The death of Bob Zale, founder of PowerBASIC

Paul Squires · November 26, 2012, 02:43:51 PM

I am still in shock over this: http://www.powerbasic.com/support/pbforums/showthread.php?t=51887

Please take the time to respond to that thread. Bob Zale is the reason FireFly exists and why we are together here as a community. He will certainly be missed.

Paul Squires · November 26, 2012, 09:16:54 PM

I have been struggling with this all day. It will be interesting to see where PB goes from here. Bob passed away 3 weeks ago so I assume that in that time frame the company has followed through on some type of succession plan. It will be critical for all of us to see what direction the compiler goes in now or if this is the end of it.

I am comforted by this quote from Jim Bailey, PB employee:

Quote
Development is continuing in multiple projects by competent programmers in R&D. We still have many, many projects that Bob had proposed that still need to be implemented.

I just worry about the "still need to be implemented" part - who is actually going to do that implementation? I imagine that the compiler itself was closely guarded and coded by Bob himself. I hope that someone there is able to continue on with it. I remember years ago that there was a push within PB to convert the compiler itself into PB code however in the end that they stuck with assembly language. I wonder if that conversion will now happen. I guess that I am wondering about many things.....

James Klutho · November 28, 2012, 06:38:58 PM

I have the same concerns. It looks like Bob's wife, Vivian, is in her early 70's and I would guess that a likely scenario would be for her to sell the company. I imagine Bob was nearly 100% of the PowerBasic energy and though I have no way to know, I would be very surprised if it is business as usual. I suppose it is possible she would keep the company for sentimental reasons but very few people in their 70's can carry on a business, much less one that you did not create. I never heard of Bob having kids that were involved with the company. Powerbasic was written by a skilled assembly language programmer. I can not imagine that will be easy for someone else to maintain much less rewrite Powerbasic in a major way for something like a 64 bit compiler. I can see the current employees being able to add a few commands here and there and clean up things where needed but I see the current version as probably the last meaningfull version. We will see though.

James Padgett · November 28, 2012, 07:42:36 PM

Assumptions:
1- The technical staff at PowerBasic are able to carry on with powerbasic ..

If this be the case then technically there is no reason the compiler will not continue on..
Perhaps Mrs. Zale will allow the current staff to ' buy ' powerbasic ' .. or maybe all of the owners of licenses could buy in on it.

If Mr. Zale was anything near the age of his wife I can't imagine he never gave thought as to what to do with 'powerbasic' as a company.. perhaps time will tell..

Paul Squires · November 28, 2012, 10:47:09 PM

Bob was 66 when he passed away. Personally, given Bob's personality, I can't imagine that he shared too much of the compiler code with anyone else. Hopefully I am wrong about that. It is nice to see Steve Rossell post again. I had feared that he had left the company because he used to post regularly and then all of sudden nothing. We saw that happen to others like Lance and Tom. Not sure what job this Jim Bailey guy holds with the company. Sales? Marketing? Programmer? I would be surprised if there are more than 5 or 6 employees in the whole company.

I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for a 64 bit compiler.

I am now worried that true ActiveX support for visual controls may not happen anytime soon.

I plan to hedge my bets over the next couple of months. I have already downloaded SharpDevelop and am learning C# (rather than vb.net). We'll see how all this plays out between now and after Christmas. Not trying to be pessimistic... rather more like realistic. The PowerBasic team could use the talents of the likes of Jose and Dominic to help get the compiler to the next level. I'm sure that Mrs. Zale is a very nice person but I am not putting all my programming future into her hands just yet.

Personally, I want to see a published roadmap of where PB plans to head over the next year or two. Time to let go of the no vaporware policy and give us developers real insight into the product's direction.

I really want to stick with PB but I have seen it happen way too many times when the lead person of a product leaves then the product eventually just becomes irrelevant way too quickly.

I hope that PB proves me 100% wrong.

James Klutho · November 28, 2012, 11:54:35 PM

I have always wondered if the Powerbasic compiler was just a small part Powerbasic Inc. It has never seemed like software sales could not generate enough cash flow for even 4 employees. If you sold 1000 compilers a year that is only $150,000 to $200,000 per year gross. I have a feeling that is high side. If the address was a real address and not a PO box, then you have rent. With major updates only once every 3 years, I have to assume consulting was a big part of the cash generation. With Bob gone, that is gone. If Jim Bailey, Steve Rossell or Jeff Daniels leave Vivian probably would not know where to begin to look for replacements. She is probably nervous, especially if there is no office and everyone telecommutes. Powerbasic is a brilliant piece of software and only a brilliant , inspired and manically focus person can take it to the next level. Again, a long shot. I have a feeling none of the employees could come up with the coin that Vivian thinks the compiler is worth and employees do not have a piece of the action to stick around. Probably what will happen is the Turly route where the business is sold (second round) and the buyer will sell licenses on pretty much the old work.

Douglas McDonald · November 29, 2012, 09:38:53 AM

I doubt there are many great ASM programmers out there that really understand how windows works. There are still many who program micro controllers in ASM but its not close to the same thing. It seems like it is too late now to port PB from ASM to PB. I wish I would have learned Delphi 20 years ago.
Anyway if they can add ActiveX support for visual controls then Pb would last me the rest of my programming years, the few I have left. I'm sure PB 10 will be just fine for my needs but ActiveX support for visual controls make it much better.

I truly hope PB can survive and grow. As said in the posts above it will take the right people in the right atmosphere.

Very sorry to see Bob leave us.

Doug

Julian Small · November 29, 2012, 11:21:13 PM

Quote
I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for a 64 bit compiler.
I am now worried that true ActiveX support for visual controls may not happen anytime soon.

Check this link on the PowerBasic forum http://www.powerbasic.com/support/pbforums/forumdisplay.php?f=64

Seems like they intend business as usual

Julian

Paul Squires · November 30, 2012, 11:19:09 AM

Thanks Julian - I have been following every word in those threads for the past week. I am interested in seeing what leadership emerges from this tough time for PB. Without Bob Zale steering the ship then I would like to know where the boat is headed. Updates to the compiler have always been traditionally slow. Without Bob will those updates now be even slower?

The comment about a 64 bit compiler is troubling. Everything in the industry is at the 64 bit stage now and PB is once again playing catch up (remember how it took to finally get COM cababilities and some sort of OOP?). From reading the post it seems like PB thoughts are that it will be a separate standalone product at some point much later? I have long argued that PB should have one compiler capable of producing Windows/GUI and Console EXE's/DLL's. Now there should only be one compiler cabable of producing 32/64 bit GUI and Console programs. Separate products is just a money grab. Internally the difference between producing a GUI and Console program are minimal other than an EXE header modification and runtime functions specifically geared for each platform.

Patrice Terrier · November 30, 2012, 12:11:40 PM

I am very pessimistic, because since Bob has passed, everything gets hung.
I can't see anybody able to take up on his work.

I have asked Jim and the said "programming team" to present themselves, to tell us what their expertise(s) are, and the only answered i got, is that the thread, i have posted in, was closed.

...

José Roca · November 30, 2012, 12:45:31 PM

Anyone has tried FreePascal? I'm tempted to try it using my SDK way of programming, that is without Lazarus, that adds a lot of bloat.

Quote
It's also important to note that the hello world Lazarus software already includes a huge amount of features. It includes:

XML handling library
Image handling library for png, xpm, bmp and ico files
Almost all widgets from the Lazarus Component Library
All of the Free Pascal Runtime Library

So it's very big, but it already includes almost everything a real world non-trivial app will need.

Israel Vega Alvarez · November 30, 2012, 02:37:06 PM

I am very sad about the death of Bob...I have no words...Who knows what will be hands compiler
I love working with Firefly and PowerBasic, but we do not know the future of PB for continuity ... anyone have any
experience with PureBasic?...PureBasic can be an alternative?...

There are good programmers as Jose Roca, Paul Squires, James Klutho, Dominic Mitchell, Michael Mattias who are very talented ... I think the staff should PowerBasic lean on them ... and many more of the forum would be a PB ...
shame that ended a great product here.

p.d. sorry for my bad English ... not sure if it was translated correctly

Patrice Terrier · November 30, 2012, 03:06:14 PM

The reason why we are so anxoius, is because Bob Zale had such a strong personnality that he was controlling everything. He was not only the Boss, but also the core (if not the single) programmer of the compilers, working days and nights, 7/7 days, 365/365 days per year, on his life work of art.

Without knowing the profile of Jim and team, i think there are very little chance for them to take his place, except if they are themselves genious, and if they do not have any family life.

...

James Padgett · December 01, 2012, 08:46:53 PM

While I don't doubt Bob had a major influence in PB products... I can't imagine that he performed the ' grunt ' work of coding... I have to guess that his coding staff did the brunt of the work there.

My main concern at this stage is the unknown of ' PowerBasic ' as a company.

Paul Squires · December 01, 2012, 09:52:45 PM

Hi James, maybe you're right although I am pretty sure that the compiler itself was coded pretty much exclusively by Bob. I believe that PBForms was contracted to Calvin Chipman and maybe Borje later on. The PB editor was written in PB and I think staffers such as Lance Edmonds did work on it.

Of course, I could be wrong.