What limits you?

[Unseen Machine]

Hey, 

When I first started coding, everything was a limit! Now, I feel that what limits me is time and inclination! 

I know C++ and C# from when I studied Games programming at Uni...and if making games was my ambition then XNA or Unreal or CryEngine would be for me and I would never write and you guys would never read this thread...but....I love QBasic!

For me QB64 (especially after _MEM) was a GOD send! Easy to write, read and mod. I pushed it to the max and the OLDSKOOL peps will vouch for me...(i suck at math but when it comes to logic, I'd give any Vulcan a run for their money!) but with this came a LIMIT! 

Asteroids/Space invaders/Mario = Easy, no stress, obvious! Wolfenstein3D, Duke Nukem, Z, Quake and the rest that followed them reset the BAR! No longer was it possible for an individual to enter the game market...Battle chess was coded by 3 people, doom took 6 people working 16 hour days over a year to complete and us simple minded home grown coders where left out in the cold...from this my ambition was/is to allow coders to use the tools from modern stuff in the old skool way...

Soooooo...I ask... What is it that stops you folks from PUSHING the limits/starting a project/finishing something? 

Unseen

[madscijr]

Can you add a third option "A little of both"? 

Because let's face it, in any situation we can always say "if I was smarter / faster / etc." I'd do better. The onus is on the person. 

But everyone is different, and people all have their strengths and weaknesses. You can put them in an environment or a situation that plays to their strengths or doesn't let them do their best. 
If you're Michael Phelps on a football field instead of a swimming pool. Maybe he can succeed in both, maybe not. 

I can always learn better programming habits, new methods, gain experience. I surely fall victim to my own bad habits or lessons I haven't learned yet. 

At the same time, there are some things about QB64PE (not just QB64PE but all languages) where if they were changed, would help me do more, more effecticely, faster. 

So my answer is "C", a little of both!

[SMcNeill]

I'm with mad; it's a little of both.  QB64 itself limits me on some of the things that I want to do, due to its underlying flaws with glut and such.  (The keyhit issue gnaws at my soul and has made me curse loudly more than once.)  The problem is, I'm not a standard user of QB64, as as such, I'm wanting it to do things for me that most people simply don't need it to do, so the chances of those things being added to the language are small to none. 

Now, of course, that's just the limit of the language itself.  I'm also limited by my own self, as I've just got too many irons in the fire like always.  I can't devote time to work on anything for more than a few hours, which I basically use just as a break from other life-issues, so I'm not going to be producing anything outlandishly great and amazing anytime soon.  I just don't have time and motivation to invest in anything beyond something simple, such as helping folks on the forums or whatnot.  I'm too busy farming, working, volunteering, reading, watching tv, sleeping, eating, writing, and everything in between to devote time to do any serious programming.

The language itself limits me somewhat, but even IF it did everything I wanted it to do, I'd still be limited by my own hectic life and schedule.  It's definitely an issue where both things tend to limit me somewhat. 

[madscijr]

Too many irons in the fire is definitely one of my bigger self-imposed limitations! If I can learn to focus on one project at a time, maybe I'll get something done! 

But I wanted to mention something about QB64 / QB64PE that doesn't limit me, but rather has helped and enabled me to achieve: its stability with being backwards-compatible! It seemed like I just started discovering QuickBasic & QB45 when everything started moving to VB. For a while I settled into VB6, but after just a couple years along came VB.NET. And before long the .NET 2.0 framework, and Microsoft was deprecating QuickBasic and VB4/5/6. And then language features in the earlier .NET versions started getting deprecated. Not just Microsoft's languages, but that was a big one, and it limited me because like Steve and a lot of people, I'm busy and don't always have time to finish my pet projects right away. I might work on something snd then get busy and on the bsckburner it goes for weeks, months, sometimes years. In that time, the languages and even the operating systems I develop a lot of these in, get deprecated & abandoned by Microsoft or whoever, and I don't always have time to stay current with changing languages, let alone go back and rewrite EVERYTHING that was working before, just to catch back up to where a I was. On top of that, my old completed projects no longer work on people's computers.

So for me at least, QB64/PE is a godsend, in that it fixes that very aggravating and disheartening problem of programming software. It is actually feasable that the programs I write today will still work in 5+ years! 

The only other languages on the desktop where my work has continued to function and remain useful (for the most part) for a decade or two has been MS Office VBA macros and vbscripts. There were some growing pains when Office 2007 came out and you had to fix stuff for 64-bit compatibility. Now Microsoft has announced they're deprecating vbscript, and who knows how long VBA will be supported (I'm not looking forward to converting 1000s of lines of code into Python or PowerHell or whatever the frack they expect us to move to. I like BASIC, dammit!)

So kudos to QB64/PE and the respective communities for keeping this stuff alive and making it possible to continue on with projects that otherwise might die in deprecation! And they STILL manage to keep adding useful new features, without breaking old programs (for the most part!) 

[bplus]

Real Life limits me plus the friends I make kinda direct adventures I undertake. Then there is experience growing up, a big influence on what appeals and doesn't. But when something really takes my mind and heart there is only Time as a limitation.

[CookieOscar]

For me, the biggest limitation would be my own constant procrastination... my biggest sin of all.

I am very detailed oriented and kind of a perfectionist, and that is not always a benefit.
I always end up in rabbit holes, within rabbit holes, within rabbit holes, within rabbit holes....
Rarely finishing any project because of that.

Like a pitbull I often bite hard in a specific niche topic and can spend days/months on it.
(eg: last couple of days that was the Internet Archive and their API)

--

However, besides all the personal stuff: yes, the programming language is also a deal braker OR maker, for me too.
I never bothered to learn C(++), which I often regretted (and I can't be bothered now anymore...)

But since I (finally) discovered QB64 (and freebasic I must say), a new world has opened up, which I fantasized about since a long long time: "If only there was something very easy to use, without the need to learn something new, but which can compile in fast native code, and not the dreaded P-code. Kind of like a mix between BASIC and C (or ASM) if you will...."

So, this is kind of like a dream coming true. A dream since QB45 actually (because it compiled to P-code and no longer native code like QB30 did).

And with that, there is a project or two coming up. Which I never was able to do otherwise (it involves...guess what... a whole bunch of fast computing/calculations). And as usual, it also sparked some other ideas to test out.

....as soon as I finish this and that, oh and that too, and don't forget this... and... and... ugh...


So, for now, my answer would be: 'Myself' as the limiting factor, since I don't see QB64 as a limiting factor yet, on the contrary.

;-)

[TempodiBasic]

surely QB64pe is an ocean so it is possible to loose himself in this extensive and multidirectional language
that call to the life the main part of QuickBasic 4.5, but if you get lost in the open sea it's you who went too far out.

So the real limiting actor is myself

[bplus]

Yeah inclination is huge, where there is a will there is way.

[Pete]

AGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[madscijr]

I have to say that between having a good community, decent docs with the wiki and tutorials, and even help from ai getting better, limitations are less. I feel more capable of realizing my creations now than at any point in my programming "career". At this point I feel my main limitation is my ability to maintain focus and carve out time for a given project. It gets easier as you accumulate tools and experience, which counts for a lot with QB64PE & QB64 being pretty good about staying backwards-compatible and not "deprecating" commands, unlike many other languages & tools.