Adam.Frix@p2.f200.n226.z1.FIDONET.ORG (Adam Frix) (05/25/90)
In a message of 05/19/90, David Nettles wrote - > I have some questions about MS Quick Basic and would greatly appreciate > any answers. I am thinking about porting an application from DOS to the > Mac. It is currently in MS QuickBasic on the PC. The questions: > > How good is QuickBasic on the Mac? > > Can good, commercial quality applications be done in Quickbasic? I recently bought a commercial package with three of the parts written in MS QuickBasic. If these parts are representative samples, then no; good, commercial quality apps cannot be done in QuickBasic. And in fact, the author of the package has admitted so and is in the process of looking into something from Symantec, either Pascal or C. This isn't to say it can't be done, mind you, as the current version of this package of mine is serviceable, but only marginally so. And here's a hint: QuickBasic programs compile so that initwindows is called before initfonts. Inside Mac says this is a major no-no. Be careful to avoid this no-no, as it will definitely cause some sort of problem at some point (especially for SuperClock users). --Adam-- -- Adam Frix via cmhGate - Net 226 fido<=>uucp gateway Col, OH UUCP: ...!osu-cis!n8emr!cmhgate!200.2!Adam.Frix INET: Adam.Frix@p2.f200.n226.z1.FIDONET.ORG
aw0g+@andrew.cmu.edu (Aaron Wohl) (05/27/90)
David, Some real programers (me anyway) that know c,assembly, pascal, macapp on the mac still use quick basic. I made a german vocabulary drill one afternoon in quick basic. I was taking a german class and was primarly interested in quickly making a program to do the job not playing around with the enviorment. The program is now given out to all the first year students with vocabulary files for all the chapters. The students are happy, nobody ever complained 'ick look at the about box it was written in basic'. It depends on the market the program is addressed at. If it is non computer nerds that need something to address a need they have, I think basic would be viable. If the program where to be marketed to computer nerds then it would be shuned due to the macho factor. There have only been two releases of the quick basic. It doesn't have a big community of users on the net to help with problems (as far as I know). The error handling is really pretty funky. You can have an 'on error gosub' which is ok, but now a days basic programs don't have line numbers they have labels. So when you start getting an error all of a sudden it is a real pane to track down the source line it happened on. For new development I tend to use THINK c with TCL (think class library). I can make an application as quickly as with basic now. It is much simpler to make a visual interface. However if you are new to object oriented programming and the mac allow a really big startup time to learn them. Apple at there developer university has two classes that are usefull for people starting out on the mac: - Intro to mac programming: this is toolbox kind of stuff written in think c or think pascal (bare without the class libraries). - MacApp (in pascal or c++) - This is apples object oriented programming environment. The class also introduces what oop is. An experianced basic programmer can do a programm in some areas (not to visual) with quick basic right away. It would look a littly non mac like, say it would be an 85% solution. The other major development systems take a real long time to learn (think c/pascal with tcl, macapp pascal/c++). There are some other possibilities for interactive compilable languages: VIP (visual interactive programming) and Prograph. I have a copy of VIP. You draw flow charts. The little boxes light up (when debugging) as the program executes. I found it diffacult to make real programs in VIP and never really got anything usefull done with it. Prograph looks real prommising. A friend is using very heavily. They drew a big crowd at the apple world developers conference. It looks like a viable way to make real mac programs. Menus and all sorts of graphical things in windows can be created interactivly and tried out. You can set up all your menus and some windows as a prototype and then have it evolve into your application. On the compatablity with the pc version: I read the pc manuals one day. I think simple things like arithmatic are no problem. However all the userinterface (windows, menus, etc) are not compatable. The pc version of quick basic was recently upgraded to be able to do all sorts of fancy os/2 stuff. Aaron