Too quiet lately.

[Elias Montoya]

 Are we praying?

[Klaus Henn]

No ...
still waiting for a miracle .... 

[Elias Montoya]

 What kind of miracle? About PowerBASIC inc?

Lets face it, Bob is not going to revive. And Bob was PowerBASIC. They died together.
But we dont need the company to be alive to enjoy the compiler, or profit with it.

sad but true. No matter what good intentions Vivian has/had, she will not be able to
do something without money, which she lacks.

The sooner we face it, the sooner we move ahead... not away, but ahead.

[James Padgett]

And no one would invest the amount of cash needed to buy Vivian out for such a limited distribution product. Let's face it... the business world has been Microsofted to death such that if you don't use one of the big boy's tools you are left in the dark...

But it would be 'Great' if you could get it distributed to mass public schools as a spring board into programming....

[Mark Strickland]

Some of the chatter on the PB site talks about Bob having the source or whole hard drives encrypted and nobody can open it.

If that is true then Bob "killed" PB himself.  I knew him by the interaction on the PB site but I could see him encrypting things and being paranoid.

Has anybody made any cash offer Vivian?

[James Padgett]

I highly doubt any business would do that... and others did write code for PB products and what a nightmare that would have been if you have to go get Bob to open your files for you every day......

It would be interesting if say 50 or 100 people could pony up enough cash to by the business... but without a current statement of profit / loss who would even consider that...
I would like to know the annual sales figures for PB products though...

[Paul Squires]

A better approach would be for someone to create a new PB language compatible compiler and market it towards existing PB customers. I can't imagine how much effort would be involved in trying to maintain and further enhance all that old asm code.

[Mark Strickland]

I cannot imagine trying to deal with all of the Assembler code.  Unless the price was low to purchase the PB assets it probably would not be worth the effort required to keep the product functioning and to make a 64 bit version.  If you don't eventually have a 64 bit version it will die anyway.

Maybe the plan is to just keep the PB company alive with minimal investment and just let it fade out.

How about a PB to FreeBASIC source code translator?  I have not looked at FreeBASIC syntax but it must be close for Paul to port FF3.  Of course there is not any money in that approach.  And nobody would want to do commercial projects in a "free" compiler.

And we can just keep compiling until Microsoft releases an OS and things don't work any more.  Has anybody tried to run a PB compiled program on Windows 10?

But it is clear that if you want to be viable going forward you better find a new tool.  I don't think it is an emergency but it will be a necessity at some point.

[James Klutho]

If the forum attendence is any indication of interest in a language, then PowerBasic is heads and shoulders above the rest but even it I believe has no future.  It seems Purebasic has really taken a dive recently which was not helped by Blitzbasic being shelved (which shares the quirky syntax with Purbasic).  I would be hard pressed to investment much time in any of them for serious, long shelf life projects.  Basic is truly a hobby only language I am sad to say. 

In the last few minutes, I polled forum attendence.  And remember this forum are world wide.

Site                  Total Users      Reg User(excluding bots)
Powerbasic             293                  24
Purebasic                 43                    2
Ionic Wind Basic       20                    2
FreeBasic                 20                    2

[Knuth Konrad]

I cannot imagine trying to deal with all of the Assembler code.  Unless the price was low to purchase the PB assets it probably would not be worth the effort required to keep the product functioning and to make a 64 bit version.  If you don't eventually have a 64 bit version it will die anyway.

My opinion is that this is the main problem for any potential investor(s). Is there any other compiler out there these days which is written in Assembler? Are there any Assembler gurus out there wishing/willing to take over a compiler?

I "begged" for years that Bob "opens up" the compilers to allow 3rd parties to "hook into it". Although I always had RAD tools like FF in mind (let's face it - DDT and PBForms are terrible hacks), my guess is that it would also help interested parties in extending the existing Assembler code with another programming language.

[Mark Strickland]

XOJO (formerly RealBASIC) has these stats this morning:

167,356   posts
  19,098   conversations
  10,822   members (not so sure about this number)
         17  online

Other than VB from Microsoft this is probably the only implementation of BASIC that is considered "commercial".  It also is multi-platform (Windows / OS X / Linux / iOS).

But it is expensive $$$ with annual renewal to stay current with releases.

[Elias Montoya]

A better approach would be for someone to create a new PB language compatible compiler and market it towards existing PB customers...

I have aquired a lot of experience in the PowerBASIC language and all involved in it. In theory i could put together a simple compiler, but to emulate all the functions would take a loooong time.

I cannot imagine trying to deal with all of the Assembler code...

I can imagine it, and its not a very pretty picture. Specially when you consider that after all the stressing work of doing it, there is a (really slim) possibility that the *real deal* revives, or the final product is not accepted by the fellow PBers.

[Eddy Van Esch]

A better approach would be for someone to create a new PB language compatible compiler

Isn't Eros Olmi's ThinBasic syntax compatible with PB ...?

[Michael Meeks]

Check out PB Forum - New Posts from the Big Guns and Vivian!
Also check out the New PB Updates just posted recently.

I hope they work it out and get things back into gear!
PowerBasic is not Dead - and although I've heard it more & more these days - I'll never believe it while I'm alive and still programming.

There's only one place to go when your down - get back up!

[José Roca]

> Check out PB Forum - New Posts from the Big Guns and Vivian!
> Also check out the New PB Updates just posted recently.

Are you joking?