Which Basic for Amiga?

[trekiej]

I have an A500, A1000, and an A1200.
I miss my old A2000 and A3000T.
What if I want to do GUI apps, What do you recommend?
I would like to design a CNC controler program.

[justthatgood]

People seem to enjoy AmiBlitz. Though if you are going to do anything having to do with the a GUI, you really should suck it up and actually learn a REAL language like C.

As long as you have access to the a parallel port in your desired language, you could use just about anything (unless you are stuck using a Windows NT, 2000 or XP system)

[trekiej]

I have used C at school and I like using it.
I feel my machines are too weak for it.

[justthatgood]

Err, your machines being too weak for C? The C language in more aspects impower your machines a lot more then the cripple ware limits imposed by a much higer level language like Basic.

The Apple II had C, the Ataris had C. Even the most ancient workstations that had less memory then most calculators today had C.

Even better would be getting a handle on 68K assembly language. Though nowadays for the most part it's a task akin to getting your teeth gouged out by rusty forks. The Super Nintendo freaks of the 90's did a lot of stuff with their Amiga's.

[trekiej]

I just need to accelerate them and add more memory.
Elbox has A500 ram and chip ram upgrades.
The ram upgrade goes under the 68000.
I wanted to put a clock port there.  The one on Amigakit.com looks cool.
Maybe I will have a ram upgrade made by the end of the year.

sorry, I went off topic.

Using assembly is something I would like to do.
I wonder if some of the C packages out there will allow the addition of assembly in C code.  I know some do in the pc world.

[Karlos]

Let's not spam the thread with our opinions of why C/C++ is so much better. We aren't like VB.net developers, after all ;-)

BlitzBasic did have access to normal AmigaOS libraries, including but not limited to Intuition. It is perfectly capable of creating OS legal applications. IMO, it always seemed a lot more OS friendly than say AMOS. I can only assume AmiBlitz retains this abiliy.

Also, as has been pointed out, an AMOS compatible language is also in development and I'm sure that it addresses the OS integration issue.

-edit-

Regarding the "weakness" issue, if you do want to use C, you might find compiling a painful experience on a basic 68000. The resulting code will probably be better in performance terms than something created in Blitz (but that's no means guarenteed on a basic 68000 either, after all blitz was designed for game production) but compiling it would be evil. Due to the amount of files that need to be pulled in and examined, a hard disk is an absolute must at the very least.

For C development I'd recommend at least an 020, 8MB of fast ram and a hard disk. That should be enough to run DICE or stormC 3 (as found on the DevCD 2.1), but you'd still find compiling a slow process.

-edit2-

I wonder if some of the C packages out there will allow the addition of assembly in C code. I know some do in the pc world

Most do. There are two ways you can go about doing it. First, you can define an entire function in assembler and have a C prototype for it. You have to make sure you don't trash the stack (at least the state it was before your call) or any non-volatile registers in your asm code. If you need to use register-exact argument passing you will almost certainly find different compilers use different constructs for defining them. It can be a pain.

The second way is "inline assembler". Mechanisms for that vary, but at least gcc allows the use of the asm() construct, which is pretty well documented.

I've actually used gcc's asm() in ANSI C++ mode to create functioning inline headers for amigaos library calls. It's a pain in the a*se, but it's better than having to create stub libraries for them.

[balrogsoft]

I insist you to test PureBasic, it has been updated some weeks ago and it's free, it have access to all the Amiga API, with conversors from c includes to PureBasic. I like a lot how is structured this language (all versions, Amiga, Windows, Linux), more than Blitz Basic or AmiBlitz. You can use asm merged with your PureBasic code, it have a good debugger, and you can generate the asm file of your complete basic code, for asm freaks!

Purebasic 4.0 OpenSource

[SamuraiCrow]

If C is too heavy for your system then Mattathias Basic is out of the question.  It uses C as a backend for compatibility with PowerPC and x86.

AmiBlitz requires a hard drive to hold all of its include files.

Blitz Basic is buggy but has a fast compiler.

PureBasic requires AmigaOS 3.0+ according to its webpage.

If you're on an ECS or OCS Amiga then AmosPro might be okay since it was designed to run on 1 meg A500s with dual floppys.  I wouldn't recommend running anything on under 1 meg nowadays.  Also, Amos includes an interpreter which is handy for debugging if you don't want to compile all of the time.

ACE will run on a bag standard A500 if you want to.  The code generated wasn't very well optimized the last time I looked into it, though.  It uses an extensive linker library for all of its functions so the compile times are faster than other Basics.

I'd say that if you're on a flat 68000, go with Amos or Ace (or both).  But I'd definitely look into downloading Dice C as well if I were you.

[CRL]

Hi All-
I'm thinking about writing educational software again, and the PureBasic approach appeals to me.  I can use the amiga to try out ideas and then port them to the MSwindows system my school will insist upon.  Sooo... I downloaded the open source Amiga version and unpacked it and tryed it.  Immediate or slightly delayed crashes every time.  Bummer, because in the delay before freezing/crashing I get nice examples of sprite and draw function that I would find useful.  I have a mostly stock (a Sonnet Quaddoubler puts the 68040 up to 50mh) A4000/40 with some speed-up patches.  I started commenting the patches out and testing for crashes, but after this got tedious it occurred to me that there might be a trouble shooters list of things to try for PureBasic and maybe AmiBasic also (AB sort of dumps out on me also).
Any suggestions?
CRL

[SamuraiCrow]

Don't let portability to the PC scare you away from some of the more powerful Basics on the Amiga.  AmiBlitz code can be ported to the PC's BlitzPlus.  Likewise, AmosPro can be ported to DarkBasic without too much difficulty.

BTW, try downclocking your '040 back to 40MHz and see if that works.