VSCode = Visual Studio Code (Editor ++) with QB64 extension

[bplus]

@grymmjack brought up this subject here 
https://qb64phoenix.com/forum/showthread...9#pid15439

But this surely deserves a thread of it's own if not a Board.

#1 I am so glad to see QB64 Phoenix Edition included with this project along with QB64 v2.1 fork.

Here is review I posted at the other forum of first impressions of First video grymmjack linked and hosted on You Tube.

This is mostly a review of first video:
https://youtu.be/6kn-N_-eycg

Finally made it through first video, exhausted, overwhelmed. It's just a very fancy editor. Looks like it does handle formatting like QB64 IDE my biggest concern. I can open a window for a IDE substitute of F1 help in Notepad++ but the formatting is what kept me from Notepad++. If I Dim myVariable with camel caps and later type myvariable, will it reformat to myVariable so I know I am using a DIM'd variable and not a typo? Avoiding typos is my biggest concern with editors. Hey does it have spellchecker? It's got to amoung all those extensions

Not at all clear how to get the QB64 Extension (not made public yet, Beta testing) for downloaded VSCode. I know it's at GitHub but very unclear getting it to work with VSCode. BTW couldn't extract VSCode into a folder on my Desktop it dumped a mess of files and folders right on my desktop and I had to delete the mess. Usually extractions go easily into folders??? which it did do in DownLoads Folder.

I don't work with Jason so not impressed with configuring system with it, if it's text it's probably easy to figure out after rules of formatting known.

Looks like professional coders editor specially with links to GitHub.

Oh yeah, what is Lint or Linting? Never heard of it.

BTW RhoSigma did and does a fantastic job getting the QB64pe Wiki updated and looking good!
qb64phoenix.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=25

Well onto the 2nd video, I hope we go over getting QB64 setup in VSCode more slowly and with easier to see writing on screen.

Basically we are mostly hobbyists not multi-lingual computer scientists.

[mnrvovrfc]

A spellchecker in a code editor? Just why?

This isn't aimed at bplus or anybody else in particular, but I babble (as usual) from experience:

It's not going to help you get variable names spelled correctly unless you slave over which "words" are good and which have to be rejected. Run the code editor on a powerful computer, not on 32-bit single-core CPU where the poor performance will be noticed easily. Sadly, we will have to accept even more of these programs (including Linux desktop environments) that could potentially save gigabytes of data only for search results.

A code editor isn't worth using if it doesn't have a program preferences dialog in a GUI. Not modifying XML or JSON. Notepad++ failed very hard right here, doing a half-ass job with a dialog which has only half the settings and otherwise have to go hunting with five or six XML files it might or might not modify. Cannot modify one of those files while Notepad++ is running!

Don't come near the "clone" on Linux known as "Notepadqq". That is an even bigger joke about program preferences -- it doesn't have any!

Sometimes I use Geany, and more often I settle for the slow GEdit/Pluma/Xed, or Kate on KDE only to edit QB64 source code. Yes I could do better than that but I can't be arsed with memory hogs with toolbars all over the place, syntax coloring which zaps my eyes, and with the never-ending possibilities of editing a template command line that sometimes doesn't work.

I don't like any editor based on Scintilla because whoever packaged it has it doing screwy things. Like the Purebasic editor, and this freeware editor written by a Russian. The latter was pretty good but liked messing around with file associations. It ignored the program preferences which were barely sufficient for it. Generally it was inferior to Notepad++ doing anything with it which wasn't source code. The Purebasic editor around v5.21 LTS was buggy, kept a database for undo or sessions or whatever, then suddenly it crashed and I lost my work too often so I became disaffected by that whole programming system.

In the past with Freebasic I used FBEdit which was a darned good effort but counterintuitive in places. I was never able to compile and run successfully any program through it. It was a royal pain on WindowsXP having to give it the "-s" flag for Freebasic to create a GUI program and it was easy to mess it up if the programmer had any "PRINT" statements which were meant instead for a console program. Sadly it was endless adjusting of the command-line template to compile. I have never attempted it with a multi-file project. The FBEdit had other bugs never fixed, including an ugly one with undo.

Which reminds me: with Geany make sure you go into the preferences and disable [CTRL][R] shortcut. Because it would take you by surprise in a really nasty way! In the very first time that is pressed, after it's installed, it wipes out your current file. Then it does like GEdit putting a lame-ass quasi-dialog box warning you that you have to go back to the preferences to make sure you didn't choose the undo history being disregarded while trying to reload a file from disk, to save memory. This is the first time such an abominable thing ever happened to me! I could lose all my work with one keypress! This Geany is pretty good otherwise except this thing I have just explained.

Make sure with any text editor used to edit source code, you save your work regularly. Do not depend on any auto-save feature. The one for Kate/KWrite is somewhat buggy and really sucks using it toward a slow internal hard disk or an even slower USB v2.0 pluggable disk. Enable the back-up feature for GEdit and work-alikes if you have to.

[bplus]

Spelling helps check Titles or any string literals, helps in variables if I Dim'd correct spelling and maybe mainly comments that would make me look smarter or wordsmithy (ohh!!! the editor underlined that) than I am ;-))

[bplus]

Half hour into 2nd video and @grymmjack is still cleaning out his stuff...

I go to GitHub and check for QB64 Extension for VSCode and AndyMule's thing dominates search which is old and appears to be for old QB. 

So maybe when @gymmjack gets it together I will check later...

[aurel]

OMG VScode editor for qb64 ...
all fine ..but come on ??
 
I prefer to use mine :

I don't like any editor based on Scintilla because whoever packaged it has it doing screwy thing

yes it is Scintilla based and work well and fast and is simple

[bplus]

Does it have a Spellchecker?

That is the one extension for Notepad++ that was worth the hassle of installing.

[grymmjack]

Great feedback!

Let me respond with some hopefully helpful things in return. I'm NOT assuming that you don't know how to use YouTube, this is confusing stuff to me, and I'm making sure that yall know about it too. When I found it I was very happy!

You are all right.

1. It's too long.
2. There are too many assumptions made about familiarity with things.

Re: #1 Too long - yes! Totally agree. The content can be edited and slimmed down; but there is a risk doing so in that I lose some of the soul and spirit of it's purpose. All the videos on my channel are long, too long, I know. It isn't just this one. The way I think about YouTube is it's a VOD (Video on Demand) platform, that people can just skip around to the parts that interest them.

There is a feature in YouTube that you might not be aware of called Chapter Markers. It looks like this:



How you can see the Chapter Markers pane in YouTube, isn't intuitive.

Click pause on the playhead, then the little text marker near it:



How this works in YouTube is you have timestamps that the system detects and automatically adds chapter markers for you to hop to from them. They are mapped like this:



#2 Too many assumptions

Absolutely agree that I screwed up here. i didn't do this to alienate anyone, I just make video content for myself 1st, and everyone else 2nd. These videos don't have any goals except hoping to help me remember later (posterity!) and helping others too. I love sharing what I find interesting and am a passionate nerd about this stuff I admit.

That said: I assumed too much.

a. I assumed everyone watching would CARE about all the things I was even talking about like I do.
b. I assumed everyone watching knew how to use GitHub and command lines.
c. I assumed everyone watching knew where to download visual studio code, why they would want to, and so on.
d. I assumed everyone watching was comfortable making changes to JSON files and even knew what JSON was.

For a. I apologize!

For b, c, and d. Let me explain a bit here. I work on computers all day every day and have been using them since the 80s like a lot of you. The difference though is that I have to stay contemporary and relevant (this isn't claiming that those who don't do the same are dusty or irrelevant at all!) so it forces me to just adopt and conform to the "new school" way of things.

As I come from the old days of 8bit 128k and so on, but I also am a huge fan and very interested still in retro computing (which is where QB comes in), I thought OK here is a chance for me to "give back" by at least demonstrating some of the new to some of the old greybeards (like myself).

I 100% understand and get that a lot of ya just like what ya like, and do what you like, and are amazingly talented and brilliant with only QB and the IDE and all that. So don't interpret the videos as a backhanded swipe at your sensibilities. That is NOT the intention. I am not saying to change anything you're doing, just sharing

In this last light, I will start to think about fundamentals assuming nothing in the future. I apologize if you guys were offended, or annoyed, or anything by the approach I took.

That said -- now here comes the soapbox --

2 antecdotes (it wouldn't be greybeard posts without these right? lol the older we get the more we ramble...)

1. I had a cousin who was a cobol and RPG programmer. Around 1995 or so (when Doom 2 was around and people were still having LAN parties and carrying their boxes to each others houses, etc.) he hit a point in his life where he flat out did not want to learn anything new. He knew that he just didn't have it in him to conform, evolve, etc. He was really smart, funny, and a great dad and husband. Sadly he took his life later and hanged himself. I'm only saying this to let you know how deeply I empathize about using older technologies and languages, and how stupid I feel the entire world is at making us all reinvent things every 5 years, even if the old way is FINE. Granted, I'm not saying cobol and RPG were relevant to the new school, because they just weren't. But I hated seeing my cousin commit suicide when he had so much to offer. In this light, I have a strong code that I operate by where I follow my heart and my intuition about how to make technology, new tech specifically, safe for people who might feel left behind. This isn't something I intentionally set out to do, it just sort of happens. Now, I'm not going to put this in the disclaimer of every long YouTube video I make, because that's crazy right? You nerd fam' (which means what you think it does fam = family - this is what my daughter tells me too, and it doesn't mean blood relatives it means anyone in the circle of trust or friendship - the new kids don't segregate and bucket like we did (whole other topic)) get the lengthy explanation

2. My dad died of dementia. All 8 stages. It was horrible to watch him decay. He's been gone for I dunno, like 6 years I guess now. Why does this matter? Because dementia is a hereditary thing that can happen to me. Long story brace yourself: dad worked as a assembly line worker for the auto industry in Detroit WAY back before the unions. He was around when they were formed. The autos in Detroit helped shape our state and city and our country during times of war, etc. I am a "UAW Kid", where dad was in a union, and he was a press operator. He would life whole sides of cars and put them into a machine press and stamp them. Where he worked was called a "stamping plant". My dad was as big as a gorilla and strong too. He lost his hearing, he lost his sanity, and over time he became addicted to the repetition of his world. After he retired after giving 40 years of his life to Chrysler, I watched him decay. He replaced his job with playing solitaire (cards). I loved my dad, but we were not like best friends. We fought, fist fights and everything too because he couldn't hear well and I was a punk and he hit me and so on. Doesn't matter, but I want you to understand that I saw him decay. After a while as he was playing solitaire, he would just be sitting there flipping cards, ignoring rules. It turned from a game into sorting the cards. It broke my heart but I also was laughing because I thought "he doesn't fucking care AND he's happy as hell" - great job dad! Do you. Anyway, later, after mom passed he really got worse. He ran the car through the back wall of the garage (first memory care escalation incident), he burnt stuff in the kitchen and scorched the walls (second one), he would take walks and get lost (third), and eventually he fell in a parking lot far away from home and I was called by the authorities to come pick him up (fourth). At that point had to put dad in a memory care facility for his own good. It was a great home. OK so there is more to this, like Dad becoming so mystified that he got violent and was hitting other residents and nurses and stuff, etc. But the relevance to all of this story and why I'm sharing re: YouTube videos that are long. There is a selfish component where I hope to record and capture things so I can re-remember should I have the unfortunate luck dad had and start losing memories, etc. It's already happening here and there, but I find keeping my mind sharp - BASIC IS GREAT FOR THIS BTW! - by staying focused and busy and productive really helps. I've been doing reading as well where they say the less higher level thinking we do as we age the more susceptible we are to dementia. Anyway, that's it.

So I am sorry the videos are long, I will stop assuming things.

For now, if you have questions, ask and I'm also available to help anyone interested in a slower version or more specific topics that I made assumptions about. I understand the pace and ridiculous conformity and expectations are high on us all in technology, and so I do what the Bible says - love one another. That's my only goal.

Thanks for watching, and YOU ARE ALL RIGHT! We can make it better for each other! No nerd left behind (unless they want to be!) kind of thing I guess, indirectly, but not from a place of judgment but of love. The new school is awesome. There are SO MANY GREAT THINGS that they have done since QB and the old days. I guess I get so excited and wrapped up in sharing that I forget we're not all the same and have different backgrounds.

Hope this helps!

P.S. Forgot this part - you can watch at 2X like Louis in Ghostbusters you can get a 20 minute brain cram in 10 minutes:

Dana Barrett: [gets off the elevator and Louis comes out of his apartment]
Louis: Oh, Dana, it's you!
Dana Barrett: Oh hi. Yes Louis, it's me.
Louis: I thought it was the drugstore.
Dana Barrett: Oh, are you sick?
Louis: Oh! No, no, I'm fine, I feel great! Just ordered some more vitamins and stuff. I was just exercising. I taped a 20-minute workout and played it back at high speed on my machine so it only took ten minutes. I got a great workout.





BTW, and lastly, I'm not assuming you don't know these things, I'm assuming nothing. I am assuming that the platform you watch YouTube videos on has the speed feature. A lot don't including old rokus. <3

[grymmjack]

OMG VScode editor for qb64 ...
all fine ..but come on ??
 
I prefer to use mine :

I don't like any editor based on Scintilla because whoever packaged it has it doing screwy thing

yes it is Scintilla based and work well and fast and is simple

Keep using yours

No offense or judgment or anything. Dude I used list.com and ed.com from Vern D. Buerg for years and wouldn't budge. People would be like "use edit.com grymm!" no! Why not? because ed.com showed whitespace characters!

All good, stay with what you know and love. Change nothing

[grymmjack]

Half hour into 2nd video and @grymmjack is still cleaning out his stuff...

I go to GitHub and check for QB64 Extension for VSCode and AndyMule's thing dominates search which is old and appears to be for old QB. 

So maybe when @gymmjack gets it together I will check later...

Hey @bplus - what would you like me to get together? help me help you.

- Jerry McGuire

I'm not being an asshat, I genuinely want to know how I can help you.

[bplus]

@grymmjack thanks for soul bearing reply. Doing those vid's for yourself firstly sure explains allot. My dad passed from Alzhiemers/Parkensons 2014 and going through same now with mom at 92, she does crossword puzzles to help keep mind fit but nothing sticks in short term memory, hard to get use to... 

Anyway so glad you got back to us here!

One question inquiring minds must know:
"What is Lint or Linting? Never heard of it."

It is interesting to see a professional doing stuff on his computer, kind of mind blowing.

Every new tech thing comes with a manual that is a little book that could takes hours to go through, then there is the Quick Start page/diagram that gets you up and running in 5-10 minutes. 

I would like the Quick Start thing to get the QB64 Extension you are working with loaded into VSCode so I can start editing a QB64 program, connecting with my QB64 files and exploring the bells and whistles of VSCode and QB64 Extension from there.