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possible programming challenge: a smart(er) IDE?
#31
(10-19-2022, 02:57 AM)Pete Wrote: Funny. Reminds me of another reason Rob (Galleon) made QB64. He was a very good C/C++ coder, but like me, he hated all the damn bracket crap. He was much more comfortable coding in BASIC. Anyway, as QB64 became more and more inclusive, Rob started making more and more of his other professional project in QB64. He quit teaching and found work as a free-lance coder. For awhile, he even had ambitions to remake QB64 as a JAVA translator. I think he woke up one day and figured he, and his now couple of kids, weren't getting any younger. Oh well, maybe one day, someway, QB64 will get "smart" enough to run on a mobile phone. Maybe dbox is our best hope in that department. He is actively advancing a QB64 to JavaScript translator and yes, Virginia, we can uset JavaScript to code mobile apps.

Pete

If QB64 can ever be used to make smartphone apps, I'll finally feel like I am actually making full use of this supposed pocket computer from the future we all now have! 

Is that what Rob Galleon is doing now, the QB64 JavaScript translator? 
Is he the guy on here with that BASIC anywhere project?
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#32
To clarify, Rob left the building about 5+ years ago. He used to come back to see what was happening at the .rip site, but rarely. He even posted there once or twice. As far as I know, he has never got back into any further development of QB64. Now dbox is a different developer, who started a QB64 project that translates QB64 source code into Javascript. He has an online demo site at: qbjs.org

Pete
Shoot first and shoot people who ask questions, later.
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#33
(10-19-2022, 03:49 AM)Pete Wrote: To clarify, Rob left the building about 5+ years ago. He used to come back to see what was happening at the .rip site, but rarely. He even posted there once or twice. As far as I know, he has never got back into any further development of QB64. Now dbox is a different developer, who started a QB64 project that translates QB64 source code into Javascript. He has an online demo site at: qbjs.org

Pete

Gotcha. Is he aware people are still using his project years later? There has to be some satisfaction in that!
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#34
He is aware, but sadly, I think he suffers from developers remorse. My take on it is that the larger a project gets, the more time consuming  and monopolizing it becomes. If you take time away, you have difficulty remembering where everything is, and to completely redo it in a different language necessitates completely learning the other language, and starting over. I think just thinking about that makes a person wish he had a crystal ball to do it the other way in the first place. So I get it, but I'm also in the camp who hopes he realizes what a great achievement QB64 was for a single developer to code. Do you know when Win-95 was released they had a small televised ceremony to thank all those who developed the platform? The curtain rolls back and there were over 150 coders and support personnel involved. It takes a lot of effort to code large projects, and apparently manpower. I still get a laugh when I see a newbie arrive on the seen who claims he's going to write a platform, like Windows, in QB64. Oh well, one can dream... but like I always say, "Dream smarter!" Some projects are just too big for any one individual.

Pete
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#35
I think he just straight up finished the project, Pete, and was smart enough to know when to pull out and move on to newer and better things. I can't even remember the last time QB64 was not a fully sufficient replacement for QB45 but it's been years. Bug fixes and quality of life improvements will always be welcome and appreciated but anybody that has tried to get possessive over it, trying to imbue their person and ego into it, has received a hilarious kick in the face by circumstance, as recent and ongoing events have been showing.
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#36
As my old friend Kewbie once stated: "There is no such thing as a finished program." I actually tried to talk Rob into making a version of QB64 a finished program, but he wouldn't go for it. That was when QB64 was about 99% QuickBASIC compatible. Rob decided to not pursue translating DEF FN and couple of other keywords like FRE() and instead move on to adding the new underscore keywords. He could have declared the QB one "finished" and gave the underscore versions a slightly different name. PowerBASIC somewhat did that with PB and PB for Windows. Of course the downside is now you have to bug fix two products, instead of just one.

As for the .net website. Towards the end weird downtime started becoming an issue. This was the reason .rip got put together. Originally the Odin three only put it up when .net went down. I talked to Rob about the .net downtime and he related back some growing pains issues that required him to periodically fix the site to get it back up and running. It was around then I was able to talk Fell into keeping .rip up permanently and sure enough, a little time after that, .net went down again, and for the final time. A few years go by, and we then experienced the same repeat karma with .rip. Fell started experiencing similar downtime issues. He emailed me a script to use to reset it. The one time I had to go into the site to perform a reset, it failed. It failed because the site was being switched over. Shortly after, it got pulled and became .rip.

You know I think if I inherited the project, I'd just rename DQ BASIC, you know, for drama queen. I also think it would only support SCREEN 0, so the rest of you better hope that never happens! Kidding aside, I hope the other developers, going forward, take a break from the old karma, enjoy the project without breaking away, and realize they are all part of something that odds suggested never would have happened.

Pete
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#37
yeah, for the record I'm 100% pro team Steve. but I also think QBJS is coming along nicely and is a good project and have recently managed to port several of my programs to it, though this website is dedicated to QB64 PE only. It kind of reminds me of those days of early freebasic being introduced and creating a rift
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#38
@MadSciJr
this is a project.... make a substrate of function/procedure/block of code (surely in C for compiler used to make .EXE) that does the underhood work while the coder is free to use the QB64 code or Phyton or Java or Javascript or one of the other programming languages set as available in IDE.
Buuut you must think that all available languages can be used only in the measure that it emulates the QB64 set of instructions and not freely.
IMHO ,in a different way (let to use with all their potential) the work to build this project is bigger than build Visual Studio Microsoft Enterprise.

Buuut this is only the opinion of an hobbist programmer.
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#39
(10-19-2022, 01:30 PM)TempodiBasic Wrote: @MadSciJr
this is a project.... make a substrate of function/procedure/block of code (surely in C for compiler used to make .EXE) that does the underhood work while the coder is free to use the QB64 code  or Phyton or Java or Javascript or one of the other programming languages set as available in IDE.
Buuut you must think that all available languages can be used only in the measure that it emulates the  QB64 set of instructions and not freely.
IMHO ,in a different way (let to use with all their potential) the work to build this project is bigger than build Visual Studio Microsoft Enterprise.

Buuut this is only the opinion of an hobbist programmer.

This kind of thing will probably get done in a few years when artificial intelligence is smart enough to help out with it. There is already AI to translate syntax, but I don't think it can translate code from specialized libraries and find an equivalent in another language / library. That would take real smarts! 
But it can translate syntax from one language into another, and the code I tested actually worked. 
Here is the one that translates JavaScript to Python
https://beta.openai.com/playground/p/def...inci-codex
(you must sign up for a free account). 
I was using it to translate a library of string and math functions I had in JavaScript to Python, mainly out of curiosity and to see what the equivalent Python syntax would be for things I already know how to do in JavaScript. 

Anyway, I agree that this is still a ways off in the future. 
For now I am happy with QB64!
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#40
(10-19-2022, 11:47 AM)vince Wrote: yeah, for the record I'm 100% pro team Steve.  but I also think QBJS is coming along nicely and is a good project and have recently managed to port several of my  programs to it, though this website is dedicated to QB64 PE only.  It kind of reminds me of those days of early freebasic being introduced and creating a rift

If d os ever wants his own subforum here for QBJS, I'll happy set him up a spot for it.  The same with Fellippe and InForm.  None of us, however, are contributors to either of those projects, and without their dev team/creators being around to help support and answer questions concerning them, I just wouldn't feel right hosting such subforums.  I don't think it'd be fair to either the developers or their user base.
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