has to take shortcuts to get things done and not spend a lot of time on rewrites. Get it working as soon as possible and working right is what's important. That's great, just don't lift up the hood!

I think what Rob created as a one man show is nothing short of spectacular. All I ever wanted, initially, was a way to run QuickBASIC programs on a modern Windows OS without DosBOX or some other virtual machine emulator. This project did that with near 100% compatibility, and works in Linux and Mac, too. I always wished Rob had made a finished project with just that, but he decided to add more bells and whistles. I have to admit I like the new underscore keywords and the other abilities, which are beyond what I currently use, but it's nice to know that they are there. About all that was missing was a way to run code interpreted. I made a simple line tracer for that, but Fell put together his VWATCH project which is the whole enchilada. (Sorry Fell, I was viewing pics of Trudeau in Indian garb yesterday, and I haven't shook off the whole ethnicity thing yet, argh!) 

This is an open source project, so if you are C++ savvy and can stomach a helping serving of spaghetti code, have a look. Windows enhancements, mobile app building, I'm not an OOP fan but that's been mentioned, too. I think what a lot of people don't get is this is a translator. In 1990 I picked a language that I thought would survive the ages, and it was C. I just hated writing in it. Since this project essentially translates your BASIC programs to the C/C++ language, it has a lot going for it in terms of stability, all with the fun of being able to code your projects in dear old BASIC.

Welcome to the forum,

Pete :)

[doppler]

Hi doppler,

Glad you have us on your radar!

Why does everybody goes that route.  If you know about the "Doppler scientific effect."  It applies to sound too.  Back in my bunny hunting days in Amateur Radio.  Using the doppler effect for RDF direction location.  Really surprises the S**T out of people harassing emergency services.  They think about how they could get away with harassing on CB.

I always thought of QB64 as all gravy.  Something everybody wants and can't do without.  I have looked at the code, if I was more of a programmer I would consider making "Canned" windows system calls.  Today I will take and thank for all I can get.

[Pete]

Well I guess more people associate doppler with radar "weather" you like it or not. That's it, that guy is fired! I hear Tim Allen's writer is looking for work. I'll look him up later.

Enjoy QB64. I've only found one glitch in the transition from the SDL to the GL platform. I don't do graphics, but I wrote a GUI as a lark. It was nothing really to crow about, but I did notice one glitch in positioning, which I still haven't taken time to explore. If you ever get into any similar difficulties, don't worry, most of the turkeys here can help and they usually won't give you the bird in the process. Really? What's Allen's writer's number again?

Anyway, apologizes for the name mix up. A friend tried to get me some info on a ham radio once, but I just glazed over it. What Odin? It's time for my medication already! Gee time files when your making fun.

Pete :D