Petr Schreiber
02-08-2009, 02:19
Dear John,
maybe you chose little bit unlucky period of time for your statistics experiment - it is summer. Most people I know and even suspicious creatures like programmers are :), prefer to spend more time outside rather than being closed in the room at 40°C, holidays are here ... I am sure you know what I mean.
We are also working hard on the ThinBASIC and its modules meanwhile, but there is no press to release one version after another during this time period, due to reasons I mentioned.
In case somebody would need some feature, he can come and ask for it, and he usually gets it very soon. This is how it works here since the beginning. The engine motivating us forward is simple, but powerfull - the passion for the language, for technology and the fantastic community . This, in my opininon, is not something like number of users can express in full scale.
I see your new questions are targeted more at Eros, so I will let him to reply, in case he wants.
Maybe for the first one - I use both ThinBASIC and PowerBASIC and sometimes even other languages. I think it is not smart to fix yourself on single language and defend its use for every task possible. Any of the thousands existing computer languages has its strengths, suitable for specific tasks.
Sure it is useful to learn at least 1 tool more in depth, to not just dance across 128 languages, not knowing any of them in fact.
PowerBASIC? That means to me solid compiler + ...yes, I will never be able to express my thanks enough to José Roca for his work on providing us headers to direct access latest technologies. I use PowerBASIC both for commercial programs and ThinBASIC modules.
FreeBASIC? Great multiplatform compiler, Charles masters it brilliantly to bring us Oxygen.
ThinBASIC? Fantastic tool, language we can shape and sharpen to get closer and closer to perfect form, to suit both our and our users (I should say better "friends", users sounds terrible) needs, with very personal support.
Its modularity allows to bring together power of many languages, which can be used to create good module. BASIC, Delphi, Assembler, C ... each are good for something, and each can be used for ThinBASIC module.
ThinBASIC then provides unified platform which helps me to bind power of the mentioned libraries to achieve tasks I need to do.
In your first post you asked about ThinBASIC use. From my side, if it still interests you, it is mainly platform to drive latest graphic technology for my needs. I use it for science and visualisations of scientific data, I use it for technology demos, for tutorials others can learn from without drowning in difficult syntax. I use it for commercial work and stand alone applications as well - lately to produce animations and technology demonstrators for Bender Robotics, but also for various editors.
And of course - games. In one of your post you mentioned this area of software with little devils in your eyes :). I understand it, many people view games simply as something without any purpose, something what steals their kids from learning, something simply not serious enough.
My experience is that if I would not start developing games years ago, I would never be able to apply for some of softwares I sold or provided for free. I learned graphic technology on them, learned how to optimize, how naughty sometimes graphic cards can get.
As you noticed, all games I or friends here developed, were published with full source code. This was intentional, to give to other people resource to study.
Last but not least - I must confess I am little bit confused from your posts. Some people come here, say something about their programming history, what do they like to do and what they expect from ThinBASIC in "Who are you" (http://community.thinbasic.com/index.php?board=139.0). It is always very interesting, and helps us understand who is joining us. Of course it is optional.
Only information I know about you is that you are active on many BASIC forums, but in fact I don't know which kind of functionality you seek, why do you came here (<- this sounds rude, but I am not native speaker so cannot say it without make it look offensive, should learn english more), what are your hobbys, research interests and what you expect from ThinBASIC.
I only know you like to post about ScriptBASIC, interesting language for sure. I am not clear whether you are you developer, I did checked the website but did not found your name there. Thats why I would appreciate (but I cannot force you to do so) some kind of introduction from you.
If you are developer, then you understand for sure why we work on "our" BASIC too. It is very interesting process, it helps us to talk to computer more naturally, and to me at least the language and things developed in it helped me and friends extremely in my University studies and work.
Well, enough talk in my scary english. I hope you found at least few ASCII characters holding some of the information you were searching for.
Good luck to your ScriptBASIC adventures, my personal wish is to see some ThinBASIC code from you too, and I hope you can enjoy being part of community of ThinBASIC as well.
Best regards,
Petr
Hi John,
I programmed in the past in GW Basic, Quickbasic, VBA (visual basic for applications), Visual Basic 6 Pro and a few months ago I discovered ThinBasic and that was my lucky day :-).
Visual Basic is an easy language but i always hated those runtime libraries. And some of included controls has annoying limits. ThinBasic runs on almost all windows versions, and that's something I also like a lot. It's easy to learn, has good and clear documentation, and very smart keywords. Code in ThinBasic is mostly smaller then VB. I really enjoying learning this language, also thanks to the friendly people here on the forum. And let's not forget: TB is free!
I never had something with games, I don't like to play them (because I never win haha) and I have no interest in writing them, although like Petr mentioned that could be very learnful. And when I tried some ThinBasic Examples for the first time I was shocked by it's graphic possibilities (TBGL) and the very short code needed. I guess it must like a dream come true for game developers. So I like to create applications, mostly just for fun. At the moment I do not have much inspiration for new software I could create (because you can find everything on internet nowadays). But my current project, a mood player, is something I really like to finish. It's a great project to learn ThinBasic because I use a lot of different TB modules for this. And if I need something that can't be done in TB I can send a request and a few days later there's a new command available to fullfill my needs (thanks eros!). Where else do you find that?
Thanks to ThinBasic I pickud up my old hobby, that's "basic"ly it :-)
Martin
Hi John
the number of 7 voters is normal, because in the (presidents) elections a small fraction of the society are normally vote.
i am programming as a matter of (pure existence) activity just like being having consciousness or reading books or playing chess. it is like looking from the windows of the bus in a long journey. what distinguished thinbasic is that its window is colorfull, we see a friendly people, so while we are in the bus we are looking from its window more frequently. the thinbasic forum are completely free and even the anonymous visitor can browse and download pages and files; this is a global good vision ; a cosmic mind, in contrast with some other programming sites wich they needs your full name and in the near future a photocopy of your passport stamped from the foreign affairs ministry to be able to download something from them; a very narrow self subjective unhuman vision.
the only forum i know to resemble thinbasic forum in its cosmic spirit is http://www.perlmonks.com/ which even the anonymous can post questions.
so this is some of the reasons the thinbasic planet gravity are attracting me more . i add also it seems from the huge number of examples found in the forum from math and physics demos, to graphics simulations, that there is nothing which can't be done using thinbasic in a simple way; we do not need to be professors to program something colourfull and attracting the eyes.
regards