SyntaxBomb - Indie Coders

Languages & Coding => PureBasic => Topic started by: MikeHart on September 11, 2017, 11:11:30

Title: PureBasic anyone?
Post by: MikeHart on September 11, 2017, 11:11:30
Since last week I am working on a tool in Purebasic. Anyone using PB too here?
Title: Re: PureBasic anyone?
Post by: sphinx on September 11, 2017, 12:32:20
I have a license long time ago but used it a little!
Title: Re: PureBasic anyone?
Post by: MikeHart on September 11, 2017, 12:48:58
Right now it is my main dev tool. Writing an IDE with it. The buildin scintilla gadget it a gods giving imho. I need to get used to it but slowly i can make it work the way i want it to.
Title: Re: PureBasic anyone?
Post by: Steve Elliott on September 11, 2017, 13:11:10
Yes I've used it, better for development tools than games I think.
Title: Re: PureBasic anyone?
Post by: MikeHart on September 11, 2017, 13:45:15
Quote from: Steve Elliott on September 11, 2017, 13:11:10
Yes I've used it, better for development tools than games I think.

I will use it exclusively to create tools. For games there are plenty alternatives that I am more comfortable with.
Title: Re: PureBasic anyone?
Post by: Pakz on September 11, 2017, 14:12:19
I got interested in their other product a while ago. Spiderbasic. 

Now that paypal is usable for me I can now actually buy things like this. Back then when I wanted to use purebasic buying online was a lot harder.
Title: Re: PureBasic anyone?
Post by: sphinx on September 11, 2017, 18:32:46
Quote from: MikeHart on September 11, 2017, 12:48:58
Right now it is my main dev tool. Writing an IDE with it. The buildin scintilla gadget it a gods giving imho. I need to get used to it but slowly i can make it work the way i want it to.

Are you making an IDE for Cerberus X?
Title: Re: PureBasic anyone?
Post by: MikeHart on September 11, 2017, 19:31:11
Not at the moment. Mollusk does the job just fine.
Title: Re: PureBasic anyone?
Post by: dawlane on September 12, 2017, 11:23:53
Yes I have PB, the only thing that puts me from using it full time is that it's procedural and I find it cumbersome to do GUI without oop.

Off topic
In all the years that I frequented the Blitz web site. I cannot recall if there ever was a BltzMax vs PureBasic discussion. Of course it would have ended in the usual pandemonium of people back biting, thread locked and bans. But obviously now we know ultimately who the winner would be.
Title: Re: PureBasic anyone?
Post by: sphinx on September 12, 2017, 12:40:10
Quote from: dawlane on September 12, 2017, 11:23:53
Off topic
In all the years that I frequented the Blitz web site. I cannot recall if there ever was a BltzMax vs PureBasic discussion. Of course it would have ended in the usual pandemonium of people back biting, thread locked and bans. But obviously now we know ultimately who the winner would be.

WHO?!  ;D
Title: Re: PureBasic anyone?
Post by: Rooster on September 12, 2017, 17:08:42
Quote from: sphinx on September 12, 2017, 12:40:10
Quote from: dawlane on September 12, 2017, 11:23:53
Off topic
In all the years that I frequented the Blitz web site. I cannot recall if there ever was a BltzMax vs PureBasic discussion. Of course it would have ended in the usual pandemonium of people back biting, thread locked and bans. But obviously now we know ultimately who the winner would be.

WHO?!  ;D
Hey, lets not tempt fate here. :P
Title: Re: PureBasic anyone?
Post by: MikeHart on September 13, 2017, 07:55:05
Man, coding everything by hand is dreadfull when you create a gui related app. I miss the times in Delphi. You design the gui, you code the functionality behind it. Much faster development process.

Adding to that, PureBasic has some quirks. The build-in splittergadget is imho unusable as everything flickers like a camp fire when you move it and the content resizes.
You are bascially forced to create your own splitter thingy and scale things by hand. That is what the creator of PureBasic's own IDE did, go figure.
If you use the PB WebGadget, it has redrawing issues when attached to a splitter. It "disappears" sometimes. Eewwww!  :-\

Grrr. These days I want things to work out of the box. I want to design. Not deal with half finished implementation.  ;D But I will get there, eventually  8)

Title: Re: PureBasic anyone?
Post by: dawlane on September 13, 2017, 08:23:05
Well look on the bright-side. At least the author still does reasonably regular updates, but there are still some bugs in it that haven't been address from the beginning.

Yes I also miss the days of Delphi and CBuilder. The closest that you can get to Delphi that's almost cross-platform is the Lazarus IDE project, but that has it's problems with the two biggest being OS X and web components.
Title: Re: PureBasic anyone?
Post by: MikeHart on September 13, 2017, 08:52:32
Quote from: dawlane on September 13, 2017, 08:23:05
Well look on the bright-side. At least the author still does reasonably regular updates, but there are still some bugs in it that haven't been address from the beginning.

Yes I also miss the days of Delphi and CBuilder. The closest that you can get to Delphi that's almost cross-platform is the Lazarus IDE project, but that has it's problems with the two biggest being OS X and web components.

yes, you are right. That is why I decided to use PB instead of Lazarus. But I didn't know about the webgadget and splitter issue. I guess these days I have less patience then back then. Maybe I should give up coding all together  :D
Title: Re: PureBasic anyone?
Post by: Steve Elliott on September 13, 2017, 08:59:08
lol coding can be very frustrating.  But it can also be very rewarding and enjoyable to have your creation come to life.
Title: Re: PureBasic anyone?
Post by: dawlane on September 13, 2017, 09:23:56
At the moment there is no perfect cross-platform solution out there. The best you'll get is possibly Qt, but you have to do everything the Qt way. That includes working with the licence restrictions and choose either using C++ or go Python.

When it comes to Lazarus and OS X. I've found that using the Qt version from fink appears to be the best option and if I remember you can compile 64bit GUI's with it.
Title: Re: PureBasic anyone?
Post by: MikeHart on September 13, 2017, 09:26:49
Quote from: dawlane on September 13, 2017, 09:23:56
When it comes to Lazarus and OS X. I've found that using the Qt version from fink appears to be the best option and if I remember you can compile 64bit GUI's with it.
The other day I installed 1.8 on Windows. Checkmarked the QT gui set for a project. Guess what, it tells me to build a qt related dll first. NOPE! They could have shipped it with it already.
Title: Re: PureBasic anyone?
Post by: dawlane on September 13, 2017, 10:16:50
Yes, when it comes to Lazarus you do have to build a number of things if you want to use them and clear cut documentation is rare; makes BRL's docs look professional.
I most cases you just need to install the lpk, compile then install which I believe you have to do with QtPas4/5. I've got 1.8.0 RC4 installed so I will have a go at getting Qt5 up and working with it.


Lazarus Qt on Linux has two issues:
So you have to use the GTK+2 version. GTK+3 is nowhere near ready.


Think I should start another topic for Lazarus.
Title: Re: PureBasic anyone?
Post by: Hotshot on September 13, 2017, 10:38:58
I used it sometime but I hate start and stop drawing commands thought!
Title: Re: PureBasic anyone?
Post by: Qube on September 19, 2017, 07:01:13
I purchased PureBasic about 8 hours ago and have had a quick play...

Am I missing something or does it actually spit out super speedy code and performance?. From the quick play about I've done so far it seems bloomin fast. From pure logic to 3D and pushing 1000's of 2D sprites around it all appears to run at crazy speeds.

For those more familiar with PureBasic, what am I missing? as from early tests it appears pretty decent.
Title: Re: PureBasic anyone?
Post by: MikeHart on September 19, 2017, 07:57:26
I am only touching the gui stuff to write a code editor. It suits that job pretty well. Game wise i would say the biggest lack is a decent sized game related community. For the 3d part it utilizes the Ogre 3D engine.


Updates are rather rare. But it seems to be supported. Why did you got it? What made you curious?
Title: Re: PureBasic anyone?
Post by: Steve Elliott on September 19, 2017, 08:59:42
Yes Pure BASIC is very fast.

The syntax, lack of OOP features and the community aren't really interested in games put me off.
Title: Re: PureBasic anyone?
Post by: dawlane on September 19, 2017, 09:11:41
QuoteAm I missing something or does it actually spit out super speedy code and performance?.
At a guess the super speedy code and performance would be down to using pre-compiled, optimised libraries and output to fasm assembly.

Purebasic's community game wise isn't that big and for a cross platform tool, the members are more obsessed with posting topics/examples on Windows than any of the other target operating systems.
Title: Re: PureBasic anyone?
Post by: sphinx on September 19, 2017, 10:39:51
PureBasic is great, at least the developer is enhancing since it was ever released!
Title: Re: PureBasic anyone?
Post by: Qube on September 19, 2017, 18:22:38
QuoteGame wise i would say the biggest lack is a decent sized game related community.
I noticed that the community is more towards apps but I'm not too worried about that.

QuoteUpdates are rather rare. But it seems to be supported. Why did you got it? What made you curious?
I've been curious about it for years but I think years and years ago that the 2D side was not great and pretty slow ( I seem to remember that ).

I started looking at it again about two weeks ago and bought a license yesterday. First play about shows it's very fast but I was wondering if there was some massive gotcha in regards to it's gaming abilities ( I know it does not support mobile ). I also like that is has cross platform for GUI apps.
Title: Re: PureBasic anyone?
Post by: sphinx on September 19, 2017, 19:11:13
It has some good GUI builder tools but it could be even better it it has Firefly Visual Designer as PowerBasic and FreeBasic have!

It is one of the best GUI I've ever seen that's similar to Visual Basic for Event Driven Programming model.
Title: Re: PureBasic anyone?
Post by: ms62 on September 29, 2017, 20:58:55
The same as Dawlane above. It's proceture is odd, generally, it is a verbose language. Also, I like languages that use "new". GlBasic, PureBasic and AGK, don't use it and that make thinking along the coding little uneven in my case, because I come from C road. I think, the reason I like Blitz languages is just that.

However, it uses ogre and its 3D shadows is number one. Those who love the language are lucky people, because I think it does a lot.  I finished a small database app using its csv and sqlite library. I tried to love it, but as it is verbose, I couldn't stand.
Title: Re: PureBasic anyone?
Post by: fairgood on October 28, 2017, 00:11:52
I always thought PB was on a par with Blitz for speed even for games
Krylar who ran Blitzcoder moved to PB and wrote a book on making 2d games

Has anyone used B4J by the basic4android developer ?
Title: Re: PureBasic anyone?
Post by: muruba on October 28, 2017, 05:39:26
Quote from: dawlane on September 13, 2017, 09:23:56
At the moment there is no perfect cross-platform solution out there.

Oh yes there are at least 2:)

Swing GUI Builder (https://netbeans.org/features/java/swing.html)

JavaFX Scene Builder (http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/javafxscenebuilder-info-2157684.html)
Title: Re: PureBasic anyone?
Post by: EdzUp on October 28, 2017, 08:25:17
I have PB installed as well :)
Title: Re: PureBasic anyone?
Post by: TomToad on November 09, 2017, 09:20:35
QuoteHas anyone used B4J by the basic4android developer ?
I have been messing a bit with B4J.  Language is based off of Visual Basic. It has a GUI editor making layouts easy. Much of the code can be used with B4I and B4A.  Only problem is that you need Java installed to run.  There is an installer available on the site that allows someone to install a lversion of Java with the program that only runs with that program, so they don't need to install Java on their system if they don't want to, but it does make your program bigger.

Since B4J is completely free, I'd say it is worth checking out.

Project I am working on in B4J
(https://www.syntaxbomb.com/gallery/11_09_11_17_9_16_28.gif)
Title: Re: PureBasic anyone?
Post by: Naughty Alien on November 09, 2017, 09:51:02
QuoteHas anyone used B4J by the basic4android developer ?

..im using B4J for a long time..very fast language, and GUI editor is very handy (embedded with IDE) .. compiled program is ready for cross platform deployment (jar) and it works really well..im using it for all of my applications development work i have done so far..
Title: Re: PureBasic anyone?
Post by: EdzUp on November 09, 2017, 11:06:05
Back OT one gotcha was Engined.dll is 16Mb and had to be included with your project to use 3d, back in the day it was a issue as limited bandwidth meant file sizes were large.

However as I'm now not pushing mobile targets anymore as to be honest it's to saturated now I'm looking at PB for development of my games.
Title: Re: PureBasic anyone?
Post by: zxretrosoft on November 13, 2017, 08:04:09
Yes, I use PB.
I think it's one of the best modern Basic at all.

If you want to use PureBasic for web affairs, then Fred has done SpiderBasic (90% syntax with PB).

For mobile games/applications is probably the best AGK (based on the original DarkBasic).

The PB license is definitely worthwhile!  8)
Title: Re: PureBasic anyone?
Post by: ahuang on January 03, 2018, 05:01:55
I've tried PB for a while but am still mainly using QB64. Yep, PB is fast!
Title: Re: PureBasic anyone?
Post by: Pfaber11 on March 27, 2018, 11:52:56
Out of curiosity I just checked out the pure basic site and I was wondering how it compares to AGK 2  tier one. Has anybody used both and can do a quick comparison.
Title: Re: PureBasic anyone?
Post by: MikeHart on March 27, 2018, 15:58:28
Quote from: Pfaber11 on March 27, 2018, 11:52:56
Out of curiosity I just checked out the pure basic site and I was wondering how it compares to AGK 2  tier one. Has anybody used both and can do a quick comparison.

You should talk to Blendman on the TGC forum. He uses both extensively.
Title: Re: PureBasic anyone?
Post by: Rick Nasher on March 27, 2018, 19:01:40
But... does it blend??  ;)

(https://core-cdn.russellhobbs.com/images/prod_663_14449-main.png)
Title: PureBasic anyone?
Post by: Mikey on August 16, 2018, 19:04:28
Yes I have a license for Purebasic.
I found it cumbersome in a way and have used it little since I bought the license.

I have since used B3D, never Max, and found that Freebasic was more comfortable than purebasic.

I rate them by ease of use:

1:B3D
2:Freebasic
3:Darkbasic
4:Purebasic

Yes, I'm sure someone will write that Purebasic is way better than Darkbasic in functionality, yes it is.

*** Also, this thread was the first time that I had heard of AGK, whatever it does.