misc, BASIC bugs [Was: Powerbasic, Visual Basic or other?]

comp.lang.basic.misc - Other dialects and aspects of BASIC.


misc >> BASIC bugs [Was: Powerbasic, Visual Basic or other?]

by ppnerkDELETETHIS » Wed, 16 Aug 2006 18:34:39 GMT

In article <fVqEg.8385$ XXXX@XXXXX.COM >, "Michael Mattias" < XXXX@XXXXX.COM > wrote:
>"Georg" < XXXX@XXXXX.COM > wrote in message
>news: XXXX@XXXXX.COM ...
>> I have been using Powerbasic for about 15 years now and am very
>> satisfied with it.
>>
>> The development team seems to bring out versions which have no bugs and
>> I have not yet been able to find one. I also never read in the forums
>> about a bug that Powerbasic had to acknowledge.
>
>I've been using PBabout that long, too, but there ARE bugs; but they are
>few, far between and generally obscure. Pretty close to IBM in terms of
>'bug-free-ness', unless you count documentation errors/omissions, which
>increases the number.
>
>And you CAN read about known bugs in current compiler versions with
>suggested workarounds in the PowerBase Forum.

This is one of the issues I've often wondered about with "boutique"
BASICs (and even more so if they're freeware ones) -- How can one be
sure there are not fairly fundamental bugs lurking around ready to
bite, and probably when most damaging (as Murphy ensures)?

Many (most? all?) bugs are detected by users, which means that if a
version has relatively few users then bugs are likely to go unexposed
for quite a long time.

Of course, this problem is not restricted to BASIC. Any other
languages or applications with relatively few users (therefore
"boutique" versions in this context) will suffer from the same doubts
about hidden gotchas. Or am I being too pessimistic?

Cheers, Phred.

--
XXXX@XXXXX.COM

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misc >> BASIC bugs [Was: Powerbasic, Visual Basic or other?]

by news » Wed, 16 Aug 2006 19:23:07 GMT



I certainly wouldn't want to criticise 'freeware' products, some of
which can be excellent, but it's a very valid point. I have always
taken the issue of bugs in BBC BASIC very seriously indeed, and not
just because I have paying customers who might demand their money back!
Serious bugs (which I'm pleased to say are very rare) are always fixed
immediately and more minor ones in the next scheduled release.

It's for this reason that I have always made updates to the latest
version available free of charge. However old your copy of BBC BASIC
for Windows, right back to version 1.0 in the fall of 2001, you can
update it to the current version free. However many extra features
each major new release has, it is bound also to include a few bug
fixes. As I don't believe in ever charging for bug fixes, I never
charge for updates.

When comparing products you should consider this aspect as well as the
headline cost.

Richard.
http://www.rtrussell.co.uk/
To reply by email change 'news' to my forename.
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misc >> BASIC bugs [Was: Powerbasic, Visual Basic or other?]

by Gary R. Schmidt » Wed, 16 Aug 2006 21:34:26 GMT


[SNIP stuff about bugs in BASIC implementations...]

From this I assume you don't know that there were many bugs in MS BASIC
and BASCOM?

Man/most/all(?) were put there by Bill.

There is a story that someone who had run across one of these egregious
bugs, a "sort routine" that effectively did nothing, and was having a
bit of a "who'd write this sort of crap" to the others when Bill wanders
through, looks over his shoulder, and sheepishly says, "I wrote that."

The moral of this is that even commercial products have bugs, many of
which remain in the product for ever, effectively.

Some of the bugs in C compilers I've dealt with, from the likes of IBM,
HP and MS, over the decades have led to me producing some strangely set
out and #pragmatised code.

Cheers,
Gary B-)

--
______________________________________________________________________________
Armful of chairs: Something some people would not know
whether you were up them with or not
- Barry Humphries
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misc >> BASIC bugs [Was: Powerbasic, Visual Basic or other?]

by brooks.tim.a » Fri, 01 Sep 2006 21:12:18 GMT


What about realbasic? I seen in there show case a 3d fight sim that was
build on there software, that might worth a try, and of course it
compiles on Window, Mac, and Linux so that would be a added bonus.
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