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Is BST dead?

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  • frank freedmanfrank freedman Posts: 1,983
    edited 2013-04-02 21:22
    Thought you were a unix sort of programmer. Alias the thing to your own memorable or at least favorite name.....

    FF
    David Betz wrote: »
    I wish we could convince Roy to give his compiler a real name. It's getting tiring to have to type "Roy's Spin Compiler" all the time. How about a clever name? :-)
  • David BetzDavid Betz Posts: 14,516
    edited 2013-04-03 08:03
    Thought you were a unix sort of programmer. Alias the thing to your own memorable or at least favorite name.....

    FF
    I mostly use the Mac for my personal stuff and Windows for work. I like Linux but only use it occasionally. The reason I want a better name than "Roy's Spin Compiler" is for discussion in the forums not for ease in typing the command. For that, "spin" is about as easy as it gets. :-)
  • Mike4421Mike4421 Posts: 131
    edited 2013-04-04 21:40
    WELL..... Well.... well :cool: ;

    this thread is interesting, did someone not get appreciated / rewarded right. I should of read this tread before posting on the NASA one.

    Brad I understand....

    just putting in my 2 cent's
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2013-04-04 22:27
    Mike4421,

    I just wish your 2 cents made sense to me.

    The your first cent, on the other thread, kicked of with comments about how programmers would not get paid for writing Free Software/Open Source/Linuxy stuff. Which as it happens they often do.

    This second cent seems to be about a programmer providing a closed source program and getting miffed at the lack of reward.

    These are contradictory cents. The reasoning does not start from facts in either case. Here specifically none of us really knows why BradC wrote BST or what he expected from it (if anything) or why he has stopped developing it. We can only speculate.

    Sorry if I am coming over a bit harsh, I just don't follow your meaning.
  • Roy ElthamRoy Eltham Posts: 3,000
    edited 2013-04-04 22:48
    FYI, calling the compiler I created by porting Chip's code for Parallax "Roy's spin compiler" is not really accurate. It's something Parallax has paid me for, and I believe the intention is for it to be the official compiler once I get this darn validater finished and we can properly validate it (hopefully soon). I've talked with Jeff in the past about integrating it into PropTool (as a DLL). I'm fine with whatever parallax want's to call it.

    I think of the compilers as spin.exe, propellent, proptool, and bstc. I sometimes refer to the one I worked on as my compiler, but I should really call it Parallax's.

    Also, it appears I didn't broadcast that the compiler was functional well enough, since many people didn't know it was... it's been working for over a year, and pretty bug free since August of 2012. I added the preprocessor stuff (thanks to ersmith) in October 2012.

    There will be a flurry of activity on it coming soon as I get the validater working and fix things it finds, then start adding Prop2 stuff.

    Roy
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2013-04-04 23:04
    Yes, I only discovered the pre-processor stuff the other day. Great stuff.

    I see no problem calling it "Roy's Spin Compiler" or "Spin Roy" or whatever.
    Many projects have more or less widely know project names when under development that are nothing to do with the released product name.
    In the past artists, sculpterers, musicians etc had patrons who paid for the work. The artists still got to put their names on them though.
  • Mike4421Mike4421 Posts: 131
    edited 2013-04-04 23:25
    @Heater, which Linux do you recommend?
  • Mike4421Mike4421 Posts: 131
    edited 2013-04-04 23:45
    Just one last question. With all due respect....

    Does anyone ever thought that Linux can get so big that it won't let anyone compete in the software industry?
  • Roy ElthamRoy Eltham Posts: 3,000
    edited 2013-04-04 23:49
    How does Linux stop competition in the software industry?

    You don't make any sense. If anything Linux allows for MORE competition and more opportunity to make money. Especially with all these walled gardens around...
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2013-04-04 23:56
    Mike4421.
    ...which Linux do you recommend?
    I'm not really the guy to ask as I have not tried so many Linux distributions in recent years.
    Last century I went through RedHat, Gentoo, Mandrake...had to sniff around that new world..but that is all history.

    For me now a days it's Debian. "Stable" for our work and servers etc, "unstable" for home and fun. Despite being called unstable it has never given me any grief.

    On the Raspberry Pi boards it's Raspian. Which is basically Debian customized for that architecture. On other ARM boards we have our own in house built Linux.

    We had some Ubuntu machines around the office but they always gave us grief eventually. I don't get the idea, Ubuntu is based off of Debian "testing" which is even more unstable than "unstable", then they add their own bugs to, it then they ship it. The world seems to have gone upside down. In the old days stable releases were what the public got and other release were for a few brave beta testers.

    Just for a blast I think all Linux users should install "Linux From Scratch" (LFS) at least once. http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/. There is something very satisfying in knowing that every single byte of the OS you are using has been compiled by yourself.

    Note: When I say "stable" I may mean "software that does not crash all the time" or I may mean "A system that does not get broken at the slightest upgrade or tweak and has a long life span." You will have to judge from context.
  • Mike4421Mike4421 Posts: 131
    edited 2013-04-05 00:39
    Something that I saw in the early years of Linux was that everyone wanted their own version to be the one, instead of a unified Linux machine that can serve all and progress in code,apps, and whatnot. There were some pretty good ones... even Corel (the word program for the office) had one in those days. I guess it's still the same, just a little more modern.... How can Linux stop competition.... Most users don't really use an OS's full features, just the basic stuff.... So why buy one when you can get one for free, that goes same for the apps, if someone made a free app that works for your needs why buy one; not talking about blackjack, more like word processing, compilers, internet tools, etc .... for free...
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2013-04-05 04:12
    Mike4421,
    Does anyone ever thought that Linux can get so big that it won't let anyone compete in the software industry?
    A meaningless question.

    Do remember that Linux is a kernel, it runs your code, schedules tasks, manages resources, and takes care of security, etc. It is pretty useless by itself.

    Given that, you can build an operating system on top of Linux and there are many as you know.

    I think what you are talking about is "Free Software" and "Open Source Software" and so on. I detect from your other posts that perhaps you have not divined the meaning of "free" when used in these contexts.

    When the GNU software foundation talks about "Free Software" they don't mean "free" as in you don't have to pay for it. They are talking about the availability of the source code and the freedom of users in how they can use the code, how they can modify and/or distribute copies of that code etc.

    Of course the GNU Public License (GLP) does not make you, as a user, totally free as it obliges you to make source code of any modifications you make available to anyone you give the binaries to. Similarly if you build a derived work on top of GPLed code.

    In that sense, and I think this is a subtle point missed by many, there is another meaning of "free" here. It's not just the freedom of the users of the code that is being protected but the freedom of the code itself! The code is free to not be modified and then held captive in secret while binaries compiled from it are distributed.

    Back to your question, will this kill competition in the industry?

    Aside: I used to work for a company, Racal-Redac, on a software package, CadStar, for electronic circuit and printed circuit board design. They sold that package for MSDOS for about £10,000 a seat. Today you can get similar functionality for free with open source software. As a result I have thought about this a bit.

    Ultimately if this progression kills your business, well tough. Quite frankly I think a lot of the "industry" as it stands deserves to die. Having companies endlessly recreating wheels in secret is not the way to go on. Having monopoly suppliers endlessly extorting money from users is just wrong.

    We have 9 billion people on this planet, many of them can write code, the cat is. out of the bag. That will provide a lot of competitive pressure anyway. More than we have see so far.

    Lastly, for now, there is no secret code in creating music anyone can do it. There is no secret code in being a lawyer or an artist or a politician or a chef. All those and many more industries seem to be doing just fine, why should software, or computing services be any different?
  • Mike4421Mike4421 Posts: 131
    edited 2013-04-05 08:03
    What makes a musician good or any other profession good is that they have the talent for it... just taste the food of someone who doesn't know how to cook for example.

    Back to the getting to big... I'm starting to see happen slowly; not only NASA is starting to get into it, but the gaming industry is too.... Look up STEAM; it's like Facebook for gamers; they started out originally for PC, giving you the tools to create games for public (free) use or for tradition sale of them. Then Apple got with them, so now Apple users can get in on the fun, then Playstation 3 did, with some reconfiguration of their network systems, now Linux has, and to celebrate that, the one of the first games that was made available for Linux was TF2 (Team Fortress 2) it's very fun. Without Linux the game is hacked all the time; your modem is crashed, PC is made into a slave( you can tell when start talking about your pictures on your computer or they start opening/closing your DVD drive, and whatnot) next I guess is ppl are going to start making that Linux switch to get freebies or hack into things they want for free it might take awhile but just let them get enough momentum and it's gonna get ugly...
    Steam; www.steampowered.com I think...

    thanks again for the chat on this matter....
  • richaj45richaj45 Posts: 179
    edited 2013-04-05 09:28
    Roy Eltham wrote: »
    FYI, calling the compiler I created by porting Chip's code for Parallax "Roy's spin compiler" is not really accurate. It's something Parallax has paid me for, and I believe the intention is for it to be the official compiler once I get this darn validater finished and we can properly validate it (hopefully soon). I've talked with Jeff in the past about integrating it into PropTool (as a DLL). I'm fine with whatever parallax want's to call it.

    I think of the compilers as spin.exe, propellent, proptool, and bstc. I sometimes refer to the one I worked on as my compiler, but I should really call it Parallax's.

    Also, it appears I didn't broadcast that the compiler was functional well enough, since many people didn't know it was... it's been working for over a year, and pretty bug free since August of 2012. I added the preprocessor stuff (thanks to ersmith) in October 2012.

    There will be a flurry of activity on it coming soon as I get the validater working and fix things it finds, then start adding Prop2 stuff.

    Roy

    Hello:

    Roy, does "Roy Compiler" work on MAC OS X 10.6?
    If so were would I find it?
    Sorry if you have already answered this question as i am late to this thread.

    cheers,
    rich
  • David BetzDavid Betz Posts: 14,516
    edited 2013-04-05 09:47
    richaj45 wrote: »
    Hello:

    Roy, does "Roy Compiler" work on MAC OS X 10.6?
    If so were would I find it?
    Sorry if you have already answered this question as i am late to this thread.

    cheers,
    rich
    I know you addressed this to Roy but I can assure you that Roy's Spin Compiler (maybe we should call it "rsc" for short) works fine on the Macintosh under OS X 10.8.3. Not sure about 10.6.
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2013-04-05 09:59
    Mike4421,
    What makes a musician good or any other profession good is that they have the talent for it... just taste the food of someone who doesn't know how to cook for example.

    Back to the getting to big... I'm starting to see happen slowly; not only NASA is starting to get into it, but the gaming industry is too.... Look up STEAM; it's like Facebook for gamers; they started out originally for PC, giving you the tools to create games for public (free) use or for tradition sale of them. Then Apple got with them, so now Apple users can get in on the fun, then Playstation 3 did, with some reconfiguration of their network systems, now Linux has, and to celebrate that, the one of the first games that was made available for Linux was TF2 (Team Fortress 2) it's very fun. Without Linux the game is hacked all the time; your modem is crashed, PC is made into a slave( you can tell when start talking about your pictures on your computer or they start opening/closing your DVD drive, and whatnot) next I guess is ppl are going to start making that Linux switch to get freebies or hack into things they want for free it might take awhile but just let them get enough momentum and it's gonna get ugly...
    Steam; www.steampowered.com I think...
    What on earth are you talking about?
  • Mike4421Mike4421 Posts: 131
    edited 2013-04-05 10:44
    ahh....:blank: just wondering if Linux will have some kind of WalMart effect on programming....:innocent:
  • Mike4421Mike4421 Posts: 131
    edited 2013-04-05 10:46
    ..... Nevermind....:blank:
  • Roy ElthamRoy Eltham Posts: 3,000
    edited 2013-04-05 10:48
    richaj45 wrote: »
    Hello:

    Roy, does "Roy Compiler" work on MAC OS X 10.6?
    If so were would I find it?
    Sorry if you have already answered this question as i am late to this thread.

    cheers,
    rich

    I only provide binaries for Windows, but the source code is up there as well, and has been compiled on Linux and Mac OSX. It should work on 10.6, but I don't have a Mac to use to build binaries. Eventually, I'll sort out something so I can provide binaries for other platforms besides Windows.

    Anyway, the project is here: https://code.google.com/p/open-source-spin-compiler/
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2013-04-05 10:52
    Mike4421,

    Please do tell. What is a "WalMart effect"?

    And, how does it relate to a bunch of self interested companies and individuals trying to maximize the usefulness of the product for reasons other than the product itself?
  • BatangBatang Posts: 234
    edited 2013-04-05 21:09
    @Mike4421

    Dude, can I have a toke:)
  • LeonLeon Posts: 7,620
    edited 2013-04-06 00:34
    Heater. wrote: »
    Mike4421,

    Please do tell. What is a "WalMart effect"?

    And, how does it relate to a bunch of self interested companies and individuals trying to maximize the usefulness of the product for reasons other than the product itself?

    Apparently, it's the effect that a large company like Walmart has on local businesses when they open a new store.
  • KC_RobKC_Rob Posts: 465
    edited 2013-04-06 09:11
    Mike4421 wrote: »
    ..... Nevermind....:blank:
    Mike: It's entirely possible, though by no means assured, that I could agree with some of what you're saying -- if only I knew what that is.
  • Tracy AllenTracy Allen Posts: 6,664
    edited 2013-04-06 09:50
    If anyone build Roy's compiler for Mac OSX (10.6.8), I'd sure like to try it. I don't have the tools or knowledge to do that. As I understand it, it is currently a command line compiler, not an IDE, is that right?

    I do like so many aspects of bst as an IDE and expect to stick with it as long as possible. I'm not a C programmer, and pin/pasm remains a great fit for my projects.
  • David BetzDavid Betz Posts: 14,516
    edited 2013-04-06 10:04
    If anyone build Roy's compiler for Mac OSX (10.6.8), I'd sure like to try it. I don't have the tools or knowledge to do that. As I understand it, it is currently a command line compiler, not an IDE, is that right?

    I do like so many aspects of bst as an IDE and expect to stick with it as long as possible. I'm not a C programmer, and pin/pasm remains a great fit for my projects.
    Is there any reason why you aren't upgrading to Mountain Lion?
  • Roy ElthamRoy Eltham Posts: 3,000
    edited 2013-04-06 11:42
    David Betz wrote: »
    Is there any reason why you aren't upgrading to Mountain Lion?

    Probably this: Snow Leopard is the last release of Mac OS X to support the 32-bit Intel Core Solo and Intel Core DuoCPUs.
    Snow Leopard being 10.6.x

    We run into this issue with some of our games. We'd like to update our OSX version min spec, but it would cut out a percentage of folks who can't upgrade without buying a new machine.

    It might be this, also:
    As support for Rosetta was dropped in Mac OS X Lion, Snow Leopard is the last version of Mac OS X that is able to run PowerPC-only applications.
  • David BetzDavid Betz Posts: 14,516
    edited 2013-04-06 12:10
    Roy Eltham wrote: »
    Probably this: Snow Leopard is the last release of Mac OS X to support the 32-bit Intel Core Solo and Intel Core DuoCPUs.
    Snow Leopard being 10.6.x

    We run into this issue with some of our games. We'd like to update our OSX version min spec, but it would cut out a percentage of folks who can't upgrade without buying a new machine.

    It might be this, also:
    As support for Rosetta was dropped in Mac OS X Lion, Snow Leopard is the last version of Mac OS X that is able to run PowerPC-only applications.
    I guess Parallax should get a machine that runs 10.6 for testing then. I don't have one myself.
  • Roy ElthamRoy Eltham Posts: 3,000
    edited 2013-04-06 13:53
    We build 10.6.x compatible executables at work on Macs running 10.7 and 10.8. I may be able to build spin on my Mac at work and throw it up there for Tracy Allen to try. Do you have a make file that works for the Mac? Or does the one I put up there for gcc on win/linux work?
  • Mike4421Mike4421 Posts: 131
    edited 2013-04-06 15:22
    Hey guys, give me a break.... I'm doing the Linux thing again... When I started; there was no google and stuff, and the community was at its infency... Also it's happy hour at the Chinese bar here at Boise, ID..... Happy Hour...
  • doggiedocdoggiedoc Posts: 2,243
    edited 2013-04-06 16:42
    Roy Eltham wrote: »
    We build 10.6.x compatible executables at work on Macs running 10.7 and 10.8. I may be able to build spin on my Mac at work and throw it up there for Tracy Allen to try. Do you have a make file that works for the Mac? Or does the one I put up there for gcc on win/linux work?
    I have RoySpin compiled on this Mac. No issues. I can upload it if anybody needs a compiled version.
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