FreeBASIC Frozen

TheMG · Post by **TheMG** » Dec 17, 2008 12:22

John Spikowski wrote:
In an effort to get the word out, a few key members of the FreeBASIC team have been posting 'getting started', features and code projects on the All Basic site. If you have a FreeBASIC example your proud of or a tutorial to entice Basic programmers to give FreeBASIC a try, this is the place. All contributions are welcome and appreciated.
Please explain to me how the above is spam? What am I selling? Asking the members here to promote the project in a Basic community setting is Π$/- people off? I feel I'm the FreeBASIC whipping boy for all the frustrations of moving the project forward. Is trying to do something for the benefit of all now a shameless act?

Give me a break already !

I do not mean your last couple of posts, I mean your post where you gave a link to AllBasic. It is spam because it is unwanted, promoting something, and many times. Asking us isn't Π$/- us off. Asking us a lot is Π$/- us off. It is not to the benefit of all for you to incessantly post the same link when once was enough.

Let's just stop discussing this and spamming the topic.

marcov · Post by **marcov** » Dec 17, 2008 12:23

(back on topic. I promised some people on IRC that I wouldn't post about the John situation anymore)

jevans4949 wrote: Added to that, as any software project becomes bigger and more complicated, it becomes harder to bolt on new features - especially ones that weren't planned from the beginning.

Agree. (also the snipped bits).

Some of this was raised on IRC too, however, currently we are years since the development of the C backend was announced.

I had more or less expected the current branch to be declared stable only, and see the emergence of a new branch with beta releases with the new codegenerator. And I expected something like that more than an year ago.

From my experience in the commercial world, re-writing software tends to take a lot longer than people think; it's also not unusual for the re-developer to omit certain features which on implementation turn out to be essential. A container shipping company I once worked for developed a new system; when they tried to implement it they discovered there was no way to send an empty container back to China!

Same here. FPC 1.0 to FPC 2.0 took over 6 years. (it was branched somewhere in 1999, and released may 2005). But we released snapshots, people used snapshots, people talked about features, there were bulletlists of implemented features, of planned features, beta releases, wiki pages and the like. And there was code.

So it is not the fact that it takes longer, it is the radiosilence that I find odd.

As I aired elsewhere, I believe the point has come where the devs should release something like the current 0.20 as FB 1.0. This would be a great boost for the community psychologically.

Personally I think the psychological effects of such rather empty moves are pretty shortlived. Same for site makeovers, logo changes etc.

It is a development tool. It is all about the code. Showing something of the new branch, no matter how cumbersome, would prove a much more tangiable. Label it BETA in nice friendly red letters in a 48 point font, but show something of the new developments.

I might push a bit hard, but keep in mind I'm more interested in FB designchoices than the usable product (see last but one post of me ). So for me it is even more annoying, since it cuts into my reasons to monitor the forum.

Gods and Idols · Post by **Gods and Idols** » Dec 17, 2008 15:24

LESS TALK MORE ACTION!

E.K.Virtanen · Post by **E.K.Virtanen** » Dec 17, 2008 16:03

Hi again.

I think idea what stylin posted really is worth of considering. Personally i think that it would be good to remove current main and use wiki for it.

Thanks.

Conexion · Post by **Conexion** » Dec 17, 2008 19:00

I personally really like Stylin's idea of having the Wiki be the front page. It has many advantages including regular news updates by FreeBASIC's members, etc...

marcov, I totally agree regarding they psychological effects of changes such as changing FB0.2 to FB1.0, Makeovers, Logos, etc... Although, ultimately I would say a transition to a design that really shows the power of FreeBASIC would really help in terms of attracting new users. Unfortunately, a lot of people do judge a book by it's cover, and right now I think our cover could use a bit of work.

Not to say that changing the graphics/design/names is as important as the project itself. The code and development is eons more important than making the site pretty. The reason I personally have done those so far, are because IMO, doing mock-ups of logos and sites can be done faster than outlining a new branch of the FB project. I have more experience in that area than as a coder and as such, I felt doing that gave immediate recognition to things starting to progress.

On the psychological note though, I am curious to why a plan wasn't made early on outlining the steps to a 1.0 stable release.

Oh well, not much that can be done about that.

dasyar · Post by **dasyar** » Dec 17, 2008 20:03

As a new user I do not have a problem with the setup the way it is, as long as there is no real spam getting through.

I think the documentation could use an update, some of the explanations are very terse. I have to agree with the proposal to have the version number changed, version 1.0 sounds good, if there isn't any major updates in the works. A couple of years ago freeDOS was on its death bed, until it got a version number change to 1.0, then things perked up a little bit.

I think MS spoiled everybody, so the next step, to attract some new users, might be to develop a Visual freeBASIC. That would draw in some new people, but who would be willing to take on such a task? One of the forums that I belong to, somebody just started to use realBASIC, and to tell you the truth the reason I am here is to check out what freeBASIC can do, and would there be a compelling reason to pay the $100 for realBASIC.

Not being a xxxxBASIC user, I find that the language is pretty comprehensive, I was surprised at the amount of commands that are available. As a side note, I happen to be a Parallax Propeller user, and because of the threading commands that are available, in freeBASIC, a port to that microprocessor might be a nice fit.

So far I am not disappointed with this forum, but then I again, maybe the help that I have been getting is because of the fact that I am a new guy.

Lachie Dazdarian · Post by **Lachie Dazdarian** » Dec 17, 2008 23:54

We NEED inheritance!

:P

Sorry, couldn't resist.

h4tt3n · Post by **h4tt3n** » Dec 18, 2008 0:29

Gods and Idols wrote:LESS TALK MORE ACTION!

Agreed. I have some time on my hand and would like to help. But as probably most other non-developers I don't have a clue what to do. If someone from the dev-team would be so kind to make an unmistakeably clear list of smaller tasks needed to be done then hey! I wouldn't mind spending an hour or two every night.

Cheers,
Mike

marcov · Post by **marcov** » Dec 18, 2008 11:32

Conexion wrote:I personally really like Stylin's idea of having the Wiki be the front page. It has many advantages including regular news updates by FreeBASIC's members, etc...

I thought web 2.0 was considered bankrupt ? In a short while you are more busy scrubbing off vandalism and outright spam than adding content.

marcov, I totally agree regarding they psychological effects of changes such as changing FB0.2 to FB1.0, Makeovers, Logos, etc... Although, ultimately I would say a transition to a design that really shows the power
of FreeBASIC would really help in terms of attracting new users.

Users? Who cares about users? It is an open source project! Those are measured in "active developers" or codeline mutations, not users.

Seriously, there is a grain of truth in there, not all users are equal (*). The users that become developers are the most important ones.

While Site/project/logo makeovers, and some of the more extreme forms of compatibility attract users, they are usually the lowest quality kind, the ones that only very rarely will become developer. And THAT's where the bottle neck is, not in number of users.

So I would spend that effort in making entry to development easier, not entry into being a users.

So better improve developer infrastructure, developer documenting like how to compile your own, document gotcha's etc, make case studies how to modify the compiler etc, to convert motivated individuals you already have into developers.

(*) I explicitely avoid "born equal" as term here, since my experience is that a users can change overtime. Though not as many do within the project.

jevans4949 · Post by **jevans4949** » Dec 18, 2008 21:43

marcov wrote:Users? Who cares about users? It is an open source project! Those are measured in "active developers" or codeline mutations, not users.

Yeah, well, there's another problem. Most users want a stable product, once they have all the necessary bells and whistles. Developers will either love to tinker, or get bored and go away - then when it needs to be upgraded for Windows 8, there's nobody who knows how.

marcov · Post by **marcov** » Dec 19, 2008 17:50

jevans4949 wrote:
marcov wrote:Users? Who cares about users? It is an open source project! Those are measured in "active developers" or codeline mutations, not users.
Yeah, well, there's another problem. Most users want a stable product, once they have all the necessary bells and whistles.

For the bulk of users stable is also often equal to "easy".

Real heavy users have different requirements. They often have complex framework code that stresses the dialect. We receive most of our patches from that second group (users with hundreds of thousands of lines. Or more).

This is particularly visible with syntax. The first group "just" wants "less typing", and bangs on about "expressive power", the second group wants a predictable dialect where one can intuitively guess how combinations of features react, and with little or no sideeffects, and the least possible chance of introducing accidental bugs.

Post by **coderJeff** » Dec 19, 2008 21:33

Ever since I started using FB (and later joining the dev team) there have always been periods of time where developers have worked on other things besides this project. As chance would have it, we are currently at a time where most of the (recently active) developers - including myself - are busy with other things; whether it be with school, work, family, or whatever. FreeBASIC is not a job but we do real work on it taking up sometimes significant amounts of real time mainly because we want to and enjoy it.

I believe development will pick up again, but no promises on when or by whom. I thought it would be easy to put out a couple of "official" releases every 3-4 months: one for current development, and a "patch" release for the previous release. As all can see from the plethora of news releases how well that is going.

It is encouraging though that there are some users willing to help fill the voids, for example, by packaging and releasing their own SVN builds.

I don't think the dev team is being secretive since we (the devs) all refer to the same documents that we tell users to look at to help guide development to the next steps - the TODO list, bug reports on fb.net, forum posts, feature requests, etc.

Conexion · Post by **Conexion** » Dec 23, 2008 20:55

coderJeff wrote:Ever since I started using FB (and later joining the dev team) there have always been periods of time where developers have worked on other things besides this project. As chance would have it, we are currently at a time where most of the (recently active) developers - including myself - are busy with other things; whether it be with school, work, family, or whatever. FreeBASIC is not a job but we do real work on it taking up sometimes significant amounts of real time mainly because we want to and enjoy it.

I believe development will pick up again, but no promises on when or by whom. I thought it would be easy to put out a couple of "official" releases every 3-4 months: one for current development, and a "patch" release for the previous release. As all can see from the plethora of news releases how well that is going.

It is encouraging though that there are some users willing to help fill the voids, for example, by packaging and releasing their own SVN builds.

I don't think the dev team is being secretive since we (the devs) all refer to the same documents that we tell users to look at to help guide development to the next steps - the TODO list, bug reports on fb.net, forum posts, feature requests, etc.

I personally have read the TODO list, and would love to help with that. But in attempting to learn the structure of the compiler, I have gotten completely lost in trying to follow it. My biggest complaint with it is that the structure seems completely discombobulated (That is a funny word), and there is no documentation on any of the internal functions or the overall structure of the various files, or even a guide for compiling the compiler (Which I've tried in WinGUI, WinCons, Depreciated, Lite, etc).

marcov · Post by **marcov** » Dec 23, 2008 21:15

Conexion wrote: I personally have read the TODO list, and would love to help with that. But in attempting to learn the structure of the compiler, I have gotten completely lost in trying to follow it. My biggest complaint with it is that the structure seems completely discombobulated (That is a funny word), and there is no documentation on any of the internal functions or the overall structure of the various files, or even a guide for compiling the compiler (Which I've tried in WinGUI, WinCons, Depreciated, Lite, etc).

(hmm, are you not simply expecting too much? The FPC internal docs was a one time effort, consists mostly out of section titles without actual text, and hasn't been updated since 2001)

Conexion · Post by **Conexion** » Dec 23, 2008 21:23

marcov wrote:
Conexion wrote: I personally have read the TODO list, and would love to help with that. But in attempting to learn the structure of the compiler, I have gotten completely lost in trying to follow it. My biggest complaint with it is that the structure seems completely discombobulated (That is a funny word), and there is no documentation on any of the internal functions or the overall structure of the various files, or even a guide for compiling the compiler (Which I've tried in WinGUI, WinCons, Depreciated, Lite, etc).
(hmm, are you not simply expecting too much? The FPC internal docs was a one time effort, consists mostly out of section titles without actual text, and hasn't been updated since 2001)

I don't think I'm expecting enough. Most open source projects I've been involved in have strong documentation of what each function and file does, as well as good commenting internally to show how you can change things 'under the hood'. Even PHPBB which IMO has crappy documentation, still has enough info to let you edit each page and know what to do as long as you are proficient in PHP.

Is it wrong to assume that I should be able to remotely understand a community project?