I don’t even recognize it anymore ! What ever happened to BASIC coding ?
I was playing around with the 64 bit Windows 8 Preview build today and decided to check out Visual Basic as part of Visual Studio 11, which comes with the 64 bit build.
What ever happened to coding ?
It was like landing on a different planet !
I was a Basic programmer in another galaxy which had absolutely no resemblence to where I was from (Long time Basic programmer).
I am not sure, but I think the Visual Studio build with Windows 8 is only set up for building Metro apps, because I could not find any way to create a Visual Basic desktop app.
No wonder software is a mess today!
No one codes any more. They write XAML and draw objects which are not really controls any more (they appear to be, but none are native windows controls). Intellisense is a nightmare !
For example I finally figured out how to create Basic code module (uses .vb file extension and not .bas) and I wrote a simple subroutine.
I started writing the parameter lists for the subroutine as:
SUB MySUB(byval T AS
Now when I got to the AS part, I was expecting intellisense to display a list of common data types (LONG, SINGLE, STRING) and to my surprise I got this ‘huge’ drop down list of objects, rather than simple data types. I had to scroll down through dozens and dozens of object types until I got to the word STRING (which is what I wanted).
Windows programming, even Visual Basic, has become a nightmare.
I stopped using Visual Basic at VB 5.0 Pro (I still have VB 5.0 and once in awhile pull it out and have no problem writing code with it), but this new stuff boggles the mind.
No wonder software is a mess today (and bloated).
Makes me appreciate PowerBasic even more. I can still write code like I did 20 years ago, using PowerBasic, while having access to many more modern features.
Programming is no longer simple today, when it comes to Microsoft programming languages such as Visual Basic.
I have code which dates back to DOS Basic (PDS 7.1) which I have ported to the modern PowerBasic compiler and it was not too difficult. I can still write some code today using PowerBasic just like I did over 30 years ago and can use modern features as well. All the years I have in Basic programming have not been lost when I use PowerBasic. I benefit from all those years of experience. My skill set is just as useful today as it was 10, 20 and even 30 years ago.
I am a coder, not a XAML writer. While I use a Visual Designer, I also can code an entire Windows application without a designer (using my own EZGUI engine of course). Many of the changes to programming languages have been added in the name of “ease of use”, “code reusability” and “better code maintenance”, but I really don’t see it. No wonder long time Basic programmers don’t know what to do anymore. Visual Basic 5.0 (or 6.0) was just starting to get on my nerves with all the object stuff and classes (which I never used), but it was tolerable. I can fully appreciate how many VB programmers must have felt when VB dot.net came out. Today, Basic no longer exists as we know it when it comes to Visual Basic.
While learning the Windows API, so I could fully utilize Powerbasic, was a challenge, it is nothing compared to the current state of Windows development tools. Now of course this is only one programmers opinion, but I have been programming in Basic since CPM computers (actually earlier). I have used GWBasic, Commodore Basic, TI Basic, QBasic, QuickBasic, PDS 7.1, Visual Basic versions 1.0, 2.0 and 5.0 Pro and more recently PowerBasic. In my opinion Visual Basic in todays form is no longer Basic. Not even the freeware SmallBasic (which is more of a Basic shell over a bunch of predefined objects). Now there are a lot of Basic programming languages available today on the web like PureBasic, BlitzBasic, etc. yet my impression is that such Basics also lose some of the real flavor of the original Basic language.
If you are reading this article and you too wonder what has happened to Basic, then realize you are not alone. You might want to check out PowerBasic (that is what I use today). If you are looking for a freeware Basic, then consider ThinBasic (it was written using PowerBasic).
There was an interesting comment posted on an article I wrote about PowerBasic and the commentor asked the question of what language was PowerBasic written in. He suggested possibly C. That tells you something about the state of Basic today. People may expect Basic compilers to be written in C, thinking only C is a true low level language. Actually some Basic compilers are written in C and I think it shows. Now PowerBasic was written in the only true low level language and that is assembler (the IDE was written in PowerBasic) and it shows. PowerBasic maintains the real flavor of the Basic language and it is not a C programmers idea of what Basic should be like. Even when PowerBasic borrows concepts from other languages like C or Pascal, it does it in a true Basic like syntax so it feels like it was part of Basic all along. No strange alien syntaxes here, but good old fashioned Basic like code.