Are you guys sticking with PowerBASIC?

[Anand Kumar]

Yes Patrice.  I am the same person.

[José Roca]

Don't do twice the same mistake, selecting a compiler that is not widely used, and relying heavily on the work of just a few.

VB6 was very widely used and had behind it a very big organization... There are no guarantees.

Besides, choosing PB was not a mistake. It has served me very well during many years.

FreeBasic is very similar to PowerBASIC in many ways. For a PB SDK programmer it should very easy to learn. Just get used to stricter type checking and heavy use of pointers (in their translated headers they have chosen to declare almost anything as BYVAL PTR instead of BYREF).

What I don't like is the lack of dynamic unicode strings. There are also difficulties to use COM, but very few PBers use COM anyway, and for what they have been using PB's classes, the FB ones are more convenient.

What I would like to know is how many people here are interested in FB and if they are doing something with it or just lurking.

[Paul Squires]

What I would like to know is how many people here are interested in FB and if they are doing something with it or just lurking.

That would be great information to know. I am using FreeBASIC for 100% of all my new projects. I am already just as productive in FB as I was in PB. The learning curve was not difficult at all.

As soon as I finish my new FB grid control then I will have just about all the tools I need for FB.

[Eddy Van Esch]

What I would like to know is how many people here are interested in FB and if they are doing something with it or just lurking.

I started studying the FB help file (looking for more tutorials). The more I look at FB, the more I like it. The difference in syntax will not be a problem.
Some of the graphics programs (from the forums) are really impressive, speedwise. So FB looks performant enough (so far) for my purposes.

Probably the step from PB to FB is not as big as I had expected. I do need to start looking into OOP because I have never used it in PB too. So I am not yet familiar with the OOP terms...
Also I probably will 'run into' SDK a little more than I did in PB. I am hoping that FireFly can protect me for the most part from SDK ... 
If I start a new software project, it will be in FF/FB. Even if it was just for practice.

Besides 'profiting' from Pauls and Joses experience with FB, the FB forum itself seems very much alive and plenty of helpful people there ... So plenty of support ...

[Eddy Van Esch]

What I would like to know is how many people here are interested in FB and if they are doing something with it or just lurking.

How about setting up a poll with all the questions that you are interested in....

[Patrice Terrier]

Jose--

VB6 was very widely used and had behind it a very big organization... There are no guarantees.

This is not a good comparison, because VB was just a branch of the many languages produced by Microsoft. And since they selected C and C++ to write the Windows OS, it was obvious that VB was not anymore their moto.

Things are very different for PC-Soft or any other providers that have their own line product, in that case the size of the company does matter, and as long as a it makes good money there is always a future for it.

My personnal decision was to select a tool that could be used on several platforms, especially since Android becomes so popular. Thus C/C++ (and WinDev) made the point for me. And i did the same with graphics, where i selected OpenGL, because it is the only graphic environment that is available on all platforms.

Professionnal programming recruitment here in France, is always for C/C++ and WinDev, no more VB or BASIC like jobs, and even less for any PB/PB or FB, it is why i call them dead end, and for those wanting to make a living of their work, they must swim with the flow rather than against it.

Just try to be better than your competitors, that's the deal.

...

[Eddy Van Esch]

...and for those wanting to make a living of their work, they must swim with the flow rather than against it.

Patrice, I agree with you on that one. As a professional programmer, your objectives and goals can be (very) different from programmers who do not program for a living, or who only write personal tools to help with their (non-programming) day job.
So I think: different objectives, different tools ... 

[Patrice Terrier]

So I think: different objectives, different tools ...

This is the reason why i wrote, that for hobyist time is not money.

But when you are not your own boss, or if you have to write commercial applications, or work for a "commanditaire", then you have to be pragmatic, and choose tools that are widely used. 

...

[Marc Pons]

Just some comments :

I've discorered PowerBasic and FreeBasic only 4 years ago, at that time I was only interrested on making dlls to speed vb6 applications, the 2 languages have similar synthax and not so far from vb6
In most case i've used PB because of the speed , the string functions and also easier COM interfacing.

Now i only use FreeBasic with/without FireFly because i've developped my own c string lib and adapted some COM interface to my needs.

I also do some static libs in c ( by still don't like that boring synthax) , and its also why freebasic is for me  the best choice it can also link to c static libs from the gcc word.

If I was a software company boss, it would be different : i mainly consider c/c++,  but not only from the last 2 years , at least from 15/20 years...
But if it was the case, I would not spend my time on the PB/FB forums argumenting how good is c/c++ !

my conclusion : for my needs , tools/little applications FreeBasic is just what I need ,with Firefly to take care of the repetitive sdk code, better (thanks Paul), and now with Jose in board for unicode / COM : Great !

If Freebasic finishs it will be time to go to C/C++ , the strict typing of freebasic will help to make the jump easier ( but honestly, I will always try to avoid  the   ; {...  )

[Knuth Konrad]

Things are very different for PC-Soft or any other providers that have their own line product, in that case the size of the company does matter, and as long as a it makes good money there is always a future for it.

But then again looking at the downfall of Borland, that's not necessarily true either.

[Patrice Terrier]

You may think whatever you want, however having the two feet into one single shoe, has never helped anybody to win a race.

I am just trying to give an advice to those guys sticking with PowerBASIC (the topic of this thread).
And from all the languages i tried, the WinDev's syntax is the closest to PowerBASIC, easiest to learn especially for those not comfortable with the core Windows API.
The language encapsulation itself, is much more powerful than DDT.

Over the years, some formal PB's programmer have followed my advice (especially those coming from a VB background), and now they are all close friends...
And because i know some of you, from a very long time, this is the reason why i am sharing my thought here.

...

[Eddy Van Esch]

.... this is the reason why i am sharing my thought here.

I appreciate this, Patrice. The more first-hand experiences we hear (about which-ever compiler), the easier it becomes to make an informed decision! (which each must make for its own).

[Nathan Durland]

What I would like to know is how many people here are interested in FB and if they are doing something with it or just lurking.

I'm tinkering with FB at home when I have free time, but I won't be able to put much into it until I figure out how to use SQLTools with it.  90%+ of the code we write/maintain at work interfaces with a database, so SQT is a must.

[Paul Squires]

Hi Nathan, I helped Klaas Holland interface to SQLTools. I wrote a simple BSTR string class (called aString) because you need BSTR's when calling the PB DLL's. Check out this thread http://www.planetsquires.com/protect/forum/index.php?topic=3677.0

Instead of my aString class you should now use Jose's more powerful CBSTR string class.

[José Roca]

> Instead of my aString class you should now use Jose's more powerful CBSTR string class.

Probably not. My class works with Unicode BSTRINGs, not ansi BSTRINGs.