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Author Topic: Heat from FreeBasic  (Read 35509 times)

giahung1997

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Heat from FreeBasic
« on: April 14, 2019, 06:21:19 pm »
I spent sometime with FreeBasic. Some thoughts:

+fbc can make static library, fpc can't
+fbc with -gen gcc output executable is much faster fpc
+very passionate community, I saw everyday comming a new good ide or gui library. if I remember right it's more than 7 active ides: poseidonfb, basic studio, winfbe... and a bunch of gui libraries: fbgui, fltk, winfbx, windows9.bi... it means many people is utilizing it for their businesses.
+rad environment is catching lazarus. most notable is winfbe and winfbx gui framework.
+more and more complete language with oop support (not yet match object pascal)

Two competing languages with very similar audience. Not apples vs. oranges like java (web, android) vs. object pascal (desktop). Your thoughts?

Handoko

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Re: Heat from FreeBasic
« Reply #1 on: April 14, 2019, 06:41:41 pm »
Interesting. Please tell us more. I visit their website occasionally and FreeBasic is in my wanted-to-learn list. I believe a good programmer is a programmer that can use variety of tools, unfortunately I don't have much time for learning new things.

Thaddy

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Re: Heat from FreeBasic
« Reply #2 on: April 14, 2019, 06:59:08 pm »
I spent sometime with FreeBasic. Some thoughts:

+fbc can make static library, fpc can't
Nonsense, where did you get that idea from: of course FPC can make static libaries.
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+fbc with -gen gcc output executable is much faster fpc
Not in all cases. It depends on your code and on your algorithmic knowledge too. Do not generalize too soon.
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+very passionate community, I saw everyday comming a new good ide or gui library. if I remember right it's more than 7 active ides: poseidonfb, basic studio, winfbe... and a bunch of gui libraries: fbgui, fltk, winfbx, windows9.bi... it means many people is utilizing it for their businesses.
Object Pascal (Mainly Delphi but certainly including Lazarus) is magnitudes bigger in a professional environment.
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+rad environment is catching lazarus. most notable is winfbe and winfbx gui framework.
I have to check that. Last time I looked I was disappointed for lack of two way tooling.
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+more and more complete language with oop support (not yet match object pascal)
With the risk of bolt-on features (These also exist in Object Pascal, though) OOP support is very shallow. PowerBASIC - in its last incarnation - was already much better with OOP and that is ions old.
Quote
Two competing languages with very similar audience. Not apples vs. oranges like java (web, android) vs. object pascal (desktop). Your thoughts?
I don't think so. Both languages are apples and oranges.

That said: is a nice language with indeed an active community.
« Last Edit: April 14, 2019, 07:03:55 pm by Thaddy »
But I am sure they don't want the Trumps back...

ASBzone

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Re: Heat from FreeBasic
« Reply #3 on: April 14, 2019, 07:10:27 pm »
Two competing languages with very similar audience. Not apples vs. oranges like java (web, android) vs. object pascal (desktop). Your thoughts?

The following are my personal views, and may perhaps not be supported by anyone else anywhere:

1. Mutual Exclusivity Fallacy: There is no law against having or using multiple languages.  Those who perhaps like BASIC, and see value in some of the features or advantages offered by it, are both (a) likely to avail themselves of those advantages, and (b) free to do so.

2. False Equivalence Fallacy: You appear to suggest that the audience for both FreeBasic and FPC is the same, although you did not provide any information to substantiate that conclusion.   A glance at the target platforms available to both communities readily suggests a significant variance in the communities.   FreeBasic appears to support only Windows, DOS, Linux and FreeBSD.  FreePascal supports all these, plus many more platforms.

3. Inherent Competition Fallacy: This is somewhat tied to item #1, in that there is this suggestion that the growth of some tool or platform must come at the expense of others, and thus, it is important for platform A to adopt as many things as possible to avoid "losing" to other platforms.   If there were mutual exclusivity in tool/platform use, then this would be an issue.  But there is not.

4. Zero-Sum Game Fallacy: Adding features -- even when warranted or desirable -- is not a zero sum game.   There are costs in terms of development time, QA time and ongoing support.  And that is a very casual outline of the considerations.   Consideration for the following has not even been mentioned:
-- Overall project goals  (how does the request sync up with the overall objectives?)
-- Backwards compatibility  (how does the proposed feature impact existing code?)
-- Cross-platform supportability (how does the new feature get supported across all platforms)
-- Who will regression test?
-- Who will maintain going forward?
-- What are the overall implications to the platform?
-- Does the proposed advantages outweigh the expected (and inevitable) costs?

This kind of thread shows up with regularity -- and in the past 6-12 months, I have seen many variations of it -- yet the practical implications of the work needed are rarely considered.  Only the nebulous and unquantifiable benefits of increased popularity are offered, whatever they might turn out to be.

I do understand the idea of liking a particular tool (tool A) in most respects, but wishing it had one specific feature of another tool (tool B) to address some gap I feel in the feature set.  I have on numerous occasions (and as recently as a few months ago), made such a request to a commercial organization to see if they would be inclined to add the feature.   But I offered it from my perspective as a personal benefit, and not as something essential for their survival, or as a sure-fire way for them to compete successfully with someone else.

A claim of speed was made, for which I would love to see the code that was used for the comparison -- else it is highly subjective or theoretical.

If FreeBasic suits ones needs most of the time, perhaps one would be better off using FreeBasic most of the time...     

If FreeBasic has such great features that it would be desirable to see them in FreePascal (vs just using FreeBasic outright), then it stands to reason that FreeBasic also has some deficiencies compared to FreePascal that makes is less than desirable to change development platforms. I wonder what these deficiencies are?
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440bx

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Re: Heat from FreeBasic
« Reply #4 on: April 14, 2019, 07:32:14 pm »
Only the nebulous and unquantifiable benefits of increased popularity are offered, whatever they might turn out to be.
Probably one of the most salient and recurring problems in language design today. 

Most languages just seem to have become an amalgam of desirable features without any formal study as to how all those features work together to result in a tool that has greater expressive capabilities without sacrificing the accuracy and precision required to implement algorithms in a succinct and comprehensible manner.  (quite the run-on sentence there!... oh well.)
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Handoko

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Re: Heat from FreeBasic
« Reply #5 on: April 14, 2019, 07:41:56 pm »
I'm not a FreeBasic user, so my comment maybe is not valid.

I found that the applications created using FreeBasic are mostly games. That's interesting to me. But if I want to  develop games, I personally will consider the tools specialized for game development first.
https://freebasic.net/gallery.html
http://games.freebasic.net/list_downloads.php

FreeBasic default installation has no IDE. Lazarus default installation has 2 IDEs (the GUI one and the text mode IDE). I bought my first Raspberry Pi 3 some months ago but still busy currently. FreeBasic can't generate binaries for Android and Raspberry Pi.  :(

giahung1997

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Re: Heat from FreeBasic
« Reply #6 on: April 14, 2019, 07:58:57 pm »
I'm not a FreeBasic user, so my comment maybe is not valid.

I found that the applications created using FreeBasic are mostly games. That's interesting to me. But if I want to  develop games, I personally will consider the tools specialized for game development first.
https://freebasic.net/gallery.html
http://games.freebasic.net/list_downloads.php

FreeBasic default installation has no IDE. Lazarus default installation has 2 IDEs (the GUI one and the text mode IDE). I bought my first Raspberry Pi 3 some months ago but still busy currently. FreeBasic can't generate binaries for Android and Raspberry Pi.  :(

fbc should be compared with fpc, not lazarus. most of us download lazarus but not fpc alone, isn't it? then winfbe of paul squires is lazarus of fbc. unlike fpc has a text mode ide, fbc is just a compiler. u need a ide to work with. in the past I would recommend geany, but now it is poseidonfb for non rad ide.

U would see more on their forum and planet squires forum.

giahung1997

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Re: Heat from FreeBasic
« Reply #7 on: April 14, 2019, 08:06:41 pm »
@Thaddy: show it, I haven't seen any static library project type on lazarus, only dynamic library.

@other: don't bash me that much. people have time and energy constraint. he can't learn to master both objfpc and fb. more choices in the same category means more scattered market share. u would lose market share to fb with this attitude.

Thaddy

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Re: Heat from FreeBasic
« Reply #8 on: April 14, 2019, 08:37:13 pm »
@Thaddy: show it, I haven't seen any static library project type on lazarus, only dynamic library.
It used to be documented it could, but in fact it can't and the -CS flag is even removed. Nevertheless PPU's are linked statically by default.
So regarding creating .a files I was wrong.
But I am sure they don't want the Trumps back...

ASBzone

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Re: Heat from FreeBasic
« Reply #9 on: April 14, 2019, 08:42:20 pm »
...people have time and energy constraint.

Yes, including the FPC and Lazarus developers


...he can't learn to master both objfpc and fb.

If he doesn't deem it important enough to use the tool that is most appropriate for his needs, when why does he expect it to be someone's issue to solve that problem?


...more choices in the same category means more scattered market share.

There we go with the unsubstantiated "marketshare" comments.

A - What is the marketshare of both FB and FPC?
B - How will adding FB features to FPC result in addressing your "more scattered marketshare" problem?


...u would lose market share to fb with this attitude.

I am simply a consumer/supporter of the FPC/Lazarus ecosystem.  My views and attitudes cannot contribute to a gain or loss of marketshare, given that I have no responsibility developing either FPC or Lazarus, nor am I the developer of any showcase applications.

But, back to the marketshare statements:  I'd love to see what you believe the current marketshare of both of these products to be, and what factors you objectively believe will cause this marketshare to change.

Please quantify.
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giahung1997

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Re: Heat from FreeBasic
« Reply #10 on: April 14, 2019, 09:05:43 pm »
^I didn't say we should add all features fb has we not but I only warrant about the heat coming and remind if we want to keep our position we have to invest more on development. up to now lazarus is still ahead of winfbe about features. All of you misunderstood so badly  :( and bashing me too much so i will run away... :'(

ASBzone

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Re: Heat from FreeBasic
« Reply #11 on: April 14, 2019, 09:24:58 pm »
^I didn't say we should add all features fb has we not but I only warrant about the heat coming and remind if we want to keep our position we have to invest more on development.

Who is this we that needs to invest in development?


All of you misunderstood so badly  :(  and bashing me too much so i will run away... :'(

So, you are free to make your observations and comments, but any rebuttals or questions of those assertions is termed "bashing" ?

No one is bashing you or has been rude or uncivil towards you.

We have only pointed out the obvious:  You are happy to make assertions that you are totally unwilling to support or substantiate.

In multiple messages, you have suggested that marketshare and position are threatened, but when asked to define or substantiate this, you have taken the approach of martyrdom rather than answering the questions or otherwise backing up your points.

How does this contribute to your goal?
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ASBzone

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Re: Heat from FreeBasic
« Reply #12 on: April 14, 2019, 09:30:06 pm »
^I didn't say we should add all features fb

I never said that you did.
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munair

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Re: Heat from FreeBasic
« Reply #13 on: April 14, 2019, 10:10:35 pm »
Basic Studio was an attempt by me to use FB in a RAD environment firstly on Linux. While on the project the limited object support became a bit of a burden. Especially the inability to have null objects is a handicap. The decision by the developers to extend TYPES with objects instead of providing full CLASS support, was not a good one in my opinion.

Extensions in recent years also directed FB in a more C-like environment and syntax (especially with pointers) because the developer(s) used C and thought C when adding the features.

I'm not saying FB is bad. It's not. But IMO FPC is more mature and more consistent. It would be quite a pain to develop a Lazarus-like development tool with FB because, as the current main developer said, FB provides only basic object support.
« Last Edit: April 14, 2019, 10:35:50 pm by Munair »
keep it simple

Handoko

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Re: Heat from FreeBasic
« Reply #14 on: April 14, 2019, 10:52:08 pm »
All of you misunderstood so badly  :( and bashing me too much so i will run away... :'(

Don't be sad, gianhung1997.  :)

I believe no one here was bashing you. There are lots of newbies visiting this forum, there also many professional users active in the forum. Because you said FB is competing with Lazarus/FPC and Lazarus/FPC may loss marketshare. So that of course will make us to raise a question, what proof do you have. We want it in the professional way. Also I believe, me, the developer and many others here are making it better (I'm not skillful enough to join the developer team, so I participate here to help newbies). Not because of FB is improving, but because we use Lazarus/FPC and we care it.

And about the competition, I think differently. I've been monitoring FB for 5 years or maybe more. FB really is an interesting project but it is not attractive enough for me and many others to abandon Pascal. FB still needs lots of improvement for professional use. I could be wrong but these are what I thought/know about FB:

- BASIC was very famous in the past because it is very easy to learn and beginners love it. Maybe it is too beginner-friendly, it is hard to find any serious/famous software that are written using it. Not much, but you can easily find some notable applications created using Pascal by searching the web.

- The platforms supported by FB are very limited. Nowadays, people are talking about web, Android and Raspberry. FB can't do it.

- OOP is a powerful tool (if you know how to use it), FB only has partial support. I wrote my graphics/UI cross platform module using OpenGL as its backend, it is very complicated. Thanks to OOP, developing it becomes easier.

- And some other limitations (mentioned by FB user):
https://www.freebasic.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=23484#p206929

FB isn't bad. I really like it, that's why I visit their website and forum regularly.

 

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