Re: Larkin, Power BASIC cannot be THAT good:

On Sat, 20 Jun 2009 09:09:52 -0700, John Larkin
<jjlarkin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Sat, 20 Jun 2009 10:46:01 -0500, AZ Nomad
<aznomad.3@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Sat, 20 Jun 2009 07:54:49 -0700, John Larkin <jjlarkin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Libraries? Why use libraries, when any decent language has all the
features you need built in? Would you buy a cheap car and add
after-market power steering and automatic transmission and air
conditioning?

Does your favorite basic have:
xml processing?
web retrieval routines including the ability to fill out forms, handle
all http objects
call system functions, connect file I/O w/ pipes, traverse directory trees
zipfile/bzip/bzip2 file functions
ftp/gopher/imap4/soap/nntp/smtp server access
rpc calls
email, mime, uu, binhex
multimedia handling (audio formats, video formats, etc.)
cryptographic functions

I'm an engineer and I design electronics. This is s.e.d. Does your C
do transient and frequency-domain circuit simulation? I use LT Spice
for that. And I use PowerBasic for engineering calcs and graphics. The
graphics are great.

PB does do ethernet and tcp/ip easily; I use it to talk to and test
our ethernet-version products. It takes one line of code to open a
tcp/ip session, one line to send a string, one line to get a string,
one line to close. All built in, called with plain English words (like
TCP OPEN), all with one-key HELP. PB can also do email, stroll around
directory trees, do COM stuff, random access arrays of structs in
files, all that. Fill out web forms? I don't do that to design
electronics. Zip files? Just shell out to do stuff like that, if you
have to, which I don't.

One fairly new feature I love is TRY...CATCH. It makes error
management easy. When you're writing programs to test production
instruments, errors are a big part of the game.


You got that all built in?

All that I need. More, actually.

You have all that on a platform independant langage
so if you want your software to run on say an intel atom, you won't have to
learn a whole new environment?

Windows won't run on Atom?

John


Oh, just checked. PB has data pointers, function pointers, and can
call DLLs and system stuff. Not that I would often want to do any of
that. It also has threads and nice thread management tools, which look
easy to use and might be interesting in some situations.

It does have native string variables, tons of neat string functions,
and PRINT USING. Print Using is reason enough to program in PB all by
itself.

John

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