Not a 100% Basic Stamp question...but looking for a BASIC compiler

Dave E

Hello all,
I know that this is not exactly a Basic Stamp question but I am looking for a BASIC compiler. I bought a copy of Microsoft Quick BASIC a number of years ago but it is on 5 1/4" floppies, like I said, a number of years ago. Besides, I don't know if it would run on todays computers or not even if I could get it onto my computer.

Can anyone suggest a BASIC program that will run on a Windows based PC? My wife teaches high school and several students are asking for a computer that they could learn programming on.

I noticed one called FreeBASIC that I can download from the web. Does anyone have any experience (good or bad) with FreeBASIC?

Any information would be helpful.

Thanks,
Dave E

Mike Green

I don't have any experience with FreeBasic, but it looks like a nicely done system, well supported by a community and pretty mature. I'd go with it.

QuattroRS4

Another Option is powerbasic ... Has native support for 4 com ports without the need for fossil drivers..
They have a number of products - some windows and console based - but also Dos based compiler.
They do educational offers also ...

I used this a number of years ago in a DOS based machine to great effect..

http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?p=745363

if it is a simple windows based Basic you are looking for have a look at Liberty Basic
www.libertybasic.com/



Regards,
John Twomey

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'Necessity is the mother of invention'

metron9

I have used freebasic and it has great graphics you can do and very fast. When i used it i could not figure out how to talk to the com ports though. Perhaps they have new libraries to do that.

I am now exploring C using lcc-win32, very easy to install, has IDE editor and very compact compared to the big C# and c++ packages. It has automatic skeleton builders for windows but still allows you dos type windows starting with a blank page writing a few lines of code to get a hello world program going.

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Think Inside the box first and if that doesn't work..
Re-arrange what's inside the box then...
Think outside the BOX!

LoopyByteloose

I certainly would start out with free or shareware. Basic computer products on a Windows platform is quite a broad and complex subect. Try Wikipedia to get a current status report.

Microsoft still has a great deal of pride in Basic being their flagship product, but these days it is a huge and unwieldly product, Virtual Basic. I look at it, but don't know where to begin.

5 years ago [noparse][[/noparse]before I found Parallax], I was looking for a Basic product to write easy programs and found that you really cannot turn back the clock to the early days of computing.

There are a lot of different vendors with a huge variety of approaches to Basic. And everything seemed to be priced according to the amount of useful features available.

If you really want a good product that does everything and remains free in a Windows environment you are better of with Forth. Yahoo has a WinForth32 that really is well supported.

If you are willing to avoid Windows, Python seems to a new leader in the Linux world, but the old standard of C still stands tall and you can even get Linux Fortran. And there are still lots of languages well supported in Linux for free.

I have gone over to a dual boot configuration and use Linux more and more for daily operations because it is far more educational. Like Parallax, there is a helpful fellowship that is available 24/7.

In sum, I fear that Basic on a Windows machine is overshadowed by big brother Microsoft.

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It's sunny and warm here. It is always sunny and warm here.... (unless a typhoon blows through).

Tropically, G. Herzog [noparse][[/noparse] 黃鶴 ] in Taiwan

waltc

FreeBasic would be a good choice for teaching students the basics of programming.

You don't need Microsoft products unless you like spending lots of money or you need to build windows based applications.

Brian_B

I found this basic back in a old post on this forum , I think you can even·write assembly with it.

http://www.rtrussell.co.uk/


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Thank's Brian



·"Imagination is more important than knowledge..." ·· Albert Einstein

www.PropelX.com

Dave E

Thanks for all of the input.

The primary function will be for basic to heavy math functions and education so I think I will start out with FreeBASIC and if that doesn't do it, I will go further.

For an educational starting point, I think BASIC is still the way to go even if the many C variants are more mainstream. Besides, if things go the way I hope, some of the students may get interested in using their new programming skills for for some Basic Stamp projects.

Thanks again for all of the help.
Dave E

·

John Bond

You may decide that Big Blue isn’t so evil after all and have a look at the free Microsoft Visual Studio Express

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-za/express/default(en-us).aspx
(Please don’t shoot me&#8230[noparse];)[/noparse]

This is what you get. Visual Basic, C++ and C# among the line-up

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-za/express/aa700921(en-us).aspx

But then again, you may feel so strongly about Billy Gates that you don’t want to touch this stuff.

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LoopyByteloose

I started out wanting a Windows-based Basic with RS232 ports and for that I found most everyone was charging bucks. There are better values and better entry points for education.

I must admit that getting into Forth is a bit of a boggle, but the Win32Forth [noparse][[/noparse]not WinForth32] offers the ability to produce complete programs for Windows that are compiled as .exe files and is free. That includes hefty support for GUI, and support of the RS-232 port.

The eternal appeal of Basic is in its name. If you really want to provide useful scientific math programing Fortran is still likely to be as good or better an entry point that Basic. And it is well supported within the Linux community.

The philosophy of the original Dartmouth Basic was to present the abstracted fundamental features that are universal to programing, not to provide scientific mathematics.

Parallax's PBasic is quite faithful to that approach. In such a context, Basic is mostly about logic, looping, and sub-routines. Math is mostly integer math and binary.

Science rapidly demands floating point, exponental functions, trig functions, and other items that are quite foreign to the normal use of a microprocessor. You will get better results with a language, like Fortran, that is fully committed to these functions working well together.

Now a days, everyone is crazy about Object Oriented Programing, Graphic User Interfaces, and services that work over the Internet [noparse][[/noparse]such at HTML, PHP]. So the Basic product name has been absconded to promote products that are anything but basic in their nature.

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It's sunny and warm here. It is always sunny and warm here.... (unless a typhoon blows through).

Tropically, G. Herzog [noparse][[/noparse] 黃鶴 ] in Taiwan

Post Edited (Kramer) : 8/27/2008 3:13:19 PM GMT

Mike_GTN

Brian Beckius said...
I found this basic back in a old post on this forum , I think you can even·write assembly with it.

http://www.rtrussell.co.uk/·

Hi Brian, Amazing that you mentioned this link! This is a compiler / development suite for those of us that remember the BBC micro. It is his version of BBC Basic running under Windows. The BBC Micro was my first computer back in the 1980's - Gosh how time flys past - I was made to dump all of my old BBC machines at a local Dump/Tip during the big clearout of 2001....... Even now still miss them greatly.

BTW. Richard Russell is a very talented·guy that worked for the BBC as a design engineer within the Designs Department. He created such classics as the "GNAT" which was a digital Network clock shown on screen in glorious PAL quality. Here is a link for those interested: - http://www.bbceng.info/Designs/designs_reminiscences/richard_russell_part2/rtrbbc.html

With regards

Mike.

Paul Baker

I've heard good things about RealBasic (maybe from Chris Savage, not sure). It is $100, but it's cross-platform (MS and OS X are $100 seperately, linux is free), and it supports serial coms.

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Paul Baker
Propeller Applications Engineer

Parallax, Inc.

Chris Savage

Yes, I have brought it up on several occasions. I haven’t updated my version since 2005, but it is a nice language and it’s serial support is somewhat better than VB currently has.

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Chris Savage
Parallax Engineering

Humanoido

For a simple learning platform, try this great freeware
language. It was originally a mac program but now,
when using the PC simply use the pc version. It works
well to create and save engineering programs quickly,
has graphics and very powerful commands.

Chipmonk Basic

humanoido