BASIC language for AmigaOS4.. AMOS/Blitz

[iamaboringperson]

why is everyone so worried about basic anyway?

could another real programmer please explain the benefits?


what i want to know is will storm C be available for OS 4 - and what other compilers will exist that i may use for os4/amigaone?

[Ants]

iamaboringperson:
why is everyone so worried about basic anyway?
could another real programmer please explain the benefits?

  Well, a simple to use environment for beginners, and easy to use commands- no need to include files and open libs to use them. Obviously for more experienced coders the language should provide the ability to include files etc as the programmer grows.

To begin with, C is pretty scary to get started with- so many options, just to get it to compile- I know, I've just been getting SDL working on VisualStudio6, and that's a pretty extensive IDE! A beginner would have had a hard time there! This could easily put off potential programmers, by making them give up in the early stages.

Basics tend to have a nice supportive community to help beginners (and more experienced coders), and have always had a games programming slant, and were the only places you could really learn games programming from.

The most important thing really, is the syntax- C, C++, Java all have a ghastly syntax, that IMO is very hard to read and debug- very cryptic looking with all those curly brackets  :-(

With Basics, a lot of unnecessary brackets etc have been removed, which make it easier to read, and you can see much easier where a block begins and ends- like:

While
..
..
Wend

Anton Reinauer

Phoenix Developers Consortium

[Ants]

iamaboringperson:
first post Ants? good on ya m8!

Thanks- been keeping off the forums as much as possible- too much OS wars  :-(
I'd rather keep to more productive subjects  like this :-)    

cya- Ants

Phoenix Developers Consortium

[Ants]

Sidewinder:
As Coder pointed out I am working on a new AMOS-like BASIC language called Mattathias BASIC.

Cool! - time for me to hit your forums I think!  :-)

Anton Reinauer

Phoenix Developers Consortium

[ple3003]

Quote:
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iamaboringperson:
why is everyone so worried about basic anyway?
could another real programmer please explain the benefits?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Well, a simple to use environment for beginners, and easy to use commands- no need to include files and open libs to use them. Obviously for more experienced coders the language should provide the ability to include files etc as the programmer grows.

To begin with, C is pretty scary to get started with- so many options, just to get it to compile- I know, I've just been getting SDL working on VisualStudio6, and that's a pretty extensive IDE! A beginner would have had a hard time there! This could easily put off potential programmers, by making them give up in the early stages.

Thankyou Ants!!! Just what i have been trying to say in my recent posts in this very thread...

[ne_one]

Has anyone approached the author of Hollywood and asked if there was any possibility of extending the system for more general purpose use?

The system has the ability to interpret Scala scripts so extending the compiler to handle BASIC dialects may be workable.

Hisoft Basic 2 is a very powerful BASIC compiler with lots of support to 3D/CyberGraphics libraries (including render.library from Binary Distillery). I am a registered user, and I do recommend it to anyone who likes BASIC language.

Hisoft Basic 2 (£10)
Hisoft

Aminet HisoftBasic2 related files:
http://www.aminet.net/aminet.cgi?string=hbasic
http://www.aminet.net/aminet.cgi?string=hsb

[SamuraiCrow]

If Amiga Python eventually gets a translator that will convert Python's bytecode into VP Assembler like the AmigaDE implementation of Java then that would be great!

It's still not Basic, however... :-D

[Waccoon]

Well, it's hard to say that the world needs BASIC, when hardly anything is akin to the original BASIC standard developed in the 70's.  Put a piece of AMOS code next to Blitz or GWA or Power Basic, and you'll hardly see many similarities.

What I like most about the "revamped" BASIC languages is:

- Integrated IDE:  realtime syntax checking.  Some BASIC IDEs also use color-coded text like Visual C, and auto-indent.

- Interpretation:  Compiling is great for a speed improvement, but raw code allows true architecture independence, so long as an interpreter is available.

- Realtime debugging:  Interactive debugging and tracing is easier than in true compiler languages.

- More fun:  Let's face it, you don't really WANT to start off with C.  BASIC lets you do cool stuff right away.

- Simple structure:  Writing whole apps in BASIC is a pain, but if you want to run little programs to handle mundane tasks, you don't want to do all that memory management by hand, do you?  BASIC gives you results quickly.

What I hate about BASIC:

- You have to compile the whole program.  C and other real languages allow you to compile your program in manageable parts, as object files.

- BASIC is an "idiot's" language:  Unless someone really puts in effort to make BASIC more usable, which is definately possible.

- Bad habbits:  When I gave up on BASIC and moved to C and the Allegro library, I learned a lot about real programming.  I had to toss out most of my BASIC knowledge and re-learn everything.  Instead of making a new language tailored to amateur programmers, couldn't we take C and make it easier, and then open source it so it could be ported to all sorts of platforms?

Bugs:  BASIC compilers are generally buggier than other languages.  AMOS has trashed more than a few of my programs over the years, thanks to a really screwed up editor that insisted that certain lines didn't exist and there was a syntax error when there clearly wasn't.

- Games:  All BASIC languages these days are specifically designed for making games.  There's very little out there for serious GUI applications.  In fact, if you want a standard GUI in Blitz BASIC, you have to buy a totally seperate version!  There's Blitz, Blitz 3D, and Blitz Plus.  Come on...  GUIs aren't complicated enough so you have to buy a whole seperate compiler!

- Huge executables:  BASIC is generally not modular, so when you write a program, the compiler just throws in the entire runtime library.  Blitz Basic executables are 750K minimum, no matter what.  What if you only need command-line support and no graphics?  750K.  Period.

I haven't tried Visual Basic.  I want something portable, and Visual Basic is pretty expensive.

[Atheist]

Waccoon wrote:

What I hate about BASIC:

- BASIC is an "idiot's" language:  Unless someone really puts in effort to make BASIC more usable, which is definately possible.

Thanks.

Waccoon wrote:

Bugs:  BASIC compilers are generally buggier than other languages.  AMOS has trashed more than a few of my programs over the years, thanks to a really screwed up editor that insisted that certain lines didn't exist and there was a syntax error when there clearly wasn't.

Could it have something to do with the authors of the SW? They don't take it seriously, because everyone slags it and sales stay low? It's just the way it is. I've found a couple of problems with the ide, as well (Amos Pro, I still love it). 3 at least.

Waccoon wrote:

- Huge executables:  BASIC is generally not modular, so when you write a program, the compiler just throws in the entire runtime library.  Blitz Basic executables are 750K minimum, no matter what.  What if you only need command-line support and no graphics?  750K.  Period.

The Amiga version? I've never used it (Blitz, any version), but you must be refering to the windoze version? Anything on windoze is MAMMOTH!!!! I found a commercial Ram Disk: program for w98se. It was 114K in size and required a 1.4 Meg DLL file to run!?!?!!!! The DLL didn't come with the Ram Disk, I had to track it down on the internet. Then, you find out it was programmed in visual basic!

Why can't an ide in C/C++ open a window, everytime you type a keyword in, asking you which library you want to use, tick off a checkbox beside the library, and it automatically puts it in as an include at the beginning of the source code? Or, when you enter a variable, a box opens, you check off wether it's an integer, or floating point, or whatever and it places it in the appropriate place at the beginning? Just make it EASIER to use, for Pete's sake!

AmigaOne! AOS4.0 version of AMOS Pro = shareware BONANZA!!!

[mdwh2]

Atheist wrote:
The Amiga version? I've never used it (Blitz, any version), but you must be refering to the windoze version? Anything on windoze is MAMMOTH!!!! I found a commercial Ram Disk: program for w98se. It was 114K in size and required a 1.4 Meg DLL file to run!?!?!!!! The DLL didn't come with the Ram Disk, I had to track it down on the internet. Then, you find out it was programmed in visual basic!

How big is a Hello World program in AMOS on the Amiga, for example? Things may be smaller on the Amiga, but BASICs in general still end up including everything, making larger programs.

Why can't an ide in C/C++ open a window, everytime you type a keyword in, asking you which library you want to use, tick off a checkbox beside the library, and it automatically puts it in as an include at the beginning of the source code?

Decent IDEs do automatic #including, and in a better way than what you suggest - for example, C++ Builder sticks the standard #includes, and then adds more as required whenever I add new bits to the GUI.

Where it falls down is that I have to add the #includes manually if I use a library that C++ Builder doesn't know about. But then, this is no different to BASIC where I have to manually do stuff if I want to use some library that isn't part of the supplied standard library, if that's possible at all (and in AMOS, accessing external libraries was much more complex than in C/C++).

 Or, when you enter a variable, a box opens, you check off wether it's an integer, or floating point, or whatever and it places it in the appropriate place at the beginning? Just make it EASIER to use, for Pete's sake!

Because (a) in C/C++, unlike BASIC, a variable could be a type other than the fundamental integer/float/etc - it could be any user-defined structure or class, and (b) most ppl except absolute beginners I'm sure would find that annoying - it's probably quicker to type in the name of the type than have to search through and select it out of possibly hundreds of types.

Don't get me wrong - I think BASICs, or other "beginner" languages, have their place - but there are plenty of reasons why ppl move onto other languages.

[marcus256]

> Anything on windoze is MAMMOTH!!!!

Not entirely true. It's (as usual) mostly up to the compiler, what you decide to link with etc. My OpenGL toolkit (API that wraps windowing, key/mouse/joy input, timing, multi threading etc, written in C) is only 30 KB under Windows (about the same under AmigaOS). Actually, by doing some tweaking with the compiler options for GCC under Windows (e.g. custom startup code), I was able to bring down the size of a Windows console "Hello World" program to below 10 KB (around 6-7 KB I think), which is kind of hard to beat (regardless of platform and language) without going to pure assembler.

[Jupp3]

didn't understand why you'd want to write a program with anything but global variables.

There's a bit of truth in that... Can't believe how much more "readable" my Amos sources became, after I stopped using that many global variables, but instead local variables and function calls with arguments...

Mostly becouse of that, I can still understand most parts of my 3500+ lines game project :-)

Recently, I've started re-programming it on C, based on AmosToC-produced C code (That program is available at Aminet)

The game sure did work on MorphOS, and well, if I may say, but if you're doing system friendly stuff (Using RTG screens instead of "Amos Screens") there are some limitations.

Becouse of those, and possibility of native PPC version, I decided to move the development to C.

But let me say just one thing: "This whole project couldn't have been born without AmosPro"

It's just so easy to start programming in Amos, Screen Open... and there you go!

But currently the problem is, when you start doing system friendly stuff (RTG screens, standard windows etc.) it isn't that easy anymore...

[porneL]

C/C++ is only good for OS developers. Application and games developers want stuff like the Basic language.

What a total nonsense...
First don't confuse C with C++. C++ is targetted mainly for appliaction development and it would be a nightmare to write lowlevel OS stuff in it.

Second: game developers and basic? I gave me a good laugh. As game developer I despise basic language.

Inefficent in terms of memory and cpu power (no optimizer, automatic allocation+garbage collection).
Most implementation can't handle complex data structures, algorithms and are limited to their commandsets (blitz is nice exception here).
Typeless, imperative or procedural - its real pain to maintain code longer than 1000 lines.

With basic you quickly reach its limits and then waste your time for doing tricks and workarounds.

For the system standalone basic is useless. It doesn't give you the power of arexx (tcl, perl, python...) nor can be used for shell scripts. It would be only useful for few homebrew 'developers' that will make another unfinished space shooter or platform game (see games on aminet).

Try BF instead

[redrumloa]

5 rem Programing in basic is this easy.
6 rem This is why C won't do for beginners!
10 input "Do you want Basic included with MorphOS or OS4?" ;a$
20 if a$ = "yes" then goto 50
30 print "Whatever!" : end
50 print "Yeah buddy!!" : end


 :-D

[bloodline]

redrumloa wrote:
5 rem Programing in basic is this easy.
6 rem This is why C won't do for beginners!
10 input "Do you want Basic included with MorphOS or OS4?" ;a$
20 if a$ = "yes" then goto 50
30 print "Whatever!" : end
50 print "Yeah buddy!!" : end


 :-D

This is a good reason why I think the world does need a BASIC.

It's unstructured an ugly... but it's quick and simple (with instant results), and that's what you need when you want to get started in programming.