Who is the dork, who challenged the developers here. Was he someone who is trolling, or got mad because "We" may have pointed out a blonder of his.
Blonder? I love it! A blunder that blonds make!
Hey did you guys know the grammatically preferred American and Canadian spelling is blond, instead of blonde, but in French, blond is used to to identify men with yellowish hair, while blonde is used to identify women with yellowish hair? Does this mean in France if you don't identify as male or female, you have to become a brunette? And now, back to our regular forum topic...
Yes, I was able to read some of the comments at that ratings site, despite the forever page loading with ads, and the #1 reason to use QB64 was...
It's FREE! Whoopee, there's a stellar endorsement. I guess it's somehow cheaper than those other no-cost BASIC languages. Hey I wonder what ever happened to Walt? He was last working on a project he called Crystal BASIC. I can see the ad for that now.
There's Steve. We replaced his regular version of QB64 with new BASIC Crystals. I wonder if he'll noticed. (Play on an old Folger's coffee commercial, for those of you who are from the post-Jurasic period). Anyway, BASIC doesn't make most lists of other ranking sites for the top 20 programming languages of 2021. Many of those sites are aimed at careers, and BASIC is just not considered a language used for career work. Even back in the day it was considered a way for non-career oriented folk to enjoy the ability to write programs on home computers. So while I cannot see people preferring the syntax of those other non-BASIC languages over BASIC, the human failing of follow the popularity has always outweighed the choice of practicality. In computer science, this outweighing is so pronounced the scales were not just tipped, but they were completely tipped over.
The tremendous success QB64 has is completing the goal of QB compatibility, along with its continued support, and development. No need to add some -lang compatibility switch, as with a certain "to remain unnamed" short bus to C language. Too bad QB64 missed out on the mobile market. I guess Rob dropped his remake QB64 as a JAVA translator venture. (For those of you who don't know, C C++, which is the code QB64 translates into, can only be used in part to write Android apps). As for Apple, I believe you need Objective-C, although I have read that OpenGL games can be uploaded to Apple mobile devices. I'm not sure if this is true. For now, it looks like the QB64 debugger / interpreter addition will aid us in helping any real new coders but it would take a solid plan to find and attract these newcomers. I'm sure the site George mentioned would be happy to cram yet another ad in it for us, just don't expect it to be free. Schools, at least here in the US, will not promote software unless there is some deal with the state, although charter schools can be approached, but still have acceptance standards they would prefer be met. In other words, if you are a nationally known organization, you stand a chance. So where could QB64 be showcased? My stab at it would be to eventually create a DIY site that showcases finished projects, Flappy Bird comes to mind, with videos that show how such projects can be put together in QB64. That would give us a bigger YTube audience. I'd figure who wouldn't want to send a friend for a free download of some fun or useful app, and maybe 1 out of 10 would be curious enough to want to download QB64 to start making their own stuff. Obviously adding OOP and extensive use libraries would make it more attractive, but here we go again, flying in the face of BASIC as a teaching language. I hope if the developer(s) ever go this route, a current copy of QB64 gets named and preserved and better still, what follows is renamed, much like PowerBASIC for DOS and PowerBASIC for Windows, but using better nomenclature, please. We certainly could run PowerBASIC for DOS on Windows. Oh, let's not go with QB64 OOPS, for obvious reasons. Maybe QB64 Pro?
Pete
