Suggestions for this forum

[Eros Olmi]

Hi José,

if I can permit to suggest something for this forum ...

• "Karma Description Mod" from http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=192
  It gives a complete new way to handle Karma with a more human and involving way, letting users to indicate the reason why you set up or down other's karma and linking that reasons to exact post. Just having a number is not so nice and gives nothing to people reading the forum.
• "GeSHiSmf" from http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=200
  As you can see from my site, having colored syntax when posting code is another story.

Ciao
Eros

[José Roca]

 
Hi Eros,

Thanks for your suggestions. I'm avoiding to install mods because they become a problem when new versions of the forum software are released. When version 2.0 of the forum will be released, all the mods will become incompatible. It already has been announced that "The upgrade will remove any currently-installed mods. You'd need to wait for the mod authors to upgrade their mods."

The manager of the CodingMonkeys forum already complained of not being able to update it from 1.1 RC3 to the current version because of the lack of updated versions of some mods he is using.

[Eros Olmi]

Yes, you are right. SMF forum suffer a lot the way mods are handled, I mean directly to the template code other than mounted as external extensions loaded dynamically.

In any case do not keep "Blue Steel" as an example because he installed so many mods in CodingMonkeys that I do not know how the forum can still work
He did that as a try to get more users and more vitality to the forum but I do not think it was a good move.
Here you are making a great job remaining professional on the contents so I'm pretty sure sooner or later many users will populate this board (maybe tired of old PB forum).

Ciao
Eros

[Eros Olmi]

Just a last note bout SMF mods.
It is important to check if mods have been updated at during SMF version change. All the one I have installed are all updated at least 5 times and been present in all major SMF updates.

In any case, even if a little weak on mods aspect, SMF is really good.

Ciao
Eros

[José Roca]

 
Thanks. PB needs to change the forum software and close the Café.

[Edwin Knoppert]

>Thanks. PB needs to change the forum software and close the Café.
To think i was about the last person actually making the nn-th complaint not having a off-topic forum..
Right after that it was added.. boy what a mess it gave... sorry

Actually it seems the one and only forum people seem to come back for.
Maybe a misconception of mine but frankly, i think the PB future is rather dark.

A few 'cracks' are no longer visitting.
I suspect the freeware .NET IDE's have taken over everything.
Not a big deal per se, i have new programming tasks lately as well.
PowerBASIC is less than 5% of my work nowadays.
Geeh, i do so much c# nowadays i have difficulty thinking in BASIC: Boolean b = false; (hips!)

Maybe i am all seeing this in the wrong perspective, i would like to hear your thoughts on this.

[Eros Olmi]

I feel like you Edwin but I do not think the reasons are mainly related to other development environment but mostly to how Power Basic conducts their business.
I'm pretty sure they get enough for living in any case but the fact that for many, many months there is just silence is not good for any one.

I can be wrong but recent PB strategy is the following:

1. stay calm as much as possible, say nothing
2. in the meantime develop as much as possible new functionalities to justify a pay upgrade to a new version
3. release new pay version
4. for x = 1 to rnd(1, 3)
5.   fix some bugs
6.   release free *.x version
7. next
8. goto 1

Now, it can be a not bad strategy. So where is the problem? Problem is in line number 1.
If "stay calm" is too short, they cannot justify a pay version. If "stay calm" is too long, many users disappear.

Now we are in a "stay calm" too long era. I'm sure mr Zale will come out with a new pay version in next few months and it will be rich of new functionalities, but in the meantime install and usage base will be a little bit smaller.

I still think PB compilers are the best around in many aspects but I do not like the actual strategy at all.

That's my thoughts.
Ciao
Eros

[Theo Gottwald]

From Standpoint of marketing, I like the Purebasic marketing much more.
Buy one get all further free.

And finally I think they even make more money then Powerbasic, as they sell a lot more copies.

Its just that the stability of Powerbasic is unbeaten, and most of my libraries are in Powerbasic.
If I had to switch to something else, it would cost me more time then the actual benefits.

But if that would not be the case ... if I would right now want to start programming,
I'd choose between Freebasic and Purebasic.

For the actual number of features, Powerbasic looks to me to high priced (compared to the alternatives).

Besides Freebasic also looks rather promissing as well as some other languages (like D++).
But in case of freebasic, stability seems to be a issue, and thats something I can't take in my projects.

if something in my programm doesn't work as expected, it shall be my fault, not fault of the compiler :-).
Everything else would be really surprising for me after using Powerbasic so long time now.

PS. Jose:
I am one of those who go to the PB-Forum to post in the Cafee. Its the easiest place to tell the "Amis" a bit of what they don't see in their news :-)). If it would not be that I know you really dislike it, a cafee could be in somewhere  :-)). But in fact I understand that you want to moderate technical questions and not political opinions. Which can be quite difficult. Therefore we "sell code" not "whine and coals".

[Charles Pegge]

Theo, I am doing some fairly complicated things with Freebasic but have not encountered any stability problems from the compiler. Much of the work is done by 'GCC' and 'AS' back ends, so it has adopted a strong foundation of reliability.

There may be one or two weak eareas in error reporting, for instance PRINT#1, ss does not do anything, whereas PRINT #1,ss  with space between PRINT and '#' works as expected.
I cant think of any major problems at all.

Of course, the intrinsic function set is much smaller than PowerBasic's, so you may find yourself writing the missing functions, like USING$ and FORMAT$ which only works in QBasic legacy mode. The biggest hurdle for me was learning to live without GOSUB.

[Theo Gottwald]

>the missing GOSUB


In Powerbasic you would not really need the GOSUB, as it internally seems just to compile to a CALL.

You can't do something like that in FB ?


PRINT #1,[:-)]ss
! CALL mysub
PRINT #1,[:-)]ss
END.

mysub:
PRINT #1,[:-)]ss
! RTS

At least in PB this will do the same as far as I can say.
The same with JMP and GOTO.


Here is an example how even function can be called from ASM:

ASSEMBLER-Tutorial #2

and this of course:

ASSEMBLER-Tutorial #2

Assembler-Tutorial #3

[Charles Pegge]

I had not thought of that Theo. I have just tested it with Freebasic:

GOSUB replacement

Code Select Expand


goto maincode
'------------

gosub_test:
print "here in gosubs"
asm ret

maincode:
'--------

asm call gosub_test

end


[Marco Pontello]

I too had a suggestion.
How about contacting some of the ex forum members, long lost from the PB forums?
I think we all know why (most, at least) of them "disappeared"; so, if anyone had (or still have) some friendly mail exchange with some of them, I think it would be nice to mention this new place on a message.
If this wasn't already done, off course!

Bye!

[José Roca]

 
I just have sent an email to Semen. I miss his posts.

[Paul Squires]

There are a number of ex-PB'ers over on the PureBasic forum.

[MikeTrader]

>I just have sent an email to Semen. I miss his posts.
Me too!

I really hope this forum becomes a place for ex-Pbers to come.
There have been some really excellent developers that have faded away from the PB forums. It is such a shame.