What about PowerBASIC

[Patrice Terrier]

Who cares about the users?

Software programmers who are making a living from their job, must take care of their users, or they will get soon out of work.


...

[José Roca]

Who cares about the users?

Software programmers who are making a living from their job, must take care of their users, or they will get soon out of work.

I think that Eros is talking about the users of the compilers, not the users of your applications.

I sometimes have played a little with other compilers, but when I have to write a commercial application, I use proved and stable tools.

[Edwin Knoppert]

+ it's not that a compiler like PureBasic is't suitable for professional stuff.
If it's tested and it works...?
It's that they tend to make things without concern for the future.
Note that i don't spend much time over there, i sometimes follow threads and have the feeling to cry but also like i said, some are really clever.

Somehow this compiler attract people not to serious.

My remarks should not be seen as flaming, it's just a different group of people (like so much languages having people behaving unexpected).
So be it.

[Patrice Terrier]

Software programmers who are making a living from their job, must take care of their users, or they will get soon out of work.

--José

Yep, but this would also apply to the authors of the compilers themselves 

[Eros Olmi]

Who cares about the users?

Software programmers who are making a living from their job, must take care of their users, or they will get soon out of work.

I was meaning that discussing about users in this thread has no meaning and it is very bad someone "judge" or classify users in other forums. Users (people) can move, evolve, change mind or interests.

If I'm not wrong we were talking about products and not users of that particular product that is a matter of the product developer.

Thanks José for getting it.

[Fred Buffington]

My vote definitely goes to PowerBasic for windows. Though I am not as advanced as many of you, and BTW have many of you to thank for helping me out over the years, it has been and I hope will continue to be a joy to work with PB compilers.

The one thing that I see with the CC version is that is seems to get slower as it adds new features, that is the compiled programs seem slower. That is why I still use, though not much any more, PBcc2.x when using CC and pb6.x together with pbcc4.x and pbwin8.x

You may say that is dangerous but havent had any problems to speak of so far. My use of SDK is limited
and I don't require anything fancy for gui so DDT does the majority of the work for me.

As so many have said before, the best thing about PB is the support from tech and pro users all of which are very unselfish in their help. I appreciate that so much.

[Paul Squires]

I use PowerBASIC for all my serious programming because of the support and bug free nature of the software. Having said that, I find that FreeBASIC is becoming a serious player. All it needs is a few more seriously talented 'developers' to compliment their existing developer base in order to help push development faster. You can already see the momentum building for FB over the last year or so.

FB is already functional in Windows, Linux, and DOS and has many features that PB programmers have been asking for years. Granted, there are also areas (e.g. string handling) where PB rocks over FB. I also like the fact that you can create console and gui programs all from one compiler. Also, the goal is to do an integration with the gcc compiler so when that happens you will see some serious code and speed optimizations for FB. I do wish that they would drop all of the language compatibility modes (i.e. FB, QB, FBlite, Deprecated) and just focus on the FB mode. The other modes are nothing but a distraction and cater to legacy coding practices that are better left in the past.

FB is the only other BASIC compiler that I have any interest whatsoever in.

[Edwin Knoppert]

I have mentioned using BSTR's several times on the pb forum.
Something which annoyed be greatly since ansi BSTR's are good for nearly any Windows API purpose.
We already know why BSTR's are handy anyway.

I have to explain over and over and then still a flawed string implementation.

Geeh, sounds like i know best, also annoying

Btw, they had support for ~32kb at first, later this was finally improved but no BSTR.
It may even be that nul chars are no allowed, not sure though.

[Eros Olmi]

FreeBasic has BSTR and work fine. Not native but with some include files.