I am trying to write a program using FreeBASIC and I hit a limitation that causes me to consider another langauge to get past said FreeBASIC limitation. The program that I'm writing is a DOS program and a side project. At the moment I have two options available: C++ (either DJGPP or Open Watcom) or Free Pascal.

Any recommendations for someone who's used to BASIC in DOS? I have no plans of using graphics, the program is only going to be in text mode only.

-jag
Code it, Script it, Automate it!

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Re: Language to Transition To From BASIC?
By: Jagossel to All on Tue Jul 03 2018 07:13 pm

I am trying to write a program using FreeBASIC and I hit a limitation that causes me to consider another langauge to get past said FreeBASIC limitation. The program that I'm writing is a DOS program and a side project. At the moment I have two options available: C++ (either DJGPP or Open Watcom) or Free Pascal.

Any recommendations for someone who's used to BASIC in DOS? I have no plans of using graphics, the program is only going to be in text mode only.

Why not just plain-ole C?

digital man

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Re: Language to Transition To From BASIC?
By: Jagossel to All on Tue Jul 03 2018 07:13 pm

I am trying to write a program using FreeBASIC and I hit a limitation that causes me to consider another langauge to get past said FreeBASIC limitation. The program that I'm writing is a DOS program and a side project. At the moment I have two options available: C++ (either DJGPP or Open Watcom) or Free Pascal.

Any recommendations for someone who's used to BASIC in DOS? I have no plans of using graphics, the program is only going to be in text mode only.

I haven't programmed in BASIC in a long time, but several years ago I was looking for a C++ compiler to use for DOS. I seem to recall that Open Watcom's DOS compiler had support for more recent C++ than other DOS C++ compilers
(I still don't think it supported C++11, but still a fairly recent variant of C++).

Nightfox

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Jagossel wrote to All <=-

Any recommendations for someone who's used to BASIC in DOS? I have no plans of using graphics, the program is only going to be in text mode only.

I've never programmed in C myself, but I did several projects in Pascal
back in high school. I can attest that it's not very hard to move from BASIC
to Pascal.


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Re: Language to Transition To From BASIC?
By: Digital Man to Jagossel on Tue Jul 03 2018 17:29:27

Any recommendations for someone who's used to BASIC in DOS? I have no pla of using graphics, the program is only going to be in text mode only.

Why not just plain-ole C?

That'll depend. I'm used to how easy it was to move the cursor and change the colors in BASIC; and I need loops to do the keyboard scan so that the cursor can be moved by the user.

Are there function or libraries for C that'll provide the same functionallity?

-jag
Code it, Script it, Automate it!

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Re: Language to Transition To From BASIC?
By: Nightfox to Jagossel on Tue Jul 03 2018 17:19:29

I haven't programmed in BASIC in a long time, but several years ago I was looking for a C++ compiler to use for DOS. I seem to recall that Open Watco DOS compiler had support for more recent C++ than other DOS C++ compilers
(I still don't think it supported C++11, but still a fairly recent variant o C++).

I tried to get stsrted with Open Watcom 1.9 yesterday, and I got stuck on trying to create a makefile. I have never done makefiles before, and finding resources on it has been a challenge. Have Open Watcom come with an IDE that only works in Windows doesn't help.

Oddly enough, I found Open Watcom easier to set up than DJGPP. I might continue down that route if I cannot get Free PASCAL working...

-jag
Code it, Script it, Automate it!

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Re: Language to Transition To
By: Dreamer to Jagossel on Tue Jul 03 2018 23:48:00

I've never programmed in C myself, but I did several projects in Pascal
back in high school. I can attest that it's not very hard to move from BASIC to Pascal.

Based on what I have seen so far, it seems to be the case: easy to move from BASIC to PASCAL.

However, I tried to look into using Free PASCAL, it doesn't work in Magic DOSBox; I might have to recreate a FreeDOS VM on my phone with Limbo and see if Free PASCAL will work there. I may try to see if I can find a better DOS version of Free PASCAL and try again.

-jag
Code it, Script it, Automate it!

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Re: Language to Transition To From BASIC?
By: Jagossel to Nightfox on Thu Jul 05 2018 08:00 am

I tried to get stsrted with Open Watcom 1.9 yesterday, and I got stuck on trying to create a makefile. I have never done makefiles before, and finding resources on it has been a challenge. Have Open Watcom come with an IDE that only works in Windows doesn't help.

Makefiles aren't that bad. And I suppose after this exercise, you'll know more about makefiles, which isn't a bad thing. :)

Nightfox

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Re: Language to Transition To From BASIC?
By: Jagossel to Digital Man on Thu Jul 05 2018 07:55 am

Re: Language to Transition To From BASIC?
By: Digital Man to Jagossel on Tue Jul 03 2018 17:29:27

Any recommendations for someone who's used to BASIC in DOS? I have no pla of using graphics, the program is only going to be in text mode only.

Why not just plain-ole C?

That'll depend. I'm used to how easy it was to move the cursor and change the colors in BASIC; and I need loops to do the keyboard scan so that the cursor can be moved by the user.

Are there function or libraries for C that'll provide the same functionallity?

Yes, of course.

digital man

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Jagossel wrote:

I am trying to write a program using FreeBASIC and I hit a limitation that causes me to consider another langauge to get past said FreeBASIC limitation. The program that I'm writing is a DOS program and a side project. At the moment
I have two options available: C++ (either DJGPP or Open Watcom) or Free Pascal.

Any recommendations for someone who's used to BASIC in DOS? I have no plans of
using graphics, the program is only going to be in text mode only.

If you don't need a compiled end product you could use PERL which is easy to use
and has tons of modules to allow you to write portable code. PERL will handle all
the memory management for you and will probably be a shorter learning curve than
using C or C++.

I found PERL very quick to learn and easy to use...it's probably what stopped me
learning C :)

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Re: Re: Language to Transition To From BASIC?
By: Nelgin to Jagossel on Sat Jul 21 2018 02:56 am

If you don't need a compiled end product you could use PERL which is easy to use and has tons of modules to allow you to write portable code. PERL will handle all the memory management for you and will probably be a shorter learning curve than using C or C++.

I found PERL very quick to learn and easy to use...it's probably what stopped me learning C :)

Perl tends to be a lot easier to write than it is to read. These days I might prefer Python over Perl (and in fact, I've heard of Python being used a lot these days to teach progrmaming).

Nightfox

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Nightfox wrote:

Re: Re: Language to Transition To From BASIC?
By: Nelgin to Jagossel on Sat Jul 21 2018 02:56 am

If you don't need a compiled end product you could use PERL which is easy
to use and has tons of modules to allow you to write portable code. PERL will handle all the memory management for you and will probably be a shorter learning curve than using C or C++.

I found PERL very quick to learn and easy to use...it's probably what stopped me learning C :)

Perl tends to be a lot easier to write than it is to read. These days I might
prefer Python over Perl (and in fact, I've heard of Python being used a lot these days to teach progrmaming).

Yup, Python is another option. Again, something I don't use because I don't need it. I can do most of the things I need in shell scripts. For those that deal with a lot of text files and manipulating them one way or another, or
for something regular expression heavy, I use PERL. Even php has a perl
regular expression library. In Python 2.5 the regex module was removed, which contained Emacs type pattern matching. It now uses re which is privdes
PERL like patching. For regex, you really can't beat PERL.

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Re: Re: Language to Transition To From BASIC?
By: Nightfox to Nelgin on Sat Jul 21 2018 20:31:40

I strongly reccommend and use Perl myself. Very good skill to have...

Marisa
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Re: Re: Language to Transition To From BASIC?
By: Nelgin to Nightfox on Sun Jul 22 2018 03:25 am

Yup, Python is another option. Again, something I don't use because I don't need it. I can do most of the things I need in shell scripts. For those that deal with a lot of text files and manipulating them one way or another, or for something regular expression heavy, I use PERL. Even php has a perl regular expression library. In Python 2.5 the regex module was removed, which contained Emacs type pattern matching. It now uses re which is privdes PERL like patching. For regex, you really can't beat PERL.

Yeah, the regex library in Python is pretty good. I've used regular expressions in JavaScript also, and I think it's fairly decent in JavaScript too.

Nightfox

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Re: Re: Language to Transition To From BASIC?
By: Nightfox to Nelgin on Mon Jul 23 2018 09:11 am

I would agree with Python as a good choice. Especially comming from BASIC. If our not real familiar with the C style programming languages I think you would pick up Python rather quickly.

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Re: Re: Language to Transition To From BASIC?
By: Clifra Jones to Nightfox on Tue Jul 24 2018 01:47 pm

I would agree with Python as a good choice. Especially comming from BASIC. If our not real familiar with the C style programming languages I think you would pick up Python rather quickly.

I've done more with C-style languages, and I found Python fairly easy to learn.

Nightfox

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Re: Re: Language to Transition To From BASIC?
By: Nightfox to Clifra Jones on Tue Jul 24 2018 12:58 pm

I've done more with C-style languages, and I found Python fairly easy to learn.

Nightfox

I cut my teeth on BASIC, VB.6, VB.NET. I kind of struggled with the C style languages until PowerShell became and integral part of my job. Now I find I can learn these languages much easier. I am currently learning/developing apps in Node-JS MEAN Stack and I really like it. I find I am much more productive than with the .NET languages. The fact that .NET wants to hide everything behind web objects made it more difficult to debug. I was more productive back in the old school ASP days. I feel I am back to that level of productivity with NODE.

Python, like PowerShell is just great if you need to get something automated and get it done FAST!

Clifra Jones
Sysop
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Re: Language to Transition To
By: Jagossel to Dreamer on Thu Jul 05 2018 08:04 am

However, I tried to look into using Free PASCAL, it doesn't work in Magic DOSBox; I might have to recreate a FreeDOS VM on my phone with Limbo and see

Free PASCAL will work there. I may try to see if I can find a better DOS version of Free PASCAL and try again.

If you want to use DOS, try this: http://www.retroarchive.org/turbo/ult-trbo.zip - it's a package I built last year that's got Borland Pascal 7.1, a speed-fixed CRT unit and a ton of TurboPower 3rd party stuff. Just unpack, set the search paths and go.

g.

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Re: Re: Language to Transition To From BASIC?
By: Nightfox to Clifra Jones on Tue Jul 24 2018 12:58 pm

I've done more with C-style languages, and I found Python fairly easy to learn.

Nightfox

Python, like PowerShell is just great if you need to get something automated and get it done FAST!

I agree with you both. Python is a really good language to start with. Many colleges and universities are using it to teach everything from basic programming to AI and deep learning. For anyone starting, use python 3.7. There've been a lot of speed improvements and some syntax changes since 3.6. 2.7
has an EOL in 2020, so it's best to just stay away from it.

-Fireball

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C is king. I recommend it highly.

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Idk what terminal you using all I know is how to operate vt100 terminals. From the way I use it I don't have helper functions but remember the codes needed to be sent to stdout for the terminal (a vt100 one) to interpret. I could use a library that held these codes and did such printing for me but eh.

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Tristan B. Kildaire (Deavmi)

Email: deavmi@ewbbs.synchro.net; deavmi@kk4qbn.synchro.net

+==========+

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Also as someone learning C and also x86 as a product of that it really makes you learn a lot.

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Tristan B. Kildaire (Deavmi)

Email: deavmi@ewbbs.synchro.net; deavmi@kk4qbn.synchro.net

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Deavmi, to Jagossel...

Idk what terminal you using all I know is how to operate vt100
terminals. From the way I use it I don't have helper functions but remember the codes needed to be sent to stdout for the terminal (a
vt100 one) to interpret. I could use a library that held these codes
and did such printing for me but eh.

Deavmi! Long time, man. Welcome back!

The application that I was working in back then has already been released: Cobalt (https://github.com/jagossel/cobalt); which is my answer to
providing an open source algernative to TheDraw or ACiD. I found out that
ANSI files uses those printing characters, and so having them printing on
the screen was pointless (except for full screen view, good for taking screenshots).

At the time, I was using DOSBox on my cell phone. So, it had to be ANSI with CP437. I was able to test it on real hardware with FreeDOS and discovered issues with navigation. Those issues exist in virtualized environments of FreeDOS as well. I got two issues fix, I just need to find time to commit
the changes and push them to Github.

-jag
Code it, Script it, Automate it!

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Re: Language to Transition To From BASIC?
By: Deavmi to Deavmi on Sun Nov 18 2018 12:09 pm

Also as someone learning C and also x86 as a product of that it really makes you learn a lot.

By "x86", do you mean x86 assembly code? You would learn a lot, but unless you have a job or something where you really need to program in assembly code, you might not use it much. I had a couple of x86 assembly classes in college and have not used assembly since then. Also I tend to write a lot more code in C++ rather than C.

Nightfox

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I would agree with Python as a good choice. Especially comming from BASIC. If our not real familiar with the C style programming languages I think you would pick up Python rather quickly.

I also love Python. I found it easy to learn. I work in journalism where data journalists are often self-taught, and Python seems to be the most popular language (although many use R).

--Josh


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Re: Re: Language to Transition To From BASIC?
By: Kirkman to Clifra Jones on Tue Nov 20 2018 10:00 pm

I also love Python. I found it easy to learn. I work in journalism where data
journalists are often self-taught, and Python seems to be the most popular language (although many use R).

--Josh

Python has great documentation, a thriving ecosystem of libraries and tools, and fairly good cross-platform support. Lots of Linux distros ship it pre-installed as dependencies for Python programs too.

But as far as DOS goes, I don't think you could get it to run let alone its tools or libraries. There's a re-implementation named MicroPython that can apparently be compiled using DJGPP but as a separate interpreter you likely would need to patch or outright not be able to use existing libraries.

John.

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