Simple Computing

Carl released a minor update to Liberty Basic: 4.02 . New features (pulled right from the release notes): Added a new Create Application feature to the Run menu. This is only enabled for GOLD license users. Added support for the MOD operator. For example: print 15 mod 4 Added support for scientific notation in code. For example: print 1.2345e-4 Updated the toolbar icons in the editor and debugger for a fresh looking UI. Improved the parser making it tolerant of spaces between identifiers and a ( characters. For example, some other BASIC's allow the following: print mid$ ("hey!", 4). Now Liberty BASIC also allows this kind of formatting. We did this to make it easier for people coming from other dialects of BASIC. Reworked the External Programs dialog to make it easier to use. When run or debug is invoked and there is a selection in the editor a popup notice now asks if you really want to run only the selected code. Answering no runs the entire...

REAL Software, the maker of REALbasic, is offering Visual Basic developers a free license for their Standard Edition. If you are interested, you had better hurry because the offer expires on April 15, 2005. Click here to sign up. The latest release is version 5.5.5. Microsoft ended support for Visual Basic 6 on March 31st.

My wanderings today took me back to the beginning of the personal computer revolution: the MITS Altair kit computer. Click here for a look at Altair Basic. This was Bill and Paul's first BASIC language product at a time when Microsoft Corporation was called Micro-Soft. Check out the scans of the original manual as well as Bill Gate's complaint about hobbyist piracy in a 1976 issue of Radio Electronics. Some things change and some things remain the same.

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 ano...

All of the Liberty Basic newsletters are now in one convenient location . The May edition ( NL108 ) of the newsletter has been published. This edition and many of the old ones can be viewed online. This is a first for the Liberty Basic newsletter. They used to be published as a text file.

The latest edition ( NL107 ) of the Liberty Basic Newsletter is on the virtual newsstand. It's free and a great resource for all levels of programmers. The previous 106 newsletters are also available at no cost.

Liberty Basic 4 is now in Alpha testing. It looks like it's going to be a big step forward for the language. Here's a brief list of the new features: True global variables. (declared using the new global keyword) Passing arguments to a sub or function by reference. (I complained about the lack of this feature in LB3 about 4 posts ago.) Handle variables and the new maphandle command. (liberation from static handles to windows, controls and files) Dynamic evaluation of Liberty Basic code inside of a running program. ( eval returns a numeric value and eval$ returns a string value) Subroutines can now be used for event handlers. (a better choice over branch labels for large programs) There are many other enhancements, but these are the big ones. The IDE also has a new feature that lets you create tutorials or lessons using a three-pane window. On the left pane is the outline of the lesson. On the upper right pane is the lesson text. On the lower right pane is LB code...