What is the relationship between FreeBASIC, ThinBASIC and OxygenBASIC?

General discussion for topics related to the FreeBASIC project or its community.
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aurelVZAB
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Re: What is the relationship between FreeBASIC, ThinBASIC and OxygenBASIC?

Post by aurelVZAB »

*
all technical mumbo-jumbo and too much fancy words
Last edited by aurelVZAB on Mar 13, 2023 8:16, edited 1 time in total.
caseih
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Re: What is the relationship between FreeBASIC, ThinBASIC and OxygenBASIC?

Post by caseih »

There are very few programming books aimed at truly beginners, unfortunately, for a number of reasons.

I grew up in a house with an IBM PC, which was totally rare for a long time (early 1980s), despite the popularity of the Commodore 64. There were quite a few books for beginners back then. I was fortunate enough to get a good start when I was very young with a now-famous book on learning BASIC by writing simple games. Guessing games, random number stuff, etc. Taught basic logic and flow control. Ironically I can't remember the book's title, but there was a version for TRS-80, Commodore 64, Apple II, and the IBM PC. @ungnguyengia would be horrified to know that there was nothing about UDTs or data structures in that. BASIC never supported any of that. But it was still very interesting to my young mind. Perhaps as old as they are, such books could still be useful to aspiring young programmers today. I dunno.

Perhaps better books will yet come along as well, although maybe today the problem is you're spoiled for choice in languages and how fast they change. I know there are quite a few good introductions to computer programming available online now, but not for BASIC or FreeBASIC. Unfortunately FB is a rather niche language compared to the trendy ones that get all the books (and then are obsolete in a few years).
Lost Zergling
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Re: What is the relationship between FreeBASIC, ThinBASIC and OxygenBASIC?

Post by Lost Zergling »

zx81,TI99,EpsonQX, PC AT,..
Before, 'data structures' were mainly understood via mass storage, but progress in hardware has gradually shifted the problem upwards, with the appearance of new high-level languages, or new functionalities. But, from a more general point of view, one could argue the very architecture (von Neumann) of the computer is a datastructure. The very definition of datastructure could also be the subject of research : artificial 'intelligence' (?) (Neural networks, ..), in a dynamic or 'evolutionary' design (we speak of 'genetic' algorithms), so the semantic difference between algorithms and data structure has become increasingly elusive, seems to me.
What an abyss!
The question would not be so much to judge the languages ​​as to position them, or how to anticipate the high level paradigms of tomorrow.
Let's reverse: tell me what a data structure is, and I'll tell you what you are.
marcov
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Re: What is the relationship between FreeBASIC, ThinBASIC and OxygenBASIC?

Post by marcov »

My C=64 manual was in German, since we lived on the border with Germany, and the C=64 was a lot cheaper there. A friend had the C=64 program reference, which was in English.

Mostly early computing documentation was about learning languages :-)
jj2007
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Re: What is the relationship between FreeBASIC, ThinBASIC and OxygenBASIC?

Post by jj2007 »

caseih wrote:there was nothing about UDTs or data structures in that. BASIC never supported any of that.
I wonder when UDTs were introduced. Atari GfaBasic (1985) didn't have them, but GfaBasic for Windows did, in 1995.
marcov
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Re: What is the relationship between FreeBASIC, ThinBASIC and OxygenBASIC?

Post by marcov »

jj2007 wrote:
caseih wrote:there was nothing about UDTs or data structures in that. BASIC never supported any of that.
I wonder when UDTs were introduced. Atari GfaBasic (1985) didn't have them, but GfaBasic for Windows did, in 1995.
I assume it is a result of the gradual move from interpreters to compilers/bytecode/jit.
jj2007
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Re: What is the relationship between FreeBASIC, ThinBASIC and OxygenBASIC?

Post by jj2007 »

MASM had UDTs, i.e. structures, in version 4.0 of 1987, possibly much earlier (the STRUC keyword has no version number):
Flexible Structure Definitions:
Structure definitions can now include conditional-assembly statements, thus enabling more flexible structures.
caseih
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Re: What is the relationship between FreeBASIC, ThinBASIC and OxygenBASIC?

Post by caseih »

We're talking about BASIC, not MASM. C also had UDTs from the beginning in 70s. But again, C being little more than assembler at the time, has little to do with BASIC history.
aurelVZAB
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Re: What is the relationship between FreeBASIC, ThinBASIC and OxygenBASIC?

Post by aurelVZAB »

Yes we talking about BASIC relation as OP posted ...so little UDT/OOP lurker.traveler.passenger
and we are going to offtopic...
marcov
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Re: What is the relationship between FreeBASIC, ThinBASIC and OxygenBASIC?

Post by marcov »

aurelVZAB wrote: we are going to offtopic...
Isn't Community discussion off topic per definition ?
jj2007
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Re: What is the relationship between FreeBASIC, ThinBASIC and OxygenBASIC?

Post by jj2007 »

caseih wrote:We're talking about BASIC, not MASM.
All old BASIC programmers are also Assembly programmers. The real ones, at least ;-)
Lost Zergling
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Re: What is the relationship between FreeBASIC, ThinBASIC and OxygenBASIC?

Post by Lost Zergling »

Aoh, no need to know the assembler to use dynamic data structures in Basic. On the TI99, there was the standard basic (no sprite), and the extended basic, more refreshing but leaving less memory available, probably due to a small runtime.
Here is a fresh example of data structure using sprite: http://users.csc.calpoly.edu/~jdalbey/1 ... tures.html
marcov
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Re: What is the relationship between FreeBASIC, ThinBASIC and OxygenBASIC?

Post by marcov »

Lost Zergling wrote:Aoh, no need to know the assembler to use dynamic data structures in Basic. On the TI99, there was the standard basic (no sprite), and the extended basic, more refreshing but leaving less memory available, probably due to a small runtime.
Here is a fresh example of data structure using sprite: http://users.csc.calpoly.edu/~jdalbey/1 ... tures.html
That is about dynamic arrays, not UDTs.
aurelVZAB
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Re: What is the relationship between FreeBASIC, ThinBASIC and OxygenBASIC?

Post by aurelVZAB »

ouhh schmack
we miss the point again
real spagethi programero don't use UDT....it is not natural..heh he h

but wait luker who landed here know that if basic don't have a UDT is a toy
and who even is not a programmer ...he know that ????
hmmm
aurelVZAB
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Re: What is the relationship between FreeBASIC, ThinBASIC and OxygenBASIC?

Post by aurelVZAB »

but what he knows...
new thing is ,if your programming language (read BASIC) don't have mutable constants then is a toy.
if is not functional..then is a toy
if is not OOP with multiple inheritance then is a toy
if is console compiler then is toy...
...do i need to continue....???
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