Why did you choose FreeBASIC?

General discussion for topics related to the FreeBASIC project or its community.
systemctl
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Why did you choose FreeBASIC?

Post by systemctl »

My reason is a bit silly. I considered both FreeBASIC and Free Pascal but I found FreeBASIC's command line is very similar to GCC so I choose FreeBASIC. Free Pascal's command line, IMHO, is ugly and cryptic. Perhaps because I already familiar with GCC's command line.

What about you?
marcov
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Re: Why did you choose FreeBASIC?

Post by marcov »

I always liked that in most cases just
fpc <mainprogramname>
is enough.
badidea
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Re: Why did you choose FreeBASIC?

Post by badidea »

systemctl wrote:What about you?
I started with qbasic, qb45, powerbasic and assembly in the ms-dos time with the text-based interfaces. Then I learned C as part of my study and tried more 'modern' tools for the windows platform. C++ builder, visual basic, php, perl, even labview (for work).

About 10 13 years ago I heard of freebasic and I gave it a try. And I got stuck :-) What I did like back then (and still do) was the integrated graphics, unlike C where I used SDL. Most of my coding is for hobby and there are a lot of hobbyists here on the forum, which is nice. And no 'homework' questions here.

At work I use some Python. It is nice for scripting, but I don't like it too much. I prefer strong typed languages. Arrays, structs, and pointers I understand. With Pythons tuples, lists and dictionaries I make a big mess.

Currently, I am also looking at other languages, mainly Rust. I don't want a language linked to the big companies like Apple, Microsoft, Google.
Also, I am reconsidered the OOP style, especially for making games OOP has disadvantages. Rust seems to good match for a more data-oriented-design, but the language has this built-in safety (borrow-checker) which I am trying to grok. They do have nice tools and build systems (but slow). And talks from conferences on youtube. You will not see those for freebasic :-)

And I want to play more with C++ and Qt, but there is only so much time.

I never wrote anything in Pascal, but I did translate some Pascal-code to C and powerbasic. Had I done my study I year earlier, I would have been thought Pascal instead of C. And my later choices could have been different.

The command line, I don't care too much about. In 99% of the cases, I just press F8 and F5 to build and run my code.
BasicCoder2
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Re: Why did you choose FreeBASIC?

Post by BasicCoder2 »

At the time, 11 years ago, when I wanted to get back into programming all I knew was some c++ and was using Dev-C++ IDE used by the books I had at the time for learning C++. However I found FreeBASIC was much easier to use with its native graphics and seemed fast enough for my needs. I suspect the easy graphics was also the attraction in the early days for those who wanted to write simple computer games. Although I have dabbled in other languages, like Java and recently some of the newer popular languages, when it comes down to low level programming FreeBASIC is still the easiest to use and still allows me to write the kinds of programs of interest to me. I really see it as allowing me to write programs I would otherwise have to write in C++.
Imortis
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Re: Why did you choose FreeBASIC?

Post by Imortis »

I was in highschool when FB was first released. I was using QB for my own hobby stuff at the time and I thought FB was a great idea. I was learning VB 6 in highschool at the time. I went to college and used many other languages, and was very good with them, but I was never as comfortable with them as I was QB/FB/VB. My work has me using HTML/CSS/JS now, but I still like to do my own projects in FB when I can.
Lost Zergling
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Re: Why did you choose FreeBASIC?

Post by Lost Zergling »

I was looking for something wich was same time free and basic. I am pretty sure that it is of course because I did use the keyword "hashtag" in lzle that Facebook then took revenge by creating "FreeBasics". I apologize for the inconvenience.
jj2007
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Re: Why did you choose FreeBASIC?

Post by jj2007 »

I was looking for inspiration for my own BASIC dialect, and found a nice community here. But basically I am just playing around, trying to understand what's so fascinating about C++ features and toolchains in FB ;-)
systemctl
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Re: Why did you choose FreeBASIC?

Post by systemctl »

marcov wrote:I always liked that in most cases just
fpc <mainprogramname>
is enough.
Really?

https://linux.die.net/man/1/fpc
marcov
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Re: Why did you choose FreeBASIC?

Post by marcov »

systemctl wrote:
marcov wrote:I always liked that in most cases just
fpc <mainprogramname>
is enough.
Really?

https://linux.die.net/man/1/fpc
Yes, there are options. Doesn't mean you need to use them. You can compile multimodule programs that way (both own other modules, as ones part of the FPC installation) without much trickery.

Setting dialect options can be in source (and is quite commonly done so, the IDE template does it for you often)

So yes, a lot of small programming can be as simple as that. With a default config even with only one line added for a few custom libs. And that is the daily practice for me for my own programming as a 20 year long core developer, not only as a tutorial for first time users.

It is some times called auto build (compiler sees what files are used in the mainprogram, and then recursively compiles those). With some incremental build thrown in to increase speed (only remake modules when modified).

The auto build aspect could be possible for FB too, you just need a special kind of #include that signals that a certain header has an associated .bas(instead of just being "any" include). And then recursively build all .bas files. Incremental build that way is a bit harder though.
Last edited by marcov on Jun 01, 2020 21:30, edited 1 time in total.
macko17
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Re: Why did you choose FreeBASIC?

Post by macko17 »

Is there a reason you spam your competing product in every thread about this language? And why have the moderators allowed you to do it nearly 3000 times? No doubt this is why there's a dearth of people using Freebasic, everybody who expects to read about it on this forum ends up with an advert about how great this other product is.

Eloquent spam is still spam.
marcov
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Re: Why did you choose FreeBASIC?

Post by marcov »

macko17 wrote:Is there a reason you spam your competing product in every thread about this language? And why have the moderators allowed you to do it nearly 3000 times? No doubt this is why there's a dearth of people using Freebasic, everybody who expects to read about it on this forum ends up with an advert about how great this other product is.
I'll let the allegations to my person slide, since obviously I'm biassed. But who are you to challenge the moderators ?

Anyway, it is very simple. If the FB devels ask me to retire, I will. No questions asked.
grindstone
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Re: Why did you choose FreeBASIC?

Post by grindstone »

This is the international freeBASIC forum, so why shouldn't a member of this forum, who likes freeBASIC and uses it, point out the advantages of this language? Or did I get something wrong?
caseih
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Re: Why did you choose FreeBASIC?

Post by caseih »

I believe systemctl was complaining about the mentioning of and comparisons to Free Pascal.

While I take his point (this is a forum for FreeBASIC after all), I find the comparisons with other languages to be useful. In many cases, the way Free Pascal does things could influence the way FreeBASIC does things.
TeeEmCee
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Re: Why did you choose FreeBASIC?

Post by TeeEmCee »

This thread went very offtopic (starting with a swipe at FP in the very first post).
But I always find a lot of value in marcov's sage posts on this forum, even if he's not a FB user, and hence gets (heavily) sidetracked to talking about Pascal.

Back on topic...

I haven't thought about this in years, but at the time that I came to FB I was only ~16 and still more comfortable in QB than anything else (embarrassingly), which I started to play with when I was about 9. FB was an awesome step up from QB. I became a FB user because the OHRRPGCE got ported from QB to FB by Simon Bradley (he wrote about that in Pete's QB mag), and although I was a bit of a stubborn QB holdout for a short while and let everyone else do the porting, I know I would certainly have soon left BASIC forever without FB.

Although I switched my preferred languages to first to C++ and then to Python long ago, I still find that FB has things going for it. Aside from lua, it's the only language I use which I can reasonably inspect the code for and make improvements to. And it does make some things easy, though other things are harder than in other languages. In that sense I don't "choose FB", but I see no great benefit in porting existing projects from FB to anything else.
systemctl
Posts: 182
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Re: Why did you choose FreeBASIC?

Post by systemctl »

marcov wrote:
macko17 wrote:Is there a reason you spam your competing product in every thread about this language? And why have the moderators allowed you to do it nearly 3000 times? No doubt this is why there's a dearth of people using Freebasic, everybody who expects to read about it on this forum ends up with an advert about how great this other product is.
I'll let the allegations to my person slide, since obviously I'm biassed. But who are you to challenge the moderators ?

Anyway, it is very simple. If the FB devels ask me to retire, I will. No questions asked.
I have created a new forum for Pascal. This forum is heavily modeled around the FreeBASIC forum.

https://pascal-language.proboards.com/

If you could please join it. I don't have account on the Lazarus forum so it's very kind of you if you let other people there know about it.

The forum's goal is not overlap with Lazarus forum. It's for school students and old TP7 users. Which I found is out of tune with the Delphi developers there and most of the time ignored because their homework level of questions.

With my limitted knowledge I can't help people to solve their problems as I'm as beginner as them. So I need more knowledgeable people to join it. That's assumed that this forum would have any users at all.

This is the first time I run a forum!
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