BASIC

[John]

For me, it was terrible. I rejoined this forum only to find it being dead. Some of the other forums look more like blogs. We used to complain about the level of activity on BP.org, but comparing to today's forums that place was extremely busy. The only BASIC that looks alive to me is BaCon. Other compilers/interpreters are either not being developed or used any more (I don't care about commercial products). The development of (not so long ago) busy and advanced projects has stopped or slowed down dramatically (QB64, OpenEuphoria, FreeBASIC). Python has been widely accepted as the language for beginners - Raspberry Pi (which I find boring and overrated) is probably the main reason for it. Several attempts to bring BASIC to Raspberry Pi have failed. The same can be said about mobile devices. Sorry guys, but it looks bad.

I guess Tomaaz hasn't been visiting the All BASIC or Oxygen Basic forums lately. AIR is active on the All BASIC forum cleaning up the Script BASIC distributions for Linux, Mac and Pi. The Gitlab sandbox has worked out great supplementing forum activity.

Charles is in the process of converting his FreeBasic version of his BASIC compiler to self compiling.

In all, I think BASIC had a great year. Leaving the RetoB forum and the bitter folks I left behind has made my life happier.

[John]

Why I have invested over a dozen years supporting Script BASIC.


• it is one of the most professionally done BASIC interpreters out there.
• SB has user, developer and extension documentation.
• SB is written ANSI C and runs on everthing.
• SB has unlimited expansion abilities.
• SB is embeddable (initial design goal)
• SB runs in a thread safe model
• SB is used commercially and burned into firmware.
• SB can run out of a shared object with a a 4K footprint executable.
• I could go on with this list for days.

[AIR]

Man, this topic was good in the beginning (Mike's Comment especially) but has spiraled out of control.

I don't agree with everything Mike posted, but it was well thought out and presented.

So, can we go back to talking about BASIC and/or other languages, and what functionality we could "borrow" to make our respective language of choice better than it is at the moment?

Personally, my interest is in something that is cross-platform, meaning Windows/Linux/macOS.  Most of the offerings in the BASIC world omit at least one of the OS's in my mini-list.

For example:

Bacon Linux/macOS

MBC   Linux/macOS

FBSL  Windows

ScriptBasic  Linux/Windows/macOS

Xojo (Commercial) Linux/Windows/macOS

PureBasic (Commercial) Linux/Windows/macOS

VB6 (Commercial) Windows

BlitzMax Linux/Windows/macOS

I know there are more, please add what you've seen/tried and your thoughts.

BTW, I know about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_BASIC_dialects, so no need to direct me there.  I'm going over that list.   

AIR.

[John]

ScriptBasic  Linux/Windows/macOS

Pi
Android Linux
Various embedded controller OS platforms

Basically EVERYTHING.

[Mike Lobanovsky]

ScriptBasic  Linux/Windows/macOS

Can anyone show me a screenshot of Script BASIC running natively under macOS, preferably in a windowed mode rather than the terminal?

[John]

AIR is the SB Mac OS pro. All distributions for that platform is from AIR. I remember an IUP Mac example but AIR felt it wasn't worth investing in due to not being a native solution.

[John]

Script BASIC is a glue and prototyping language that is generic enough that its code can be easily ported to another language. Not having to define anything before use makes the language a great general purpose scripting solution. The unlimited seamless extension ability is also a plus.

[John]

FBSL

Mike,

FBSL is an amazing language you should be very proud of. If nothing else it a statement of your skills and professional stance on what a language is all about. SB has been a good friend to me and has gotten me though some rough times when nothing else worked as a distraction.

[AIR]

ScriptBasic  Linux/Windows/macOS

Can anyone show me a screenshot of Script BASIC running natively under macOS, preferably in a windowed mode rather than the terminal?

Using my unreleased Cocoa Objects Library:

Code: ScriptBasic

1. import cui.bas
2.  
3. cui::init()
4.  
5. mywin = cui::Window("ScriptBasic - AIR's Cocoa Objects Library", 400, 300)
6. entry = cui::TextBox(mywin,"Welcome to Air's Cocoa Objects Demo",16,16,280,26)
7. btn = cui::Button(mywin,"Click",300,16,90,26)
8.  
9. cui::run()
10.  

[John]

Thanks AIR! 

[AIR]

ScriptBasic  Linux/Windows/macOS

Pi
Android Linux
Various embedded controller OS platforms

Basically EVERYTHING.

Pi runs Linux

Android runs Linux.

I'm specifically targeting OS's, not Platforms.  For example, both PC's and Mac can run Linux. Mac can run Windows, PC's can run macOS (although not legally).

Another one for the list:

UbxBasic (by James Fuller) Linux/Windows/macOS [I tested this earlier today under macOS]

AIR.

[John]

SB is written in ANSI C. If the OS supports a C compiler, SB will run on It.

[AIR]

Okay, we know about SB.

Have you looked at any others over the years? 

[John]

Okay, we know about SB.

Have you looked at any others over the years?

I know you're not a Windows fan but have you checked out the Oxygen Basic project?

[AIR]

My only knock against Windows (for years now) is that their default shell sux. 

Powershell is an improvement, but could be better from a usability standpoint.

(I don't mean Powershell isn't usable, I use it all of the time as my default shell in Windows, but the requirement that you need to change it's default security settings to actually execute scripts locally is a bummer.  When I do this, I do this only as an unprivileged user and not globally, which should have been the default setting IMO.  Interestingly, with Powershell under macOS this restriction doesn't apply.  Go figure)

In Windows, macOS, and Linux I would rather invoke a single command with parameters than have to click 5 times to do the same thing.  Guess I'm old-school, having started with CP/M back in the day.

Back on topic:  Oxygen is something that I haven't looked at, will check it out even though it's Win-only at this point.  Thanks!

AIR.