BASIC

[John]

I'm looking for constructive feedback.

If you have tried Script BASIC, what do you dislike about it the most?

[AlyssonR]

The one thing that I am spoiled for, and most languages lack (and not just BASIC of any flavour) is a quick and easy, drag & drop interface form designer (I was spoiled by VB6, after all) with all of the event handling bundled up alongside.

We have had this conversation often in the past.

Otherwise, I find SB to be eminently useful for back-end and background functions, even if I do use VB6 lmost exclusively.

[John]

Script BASIC by design is an embeddable scripting engine API that comes with a console mode interpreter and multi-threaded web server as examples of its use. Drag & drop is outside of the scope of its purpose.

You might want to check out the IUP IDE code challenge to make your wish come true.

[John]

Otherwise, I find SB to be eminently useful for back-end and background functions, even if I do use VB6 lmost exclusively.

VB6 and Script BASIC in your toolbox almost makes programming a free ride. 

[John]

This Dilbert strip pretty much makes my point why I use Script BASIC.

[AIR]

Well....it took me half a day to setup up a SB dev environment on my Mac....I had to modify SB's perl files to get it to detect my perl paths so it could install the esd.pl module...so there's that.  And no, it's not a macOS issue, the detection code was written against an old version of perl (early 2000's)...it wouldn't work on my RasPI or Linux server either until I tweaked it.

AIR.

[John]

Those build scripts and make files have only been touched by you since I picked up the project from Peter. I was serious when I said SB wouldn't be where it is today without the many contributions to the project you have made.

The comic refers to application programming not language development.

[AlyssonR]

@Air -

Thankyou. Can we expect to see your tweaks rolled into the SB release at some point?

Given that I'm not using Linux or Mac, this is just for information.

[AIR]

I would assume so; John is handling that part...

[John]

AIR maintains his own private SB-DEV sandbox which I'm pulling from and pushing to the public version in the sandbox. I'm pushing my extension modules I built over the years and will follow up with integrating it into the current build system. I'm following AIR's lead as he is more experianced in this area.

[John]

The future of BASIC is dependent on its ability to stay relevant.  I feel Script BASIC is the best hope to keep the language in the toolbox.

[AlyssonR]

Thank you both.

To my mind, BASIC will always be relevant at, at least, some level.

I've always found it to be the best tool for quick & dirty automation tasks, and when I was stil sysadminning at a school, it was my go-to for the annual file purge and user-account regeneration. An estimated 12 hours of keypushing reduced to a single command-line and a wait of 4 hours for the job to complete.

I never said it was fast, did I?

[John]

I’ve coded since 1988. Tech comes and goes. To have a long career:

1. Learn how to learn
2. Build comm skills
3. Continuously improve through challenges, practice, and feedback
4. Show empathy
5. Be ethical
6. Give more than you get
7. Show humility
8. Be flexible
9. Show up

[John]

Cool idea.

If we had a dedicated NaaLaa section on this forum, the problem would be solved.

Marcus is an All BASIC forum member / developer that makes occasional announcements. He is always welcome here in any form.

[John]

Scripting is the new programming language standard.

Who would ever of thought a browser scripting engine would evolve into an Enterprise server?