On Wed, 12 Sep 2007 21:36:30 GMT, Rod wrote:
>> > Liberty BASIC
>
> Well I discovered Liberty BASIC a couple of years ago and it has
> transformed my programming.
> I played with QBasic and persevered in a DOS box with DBase. But
> Liberty was just a breath of fresh air.
> Easy development screens, good debugger and a great help forum.
> Auric I don't know why you didn't get it.
Two underscores, if you please: A u r i c _ _.
It'll probably sound nit-picky to you, but there are a few things
about LB that rub me the wrong way. The ones that come immediately to
mind:
1. Lack of sup****t for Dim x as [type] -- I very much prefer being
able to determine the types I will be using, as opposed to the
language selecting for me based on the contents. (I don't use
variants in VB and other languages for the same reason.)
2. Lack of sup****t for more than 2 dimensions in an array (although
they can be simulated, as pointed out in the help file and... uh...
either here or clb.misc, in the recent past).
3. Lack of compiling to an .exe, at least in the versions I've tried.
The best I've gotten is a tokenized file that requires an external
interpreter to run. Maybe not so different from, say, Java, but you
don't see me writing Java apps either.
I'll admit that I haven't used LB enough to even look at the
debugger.
> If you really want to get into windows style BASIC programming
> download Liberty or Just BASIC and give
> yourself a couple of days, you will be hooked.
I've had LB on my hard drive for the past, oh, 7 years or so, and JB
ever since it was announced. Every time I reinstall Windows (which I
do at the drop of a hat -- just did it last week, as it happens) LB
is usually on the list of things to install, but it's for testing
purposes, not for serious use. (I've never installed JB.)
Personally, I'm working on getting *out* of Windows. If Vista is the
way things are going to be, then I'll stick with Linux. (But that's a
whole different discussion.)
> It is different from other BASICS, it is very well integrated with
> Windows and does not need 101 libraries to
> function.
Neither does PowerBasic, my BASIC of choice (under Windows). For that
matter, most BASICs that I've come across don't require runtime libs.
And VB1-6 only require a single library each (VBRUNx00 or MSVBVMx).
With PB, I can write a useful program in a handful of KB (example: my
sigmonster (selects a random sig line from a stack of text files for
the bottom of my posts) is only 17KB). Every program that I've ever
written in PB (a few dozen) could be copied onto a single floppy disk
without compression (not including source code). No external libs
required beyond GDI, User, and Kernel. (Well, one uses AdvApi.) By
comparison, IIRC the LB interpreter alone is too large for a floppy.
(Just an example; I don't use floppies any more except for backup
boot disks.)
As for integrating well with Windows, any language that can call the
Windows API is as integrated as I need. If it came right down to it,
I'd have no problems building my windows using the API. (Thankfully,
I don't have to -- I have VB6 and PB/Forms.) The only BASICs I have
that don't integrate well are the command-line BASICs and Xbasic,
which doesn't seem to integrate very well with *anything*.
[/me rereads what he wrote]
Just to be clear, I'm not saying that LB is necessarily a *bad*
language, but overall it strikes me as being a not-good variety of
BASIC for beginners. (Damn, I sound like Wirth: "BASIC = bad".) It's
too easy, and will make other languages seem that much harder, even
other flavors of BASIC. (Of course, if you're going to just stay with
LB, then have at it.)
I dunno, maybe I'm just old enough to be "old school"... or...
something.
--
auric dot auric at gmail dot com
*****
- I choose not to hit you.
- Fair enough.
--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
|
