The adventure begins ! BASIC and more !

The Computer Workshop (aka. me) is now changing direction in an effort to expand development options.

Now instead of being a primarily PowerBasic (the compiler I use) development shop, I will be focusing on multiple development tools, particularly different flavors of BASIC.

BASIC, BASIC !

There is a reason I use BASIC. Its more natural sytax (more like English language) makes coding easier, faster and easier to debug. BASIC as a language continues to stay alive despite efforts to end its use.  The current Visual Basic language no longer represents what BASIC is really all about, but instead is more of a second cousin of C# (C Sharp). Also while object oriented features are welcome in BASIC, I personally feel that BASIC really shines when used in a more procedural style of coding.  There are actually many BASIC programming languages around today, but few have come close to the level of PowerBasic which I have been using for the last decade and a half. Yet, I will be on the look out for any and all BASIC languages available which have the potential for professional level development. Some BASIC’s are better suited to game development, which is fine, but I am looking for the next generation of professional BASIC development tools. I have for years developed software (and programming tools) for use in business. So I will be examining a variety of BASIC’s with that in mind.

So, have you found a really good BASIC language ? If so tell me about it.

Are you building a new BASIC language ? If so, tell me about it.

The Computer Workshop can likely be of help to you in a variety of ways. I can help give your BASIC some exposure. I can build drag and drop Visual Designers for it and code generators. I can build GUI libraries for it. Currently my core product, EZGUI 5.0 Professional, has a GUI command set which would likely exceed what you would find in many BASIC languages today. It is a GUI framework built upon the WIN32 API which has a small footprint of about 1 megabyte, while offering extensive GUI features, including Forms engine, Print engine, Graphic engine, Threading, low level subclassing, ownerdraw engine, customdraw engine, 2D sprite engine and a 3D OpenGL based scripting engine. It does not use any open source libraries at all and was entirely written and developed by the Computer Workshop.

One of the biggest weaknesses I have found in a number of independent BASIC languages found on the web today is the quality of the Visual Designers they use. Often they are simply apps written by users of a specific BASIC language which are usually very rudimentary at best. The core functionality needed to build a WYSIWYG style Form Designer is not easy to master. The Computer Workshop though has turned drag and drop into a science, developing my own drag and drop engine which I embeded into EZGUI Professional. It was developed using the pure WIN32 API and took years to fine tune it. It has its own drag handle custom control. It has its own low level subclassing engine, which impliments drag and drop into any window class which can be created using the CreateWindowEx API function. This subclassing engine is important, because for one to have a real WYSIWYG designer, the objects really ought to be the real thing (real controls), but one must take over control of them to be able to turn on and off, user interaction with them. EZGUI’s visual designer subclass engine will subclass a control and even all of its child controls and take over control of user input, so the control can be displayed in an edit mode (for drag and drop) and a working mode (so you can impliment a test mode in the designer). The EZGUI drag handle control can display real drag handles on any control (refered to as its buddy control) and the drag handles impliment real drag and drop. There is also a rubberbanding engine for the initial drawing of new controls on a form and a real snap to grid engine for forms. Visual Designer also usually display property windows, so EZGUI has its own Property Listbox control for that.

The Computer Workshop has spent years perfecting its GUI engine and it can be used to build next generation visual designers for any BASIC language for Windows. So if that interests you, please contact me .

I have created new child forums in the new section called “BASIC, BASIC !” on the Computer Workshop’s online forums for discussing a variety of different BASIC languages. I will add new ones as I find them if they fit my criteria of an acceptable BASIC language.

WIN32 training

One area which I plan on expanding into is in developing training tutorials for learning how to work with the Windows WIN32 API. I have many years of experience with the WIN32, which is shown by what I have done with EZGUI 5.0 Professional. It is time to start sharing some of that knowledge. Hopefully some of what I may be able to offer will be free, but I do plan on developing some paid for services. There are a number of outlets available for this such as CodeProject TV and Udemy, two excellent online video education systems. My goal is to hopefully make the WIN32 lessons language agnostic, so anyone can benefit from them. While I will likely use PowerBasic for the training lessons, the code should be easily portable to C and possibly other languages.

A lot to research

Currently I have been scanning the web for everything BASIC. My goal is to make the Computer Workshop an outlet for those interested in BASIC. So come and join me in the adventure as the Computer Workshop expands BASIC to its fullest potential.