Skip to main content
I know, I know. This blog has been dormant a long time. Life happens -- new wife, baby on the way. Life is good.

Liberty Basic continues to evolve slowly -- version 4.01 is the current release. Carl is busy at work on a new more interactive Basic. I don't think it will be backwards compatible with Liberty Basic, but my forum research is incomplete and Carl does not seem to be telling. This new Basic may also be cross-platform.

He believes strongly in a small core language that remains close to the roots of the language. In a .NET world, this is a refreshing direction but it is not without its consequences. Namely, lack of readily available power.

I continue to use Liberty Basic for small projects, but the language presents roadblocks to COM, database and Internet technologies. Thanks to LB's DLL access, intrepid programmers have been working around these limitations and publishing their work in the monthly online newsletter. The problem is that it's much easier to use another language than to work with LB at such a low level. More on this in future posts.

Oh, I almost forgot. Carl has his own blog now.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Tiny Basic 1.2 Progress

I'm working on the next release of Tiny Basic. Here's the latest list of enhancements: Added GOSUB/RETURN statements. Added TITLEBAR statement for the interpreter console. Increased program lines from 100 to 1024. Rewrote the MEM code. Added runtime error handling in the interpreter. It trys to recover to the READY prompt. Created test program for the interpreter (i.e. primitive unit testing). Granted that some of these changes are behind the scenes, but I'm trying to increase the robustness of the interpreter without refactoring it into something completely different. Before I release Tiny Basic 1.2, I still want to add these features: String variables (i.e. a$ -- z$). FOR/NEXT loops Fix known bugs in current version. The work continues...

Run Basic RC1 Released

Carl invited me to be a beta tester for his upcoming Run Basic product about 4 months ago. This week he released Release Candidate 1 to the beta testing group. It's been exciting to see the evolution of RB from Beta 2 through Beta 5 to RC1. New features that aren't publicly available at www.runbasic.com include: A new syntax to use objects. (e.g. #object method). You can see the Smalltalk influence and the syntax leverages a Liberty Basic programmer's conceptual model of handles. An XMLparser object. A SQLITE object. A FILE object. A TABLE object. HTTPGet$ function that performs an HTTP GET. Carl stated that there will be a few more release candidates before the official release of the Run Basic Personal Server. There will be an "Enterprise" version available at a later date which should include version control and enterprise database access. This release will be the most significant event in the Basic programming world since the introduction of Visual Basic for...

Liberty Basic in 2010

This past year has seen some modest progress in the world of Liberty Basic: Carl published a book titled Beginning Programming with Liberty BASIC . This is a great book -- I read it from cover to cover. Even if you're an experienced programmer, it is a fast way to get the gist of the language and you may even pick up a few new things along the way. Liberty Basic 4.04. This release offers better compatibility with Windows Vista and 7. It also fixes some bugs. I think it will be the last release of the 4.x version. Liberty Basic Pro. This is just 4.04 and Assist combined into a single product. Hopefully 2011 will be the year of Run Basic.