Simple Computing

The new Run BASIC hosting service launched at midnight! Please visit http://runbasichosting.com for more details. Monthly and annual subscriptions are available. Run BASIC , a product by ShopTalk Systems, is a tool that makes it easy to create your own web applications. No computer science degree required . Run BASIC Hosting is a service that makes it easy to deploy your applications to the Internet. No IT experience required .

The first Run BASIC Hosting Service at http://runbasicnet.com shutdown a few months ago. This happened just before I realized that I needed a hosting service for my own applications. If it shutdown a month later, I may have become one of Jerry's last customers. Personally, I don't want to rely on a server running in my home connected to the Internet through my Comcast cable modem. I know a lot of people do that and it's the cheapest way to go, but I did some testing and found that I have service interruptions almost every day. They are usually short and during the night, though. Plus, there are the occasional major outages both in cable service and power that usually happen during winter months or in bad weather. I live in Atlanta, so this doesn't happen often, but it's still often enough. Last month, I purchased a subscription for my own VPS (Virtual Private Server) at VPSLand. I also started wondering if anyone else in the Run BASIC community would like to have ...

Carl has a new Run BASIC whitepaper that's definitely worth reading. It is titled Run BASIC - A Breakthrough Web Application Server . If you are new to Run BASIC but a veteran web programmer, be prepared to be shocked by how simple this is. No CGI scripting. No state management. HTML and Javascript knowledge is optional. In Run BASIC, there is an HTML statement that lets you embed custom code if you want. Embedding HTML/Javascript is still necessary to add AJAX type code for dynamic page updating, but I suspect that future versions of Run BASIC will integrate this as well. For a more traditional web interface everything you need is built-in: Desktop-like control flow No state management Graphics SQLite database HTML statement for embedding custom HTML and Javascript SMTP statement for sending email HTTP GET and POST statements for accessing other web sites and services XML parser Widgets with CSS styling Easy component creation Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Carl released a free versi...

Jerry Muelver of Hytext Consulting has launched the first Run Basic Hosting Service . Account features include: Dedicated Run Basic server. Secure folder with FTP access. Static IP address. A subscription is $60 for 6 months ($10/month). Jerry just announced a $5, 1-month trial.

There are two new podcast interviews of Carl Gundel by the guys at Cincom Smalltalk. Just in case you've missed some previous posts, Carl is the author of Liberty Basic (for Windows) and the new Run Basic (for the web). In both interviews, Carl discusses Run Basic: Industry Misinterpretations Episode 70: Run Basic, Run! Industry Misinterpretations Episode 71: Run Basic, Run! (Part 2)

Run Basic Personal Server 1.0 is available for purchase at http://runbasic.com/ . The license price is $59.95. Here are some links organized by Alyce Watson, a long-time Liberty Basic community leader: If you haven't tried Run BASIC, you'll want to visit the free online trial version here: http://runbasic.com/ The forum is here: http://runbasic.proboards82.com/ The community wiki is here: http://runbasic.wikispaces.com/ What is Run BASIC? It's a web programming language that includes a server. Read more here: http://runbasic.wikispaces.com/FAQs and here: http://runbasic.wikispaces.com/WebServer Online documentation and tutorials: http://www.runbasic.com/docs/rbhelp.html

We're up to Release Candidate 3. Carl announced that he's preparing for the official release of Run Basic Personal Server 1.0 this weekend! The Run Basic forum is also open to the public. Only the "Run Basic Beta Testing" area requires a login.

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...

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...

Over the past month, I've found several audio interviews with Carl Gundel. If you are interested in a behind-the-scenes look at Liberty Basic and Run Basic, then these are recommended listening: Industry Misinterpretations 22: Liberty Basic with Carl Gundel ( mp3 ). Shareware Radio Podcast: Interview with Carl Gundel ( mp3 ). Enjoy!

Compared to the Sieve benchmarks in previous posts, Tiny Basic is very slow. In fact, it's much slower than I anticipated. I ran Tiny Basic on both the Run Basic public server and Liberty Basic 4.03 on my laptop. Here are the numbers: After 5000, the Run Basic program exceeded the allowable time on the public server. The following is the Sieve program. I had to use IF statements because Tiny Basic doesn't have a FOR/NEXT loop yet. 10 REM sieve2 20 REM ported to Tiny Basic from Liberty Basic by David den Haring 30 REM last updated: 8-14-07 40 REM s -- size, a() -- flags array, a -- start time, z -- end time 50 REM i -- loop counter, p -- prime, c -- prime count, k -- temp 60 s = 7000 : i = 1 70 a = ms 80 IF a(i) > 0 THEN GOTO 300 90 p = (i + i + 3) 100 k = i + p 110 IF k > s THEN GOTO 290 120 a(k) = 1 130 k = k + p 140 GOTO 110 290 c = c + 1 300 i = i + 1 310 IF i > s THEN GOTO 400 320 GOTO 80 400 z = ms 410 PRINT c; 420 PRINT...

I posted a new version of Tiny Basic in both the Run Basic and Liberty Basic wikispaces. Here's a list of new features: Added a fixed array accessible from the interpreter -- a(1) to a(7001). The size of the array can be adjusted by changing the ArraySize variable in the code. Added the functions seconds and ms (or milliseconds ) for benchmarking purposes. (LB4 only). Fixed LOAD and SAVE commands. The argument that these commands take is a number. For example, " LOAD 1 ". The file saved in the working directory will be "TinyBas1". (LB4 only). Fixed AutoRun feature. If a file exists in the working directory called "TinyBas0", it will load and run automatically when the interpreter starts up. (LB4 only). Added KILL and DIR commands to round out file management. KILL takes the same numeric argument as LOAD and SAVE. The DIR command has no arguments. It will display a list of Tiny Basic files and the time stamp. Known Issues: There is no file managem...

One of the examples on the Run Basic website is a port of Tiny Basic . It's fun to play with and is very much like the interactive, command line Basics found on early personal computers. In fact, I think Tiny Basic was the dialect used on the TRS-80 Model 1. I'm currently working on modifying Tiny Basic to run the Sieve benchmark. Tiny Basic needs two things: profiling and array support . I've already added profiling support for the RUN command. Tiny Basic now displays the running time of a program in milliseconds. The last step is to add array support. Tiny Basic only supports the numeric variables 'a' to 'z'. I'm adding a single array to the environment in order to port the Sieve program. The array will be called a(). I will post the modified Tiny Basic code to the Run Basic Programming Wiki when finished. The whole point of this exercise, however, is to see how fast the Tiny Basic interpreter runs the Sieve benchmark and compare it to the others i...

After comparing the performance of Run Basic (Beta) and Liberty Basic 4.03 using the Sieve sample program, I wanted to expand the comparison to include a few other languages. I ported the Sieve program as directly as possible. Here are the test results sorted from low to high: Find primes from 0 to 7000 (10-run average in milliseconds) Visual Basic 6.0 ( 0.0 ) Run Basic ( 28.8 ) REBOL ( 35.9 ) Runtime Revolution ( 63.7 ) Liberty Basic 3.03 ( 146.8 ) Liberty Basic 4.04 ( 170.3 ) Find primes from 0 to 1000000 (10-run average in milliseconds) Visual Basic 6.0 ( 273.5 ) Run Basic ( 4164.4 ) REBOL ( 4767.2 ) Runtime Revolution ( 12421.5 ) Liberty Basic 3.03 ( 20381.1 ) Liberty Basic 4.04 ( 27732.9 ) I ran the 0-1000000 benchmark to get VB off of zero milliseconds for a better comparison.

Just for fun, I ran the sieve2.bas example that ships with LB4. I was a little shocked to find that Run Basic finished about 5-7 times faster than LB4 running on my 1-year-old Dell laptop. The Run Basic time varied between 23-35ms -- and that's on a public server. LB4 on my Dell Inspiron 9600 laptop varied between 156-172ms . The Dell is running XP and has an Intel Core Duo (T2300 @1.66GHz) with 1 gig of RAM. I mentioned this on the Liberty Basic Community Forum and Carl had this to say: "Run BASIC and LB5 are not only using a new development tool, but their design is fundamentally different than older versions." Run Basic and LB5 will be worthwhile upgrades if only for the speed improvements.

Have you ever wanted to resize the Run Basic code editor in a way not allowed by the "small/medium/large" settings? For the "large" setting, I typically want it to be longer. The width is OK. If you run Apple's Safari web browser on Windows or Macintosh, you can resize the code editor (or any text area) by just dragging the lower right hand corner. Very cool. On Windows, however, Safari is still in Beta and needs a lot of work. Here's a screen shot of an oddly resized editor for demonstration purposes. Click on the image to zoom.