| Part 1 – Personal things:
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1.
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Hello Fred,
nice that
you take the time to answer me the next questions. The community and I are very
interested to hear how things are going for ‘the man’ behind PB 
So let’s start – how do you “feel” currently, in
private life and with the situation around PB (short after release of version
5.00)? |
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Hello Andre, and hello everyone. It's always
cool to answer a few questions and brings some lights on PureBasic internals.
As you could imagine the 5.00 version was a big achievement and I'm very happy
with the results. It was a lot of work, but thanks to full time work on PB, it
has been fast to get a new version out. In private life, there are no major
hiccups and I feel well. To be honest, be really back on PB is really a
pleasant thing.
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2.
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According to the last interview you should be 35
years now – it would be nice, if you tell us something about what happened in
the last 7 years – are you married, have an own family / children(s), house,
boat, dog or cat or … now?  |
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Net yet, I'm 'only' 34 !  These last 7 years
(really??) have flown very fast and there are no much changes here: still in
Paris, no pets, no children !
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3.
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There is only one official photo (see last
interview), which should be around 10 years old. Please show us an actual one,
please please! |
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Ok, ok.
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4.
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PB is an important part of your life. How do you
manage the “balance” between such a time-consuming project and the regular life
(job, family, …)? |
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For now, I don't have a family, so things are
much easier to handle when you don't have strong constraints. I guess there is
nothing special about it: I work on PB the best when I’m motivated. Sometimes
you need to get some fresh air so I either take a long break or find a job in a
company (talk about fresh air!). It allows keeping in touch with actual
technologies and obviously gives new ideas for PB.
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5.
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Do you have any hobbies or sports besides
computer programming? |
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I'm no sport addict, but I do like tennis
(especially watching, as I don't practice anymore on a regular basis), play
guitar and video games.
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6.
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You switched between jobs in the computer
industry (doing PB stuff as a side-job) and full-time developing PB several
times now – actually with PB as daily job since April 2012. What were the
reasons for this (are you able to live alone from selling PB licences?) and
what is more fun? |
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There were two reasons for getting a daily job:
take a break from PB (while still doing some dev here and here) and get money.
PB incomes aren't very high, but I can live with it. This time, I would like to
stay at fulltime as long as possible, so I'm trying to find ways to always be
in the good coding mood. For example, I only work on PB during the week, as if
it was a daily job. I wake up early (understand 10AM ) to have a full work
day and stop around 7PM. Unlike my previous fulltime sessions, I don't try to
rush and code the night. If it’s not finished, I will finish it tomorrow.
That's means I get the evening and WE for other things than PB and I hope it
will help to stay sharp and focused on dev. This is indeed definitely more fun
to work on PB, as we try to make it better through so many different ways (new
commands, compiler improvement, new platforms etc.) than you can't be bored
(ok, I admit than bug fixing and doc sessions aren’t that fun but it's equally
important).
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7.
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Which jobs and maybe also other projects beside
PB did you do during the last years? |
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I worked 2 years as a printer controller
developer in a big company named Océ (http://www.oce.com) – an interesting experience, as I
didn't know anything on the topic. The last job was during one year and half in
a french bank named 'Societe Generale' as a developer on front-end trading
tools. Again a lot learnt about stock markets ! As side personal projects, I
have tried to do an online card gaming platform (3 months of dev in 2009 with a
friend, we used flash as client and a java server to handle the communication
and game logic). It was working but unfortunately we never reached the critical
mass to make it work. Ha, and a little Windows Phone 8 app, 2 year ago called
BlockBouncer.
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8.
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How do you live with the enormous expected
attitudes of the PB community (new features, bug-fixes, …) and sometimes
unfriendly comments of single users? |
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That's an interesting question. As long the
criticize is true and objective, I don't have any problem with it. Obviously,
if you have feedbacks (even negatives), it means than people are actually using
your software and want it better. That said, when I read some untrue
speculations and/or biased comments, it gets on my nerves. Most of the time, I
contact the user in private and ask for explanations. It's never nice to read a
bad comment concerning only one feature when you have worked on many.
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9.
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Do you still have the 'mojo' (motivation) to
develop PureBasic or sometimes it’s so hard that you want to give up? |
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Up to now, I never wanted to give up. Sometimes
the motivation is lower, but it often get back after a few time. That's why
it's so important to work on different things, to avoid the routine. Lastly, I
got quite some fun seeing the 3D engine improvements and new examples, as it
was a domain where PB was weak.
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10.
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When you're programming, do you like to be in a
quiet place, or with some 'sounds' around? Maybe some music, if yes what kind
of music do you like to hear? |
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I usually put some music in the background,
often movie/trailers style like Hans Zimmer, Two Step From Hell, AudioMachine.
Having no voices in these music allows to concentrate better.
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11.
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What are your most favourite songs / artists –
this year, but also in generally? |
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It's some french groups so you won't know them,
but if you want some names, here we go: Olivier Trevidy, Eiffel, Noir désir,
Debout sur le zinc.
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12.
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And do you have any favourite movies and books
too, maybe some favourite sports to watch? |
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My all time movie is Rock, thanks to Michael
Bay and the wonderful Hans Zimmer soundtrack. Second is probably Usual
Suspects. After it's complicated, as I like a lot of movies. As a book, I just
finished all Game of Thrones (waiting the next one, Georges RR Martin!), which
is an amazing epic scale story. I mainly watch Tennis, and sometimes Football
with friends.
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13.
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If I remember right, you enjoy to travel and to
make vacations in foreign countries. What were your last trips and what are you
planning next? |
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You remember right! Last year I was in Bali
(Indonesia) and early this year was in Vegas for a friend bachelor party (No
comment !!). The next stop will be probably Australia, still to be confirmed.
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14.
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Are you political interested? If yes, what do
you think about the current situation in France, but also in Europe / the
World? |
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No, I'm not politically interested. About the
global France situation, according to the newspapers we can't see it does look
very bright, the same for Europe, and guess what, the same for the rest of the
world. It's just the whole thing (understand the global economy based on
markets), which is broken.
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15.
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As we are short before: Where will you celebrate
Christmas and the New Year? Are there any special traditions to you and/or your
family? |
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Yes, I will celebrate Christmas with my family
in Strasbourg, like every year :). The tradition is to give a gift to every
family member, so we have quite some to unwrap! About New Year party, it will
be in Paris with friends.
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Part 2 – Development and current situation of
PureBasic and it’s community: |
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1.
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Please tell us some more about the current PB
team. Who is actually involved in developing and support of PB, and what things
are doing each one of them? How is the collaboration between you and the team
members (humanly and practically)? |
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The current team is composed of the following
people:
- Timo
(Fr34k) who has now a daily job but still doing some code here and here. He
mainly works on the libraries, debugger and IDE
- Comtois
who has done almost all the new 3D related features found in the last PB
version.
- Gatean
(Polo) who has kindly integrated his nice Form Designer in the PureBasic
package, and maintain it.
- G-Rom
who do some additional 3D coding
- André
(you) who does the German support and documentation
- Mesa
who do the French documentation since 5.00 (and has improved it a lot)
- Me
We work
trough several channels. With Comtois and G-Rom, it's only trough the french
forum. With Gatean, it was on IRC first and then Gmail/Gtalk. Mesa is trough
private messages on the french forum and André is with emails. I only meet in
real life Timo and Andre, so yes we can work on a same product without having
real meeting
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2.
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And how do you motivate fr34k or Polo for doing
the 'free coding work’? (okay, freak only needs pizza as far as I know ) |
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To be honest, I don't have anything to do, as
they are already motivated! That's the way the contributors work with PB, they
do the things they want to. I never tell what to do, they come with the ideas,
we debate and if I think it can be a great addition to PB, they start working
on it. In addition, they get access to the sources, and indeed to my support.
When you contribute to a project like PureBasic you learn a lot of new things
and new way to handle programming, and I believe they are gaining a lot of
experience. You have to follow the rules (especially coding rules), use the
right tools, and understand the PB philosophy. They are all a great help which
makes PureBasic a lot better than it would be if I did it alone, that's for
sure. In the end it's the users, which benefit of their hard work. Big thanks
to them. |
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3.
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When did you have the idea to build a programming
language on top of an ASM / C compiler and 3rd party tools? (It seems an obvious and common choice today,
but at the time of birth of PB for Multi OS (2000/2001) it was not…) |
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This was the natural choice for me, as I was an
assembler programmer at the time being. To be exact, the first PB compiler was
coded in BASIC (BlitzBasic on Amiga) and was working good enough, but when I
wanted to move to Windows, I got a 'small' issue: BlitzBasic was Amiga only. So
I began to port the compiler to C, having learning than using a single platform
language makes ports impossible. That's why now the compiler is in C. You may
think than the lesson what learned, right ? In fact no, the first Windows
version have all the libraries coded in assembly. And guess what, when trying
to make a Linux port no library were working. Again, we migrated the assembly
code for portability (and easy of maintenance as well) and since then we use C
as a central tool for every core tools. For other tools, we use PureBasic
(DocMaker, UnitTest, IDE etc.). |
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4.
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What were your main goals, when you started
creating PureBasic? And what are they today? |
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The original goal was to do a modern version of
BlitzBasic (the old Amiga version, not the PC version). It has now evolved so
much than we have forgotten this goal since a long time and PB is growing by
itself to an easy-to-use-but-powerful-all-in-one language. Our main goal today
is to provide a stable and productive environment to get the job done quickly.
It's designed for every kind of coders, from beginner to old timer who are
bored to setup a big compiling environment only to play a bit with some
libraries. |
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5.
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How many lines of code is PureBasic up-to now? |
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If you count the code from various tools used by
PureBasic, it's over 1 million lines. It's big for sure, we have more than 1500
commands on 3 different platforms. More than 14 years of development. |
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6.
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What operating system flavours do you personally
use for working on PureBasic? Which of the OS do you enjoy most? |
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My daily OS is Windows. It's simply the OS I'm
the most productive and used to, so it's my main development environment.
Visual Studio has always been a great tool to produce and debug code. I can't
say I 'enjoy' Windows, I just use it and like it. |
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7.
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According to your previous interview in 2005 the
number of registered PB users was around 5000. What's the number today? Does
the focus of the user base still is in Germany, and how the users are currently
spread over the world? |
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It's around 8.000. It's now all around the
world, with a bit more in Germany, yes. |
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8.
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Wouldn’t it be good to “officially” publish this
information on the PureBasic.com website? Once for advertising (PB isn’t only a
small language with some hundreds of users), but also for third party developers,
which want to develop add-ons for PureBasic, but want to know how many
potential costumers they have... |
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You don't usually publish such information on
your website. Also this number isn't very relevant, as the registered number is
very different of active user numbers, which doesn't include illegal use and
users who don't use PB anymore. |
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9.
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Is PB still working from an economic point of
view? Do you get enough money from licensing / donations and (especially as
it’s your daily job again) is financial independence achievable working solely
on PB? |
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As said before, it's fine with me. I don't get
as much money than a daily job, but it's enough for me, considering than I do
what I really want to do, and it comes at a price. What is encouraging is it's
very stable from year to year, so I'm happy than PB still attract more people
every year. |
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10.
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Do you also doing 'contract work' with PureBasic
for companies? If so, how can we hire you? |
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Not officially. I already have patched a lib or
two in hurry for a company who needed a quick fix and got money from it, but
it's not the rules. That said I'm open to include a feature someone would need
against a financial reward. The feature would need to be compatible with PB
command-set, so we can redistribute it. We won't make company specific
development, which couldn't be integrated in the official package. Feel free to
contact me if you have such needs. |
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11.
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Is there anything that could bring you (and the
PB team) an extra income? How about a little “PB-Market” (organized by the PB
team), to which 3rd party developers can contribute PB-related stuff (e.g.
libraries and sources)? I could imagine people would spend some money for a
good Printer-Lib, a PDF-Lib, etc. Income can be shared between the developers
and the PB group… |
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The forums are the central place for this, you
can advertise your products here. While the PB-Market idea is interesting, I
don't think I will go that way as it will ask a lot of work in
development/maintenance, including contracts between all publishers etc. It's
not a small thing to setup. |
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12.
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Comparing PureBasic to other BASIC languages –
what are the main points, with which PB stands out compared to them?
- fastest
compiled BASIC
- smallest
compiled executables
- more
O/S (operating system) and uP (microprocessor) support than any BASIC
- largest
built-in library support
- other?
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To me, the strongest point of PureBasic is the
included command-set, with clear, comprehensive naming and use. Once you have
understood how to use a library, you can easily use them all. You don't have to
bother about internal implementation, it just work. All features are important:
a good IDE is essential, a good debugger, a good speed quality as well, strong
native language features like list, map, array, complex structure, macro,
unicode etc. What's make PB a great overall tool is because there are a lot of
covered subjects. |
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13.
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What are the biggest strengths and biggest
weaknesses of PB from your perspective? |
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Biggest strengths:
- Multi-OS
(Window, Linux, OS X)
- 1500+
commands (coherent naming and code style)
-
Modern (IDE, Debugger, Fast, 64 bit)
- Still
in very active development, including core language features
Biggest weaknesses:
- Not
a mainstream language unlike C/C++/Java and the like
- Heavily depends on a small number of developers
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14.
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Will/can you work on some of named weak points? |
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Well, it's difficult to address the main
weakness, but who knows what the future will bring ? |
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15.
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What do you see as your (PB’s) most competitors?
How do you see them compared to PB? |
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From what I can see, I'm not impressed very much
by the competition. In fact, I even have the feeling there is less and less
competitive alternative language like PureBasic. In 2012, your language has to
provide native 64-bit support, Unicode, IDE, Debugger, Windows, Linux, OS X and
much more. If it doesn't, you will hit a wall very quickly or loose market
shares. In the PB competitors, I don't know of a language with all these
features except may be RealBasic (I'm not talking of mainstream languages here). |
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16.
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What do you say to people, which don’t believe,
that large projects can be done with PB because of missing feature ‘xyz’? |
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There is no need to answer this question, as
(very) large projects exist in PB since a while. The core language is versatile
and fast enough to handle big projects without any issues. Our biggest internal
PB project is the IDE, which is actually 123 000 lines, but it's rather small
compared to other projects than users sent me. |
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17.
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Can you tell us some examples you know of such
big projects? |
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Well no, I can't communicate this without their
approvals. |
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18.
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In which cases the "main languages"
like C, C++, Java, C#, etc. are the better choice for the programmer? |
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These are professional languages, it requires
solid skills and understanding of programming. Now, if you aim to be a
professional coder, it would indeed more appropriate to learn one of these
mainstream language or you won't find a job ! |
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19.
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About what in the entire PB package you are most
proud of, and with which you are less satisfied? |
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From a user point of view: I'm proud of having
a complex and robust compiler. It's an achievement, as you have to deal with
many different user inputs. Also the last 3D progress is very nice and I like
that.
From an internal point view: the compiler code is now
very old and difficult to maintain, I’m somewhat ashamed when I read some
parts. But you know the n°1 rule: never change a working code. |
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20.
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What are your favourite 3rd party extensions for
PureBasic (tools, libraries, …)? |
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Good question, I don't use any |
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21.
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Is there anything in PB’s history, which you
would make different today? |
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A lot of things. But that's part of experience,
so you can't really made history again. Now if I had to start such a project
now, there are a lot of chances than internals would be very different.
Probably outputting LLVM code instead of assembler for example. I wouldn't have
spent time on PowerPC version of PB. I would have avoided assembly for
libraries. And so on... |
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22.
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We are switching to the tiresome topic
“bug-fixing”:
1. Have you
ever fixed a bug only to have it reappear in a later version?
2. Do you
add bug fixes to a "test suite" to prevent them reoccurring?
3. Could the community create a formalized test suite
for pre-beta launches? |
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- Yes,
on the numerous bugs we fixed we had this case several time.
- When
it's possible yes. The compiler has a lot of unit tests and every time a
bug is fixed, a test is added to validate the fix. For a library bug, it
depends of the library. For a GUI/Screen/Sprite bug, we don't have
unittest as it's complex to test GUI rendering. The command can return the
correct result but don't display the right thing. For other libraries like
string, cipher, etc. we have a test suite as well (run by PureUnit, in all
possible modes – Unicode-Thread etc.).
- Do
you mean access to the test suite ? Well we could imagine it.
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23.
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Assuming you're doing a release-test, how does
it look like before releasing a new version of PureBasic? How does it look and how many time does it
need, to build updated PB packages for each supported OS? |
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The unittests are run during the build for every
platform. If one test fails, then the build is aborted and no package is
created. Sometimes we need to re-launch the build script several times after
fixing some bugs depending of the OS. All in all, it goes smoothly, and we need
about 1 hour to build the 7 different packages (Windows32/64, Linux32/64, OS
X/32/64/PPC) if all tests are successful (we use virtual machines, so we can build
all OS in parallel). |
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24.
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How do you schedule the work on different
libraries? Some people are crying at each release of a new version, because
OGRE was the only thing that has been touched or that has not been touched. |
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It depends – sometimes we work on big things,
which don’t fit the deadline so we postpone them for the next version. About
OGRE, the work is done in parallel by Comtois and G-Rom, so I just monitor and
wrap the new commands (and also updating the OGRE core libraries). So when they
are ready I wrap all the new commands and publish them. That's why it can be
huge. I also have a big TODO list where I note all the things, which would be
good to add. Then I estimate the time to do such or such feature and start the
work. |
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25.
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Ok, we come to the feature requests:
Many people seem to miss the possibility of multi-line
statements (line continuation in the source) since years. Is there a technical
reason for not implementing this? |
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Here is a scoop: it will be in the next version.
It wasn't as easy as people think. The PB parser is somehow complex and you
can't just add such feature like that. The most important to me was to avoid a
compilation time degradation, so when I recently found a good way to do it, I
did it with no speed penalty. |
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26.
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Some people are complaining about feature
requests, which are made already years ago and are renewed from time to time,
and because of a missing (positive) answer they feel ignored by you… What do
you say to them – are some things to hard to implement, are there other
reasons…? |
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What I can say is we are reading all the
features requests. We don't answer because we don't want the users to have
expectation on a feature when we have no time frame about the implementation.
Another scoop for you: the next 5.10 release will be a special “Granted wishes
release” ! The beta will be out for Christmas, as a gift for the community |
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27.
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Which criteria do you follow to decide if a
feature request will be implemented or not? |
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There are several points to look:
- Is
it fitting the PB philosophy ?
- Is
it useful for more than one user ?
- Is
it worth the new command ? (If it can be done with a combination of 2 other
commands, it is really worth it?)
- Is it possible on the legal scheme ? (i.e.: we got
some native mysql request, we would like to add it but the license forbids it.
Same for GIF at time, now it's more or less an outdated format)
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28.
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I can imagine that’s hard to satisfy all user
wishes and requests – especially the totally different interests of application
and game/3D programmers. How do you handle these opposites while further
developing PB? |
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I do it by reading the feature requests, with
the team developer feedback and my personal experience. We always try to reach
a usable state quickly in all domains than PB support. If a missing
functionality is really hurting the library use, chances are high it will be
implemented soon. For new library, we try to follow the standards, like XML,
AES, JPG etc. |
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29.
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Wouldn’t it be a good idea, to let the user vote
for the most important features they would like to see (natively build) into
PB? |
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The fact is it would put pressure on us, and I
don't want that. The PureBasic development has to remain fun and it won't be
anymore if we have to implement everything the users want (and it will be
quickly a big mess). |
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30.
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About the PB community:
The PB
forums are an excellent place to discuss about PB development, to report bugs
and feature requests, and of course to help each other by sharing tips and very
useful code examples. So this is one of the real benefits of PB. Furthermore
there is the “PureBasic Team Blog”.
What do you think about more “Web2.0” platforms, like
a PureBasic FaceBook or Twitter account, which could help to “spread the word”
and so extend the PB community / sell more licences? |
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To be honest, I personally don't like Facebook.
I don't think it will bring anything for a programming language, but I stand to
be corrected. If you think it could help, why not. |
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31.
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I’m not sure (as I’m no FaceBook user too), but
I think it can be worth the effort. But maybe that’s a topic, which could be
discussed in the PB forum? |
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Why not. |
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32.
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Why do you leave discussions of other languages
in the forums? Don’t you see that as a problem and/or as advertising for other
languages? Other forum moderators would delete such threads immediately…. You
doesn’t seem concerned by it, or…? |
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I like competition, I'm not afraid of it. If
someone wants to share his experience with another language, why should we
delete the thread? We are on a PureBasic forum so chances are high than the
reader has already registered PureBasic. And it can help anyway, PureBasic
isn't perfect for any tasks (even if we try hard to aim to that  ). |
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33.
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Do you know about any (local) PB communities,
and what the PB team think about this? |
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No, I'm not aware of local PB communities. It
would be good indeed. |
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34.
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Will there be a (larger) “PureBasic User
Meeting” one day? |
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I don't know, such meeting is hard to setup ! |
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35.
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Are there any “PureBasic promotional items”
available, like a PB T-Shirt we saw years ago? Where can people buy it? And if
not through yourself, would you give a licence to a third party to produce and
deliver such items? |
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It's not available, the t-shirt was done on
demand :). I don't know if there is a demand for such items, if yes I will see
what can be done. |
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36.
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The website (purebasic.com) still looks
quite simple. Competitors seem to do a better job on marketing &
advertising (and probably selling) their product. This problem exists since
ages. Any chance to increase quality of website purebasic.com? |
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It's a complex matter as the whole site has a
lot of code within, mixed with the HTML rendering making any lifting very
complex. If someone is motivated to work on it, why not, but I don't have the
graphical skill to do it. |
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37.
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If someone wants to support the further PB
development – what are the possibilities? |
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You can help to spread the word, for example by
telling it's done in PB in your about box, or in your documentation. There is
also a donation button in your online account ! |
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38.
|
Ok, maybe offering some official ‘Done with
PureBasic’ logos on the PB.com website would be a good idea then? How about
little competitions for such things like most exciting logos, demo programs (with
source), etc.? If needed, you can contribute some prices for the best
submissions, and will be able to use them… |
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That's a good idea. |
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39.
|
What do you think about “cheaper licence fees”
for students, schools, etc.? This could “pave the way” into computer
programming – especially for younger people.
Let’s say there is a school with a computer room and
20 PC – they will neither pay for each student, and hardly for any PC. Can they
contact the support for a special offer? |
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Yes, as I got some demands, I will do a special
price for school/company on the PureBasic ordering form. |
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|
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| Part 3 – the future of PureBasic: |
|
1.
|
There are currently PureBasic versions for
classic Windows, Linux, and MacOS actively supported. That's quite
impressive and in the last interview you already said there are no plans to
support further platforms.
Still, the
already supported platforms change continuously. So let's concentrate on that:
- Windows
8 is already released with support for 'Modern UI apps' and it is available for
desktop, tablets and phones with added support for ARM processors and new APIs
(e.g. DirectX11).
- There
are rumours Apple is exploring to change the processor platform again, maybe to
ARM based processors for desktop, phone, and tablets. Similar to Microsoft with
Windows and Windows devices.
- More
and more devices are touch-enabled. New displays/monitors for desktop
computers, and "touch mice" (classic mouse with added touch input).
How do you generally think about such innovations and
changes? |
|
|
I think than your still can't work seriously
with touch based computer, so for now there is no so much changes. Windows 8
has introduced Modern UI, which will complicate a lot the design of
applications, as there is no Modern UI toolkit (the only thing I found is a
Photoshop template, seriously ?). You have to create all your buttons, list
from scratch with a paint tool, this is unbelievable. Actually, you can do you
own Modern UI app with CanvasGadget(), it will be the same. About ARM, it's
mainly for phone tablet. If Apple chooses ARM for its mainstream computer, I
guess we will have to add a new backend ! |
|
2.
|
Do you see PureBasic support some of the big
changes in the future, or do you want PB for developing classic
Windows/MacOS/Linux desktop programs only, for x86/x64 compatible processors? |
|
|
We will follow the trend, but for now it is
unclear for me, so we will focus on what we do best: desktop development. |
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3.
|
The Mobile Market is still growing, more and
more people are using their Smartphone’s and Tablet's for doing things in and
with the internet. One competitor (Basic4Android) has a great user-base, but is
lacking in game-development and iOS. Others (AppGameKit, BasicGL,
Monkey) can do games, but don’t have enough possibilities to create
powerful applications.
Any chance that PureBasic will support the mobile
market, e.g. simplified command-set for Android/iOS in a separate “PureBasic
Mobile” version? I can imagine for such a “beast” people would pay for an extra
licence… |
|
|
I think it could be a mobile market support, but
as you said there is not too much in common between desktop OS and mobile one.
The apps are often very small, and designed especially for 'small' (in size,
not resolution) touch screens. So basically it would be only core libraries,
and may be game libraries. All the GUI part will be missing. Another issue is
Android, being a mix of Java and native calls. I don't know how we could
support this easily. |
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4.
|
If you consider to support further OS and/or
processor types, which have the best chances to be realized? (Windows RT,
Android, iOS, ARM, other…?)
And which are a "no way", because of
technical reasons, too much effort, or you just don't want to? |
|
|
All these are 'new' platforms, which needs a lot
of dedicated time. Apple always change its technology, so for software like
PureBasic, it's hard to follow (remember, Carbon is dead, PowerPC as well, the
license which had forbidden use of any third programming tool (!)). If it was a
mass market, we would probably do it, but as it stands, PureBasic mobile would
be used maybe by a few hundred of people, which is definitely not worth it. |
|
5.
|
Perhaps a LLVM to convert to different platforms
would be a good idea? |
|
|
Yes, I follow LLVM since a while and it would be
no surprise if we decide to add a backend for it (instead of raw ARM one for
example). |
|
6.
|
Instead of compiling only to ASM, could there be
byte-code generated for java virtual machines, enabling web development from a
unified syntax? |
|
|
I don't think generating Java bytecode is a good
idea, because java on client is almost dead. Nobody has an updated java client,
it's a whole mess. But it could be interesting to generate JavaScript for web
development. This would even enable small mobile app (HTML5 based). |
|
7.
|
Fred, what are your current plans regarding the
Visual Designer? We have seen that a new one emerged and there were some
rumours that it will be ultimately integrated in the IDE as a unified solution.
Will this happen anytime soon? |
|
|
Another scoop: it will be integrated for the
next version. |
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8.
|
Some of the existing libraries are a little
'behind'. For example the email and FTP functions do not support SSL
connections or even authentication. Regular Expressions support seems limited.
Are there any plans to enhance this? |
|
|
Yes, it's planned. May be not SSL support as
it's a complex subject of its own but other improvement seems ok. |
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9.
|
The cross-platform feature (the same PB source
code can mostly be compiled on each supported platform, as long you only use
the PB command-set) is one of the real benefits of PureBasic.
But the GUI abstraction is limited and not up-to-date.
Are there any plans to enhance this by a layout engine, auto adjusted control
sizes, etc.? |
|
|
Yes, it's planned. The IDE itself use a
self-made layout library, that's why it does look good on every OS. We plan to
make this library native, it should solve layout issues. |
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10.
|
Will you add more gadgets (e.g. a grid gadget, a
ribbon trail, etc.) and support more GUI features and events for existing
gadgets (like sorting of listicons, getting mouse-click in a specific cell,
etc.) natively? |
|
|
It is constantly improving. Adding a
gridgadget() isn't as easy as it seems. Even the OS doesn't provide one. Some
gridgadget libraries are sold at much higher price than the whole PureBasic
package that gives you an idea of the work to do. Basically, the perfect grid
would be Excel, so.. Ribbon and such are doable indeed, but we try to keep the
cross-platform thing a reality. If you are using Ribbons, it won't work on
Linux/OSX (at least not natively). That's why the GUI abstraction is a bit
basic. |
|
11.
|
Currently PB supports natively two important
and useful data structures: Lists and Maps. Can we hope to have more of them in
the future?
The most
useful would probably be a BST (Binary Search Tree) and maybe an AVL-Tree. We
can write them by ourselves, but a native support would make it a lot easier to
use them with any data type, since we don't have a template mechanism like in
other languages.
Adding a new data structure every now and then would
be great in general (stack, queue, priority queues, heaps, etc.) |
|
|
It could be interesting, yes. |
|
12.
|
Do you plan the support for “real”
cross-compiling, which means we can compile the source for MacOS/Linux also on
Windows (and vice versa), compile for 64 Bit on 32 Bit systems (and vice
versa)? |
|
|
It's not planned, as we would need the whole
toolkit for each OS, which is huge (and I don't even know if Apple would
authorize the redistribution of the framework). On a side note, PB is not perfect
enough to blind compile to an other OS and expect it will work on it. It sounds
like a lot of work for a little gain. |
|
13.
|
We have seen that you went to great lengths to
keep support for older operating systems. Will this support be kept in future
versions of PureBasic or it will ultimately be dropped? |
|
|
It will be dropped at some time. As long it is
too much work for an older OS, it will be dropped. For example we stopped the
AmigaOS support since 4.0. The next version won't support OS X PowerPC anymore. |
|
14.
|
PureBasic is a procedural language with several
extensions. Will you ever support “real” OOP, or a more improved / easier
method to (optionally) use it? |
|
|
No. The command set is not OOP and it won't mix
well. Either do a procedural or OOP language, but don't try to do both. It will
end up like C++ where clean C++ sources are rare. Most are patches of C and
C++. |
|
15.
|
Beside the creation of dynamic linked libraries
(.dll, .so, .dylib according to the different OS) with PB, it’s also possible
to create own “user libraries” – thanks to ‘TailBite’. But that’s only an
‘in-official’ solution and not available for all OS, and most of all the
created libraries often work only with the PB version they are compiled with.
Do you think about adding the possibility to create PB
user libraries (sometimes called ‘modules’), to avoid the need for 3rd party
tools with all their limitations? |
|
|
For now it is not planed. We have a standard SDK
for C/C++, and it is the one to use to do PB lib. The problem with PB-created 3rd
party lib is it depends of all the internal PB commands. So if we internally
change one of these basic commands, all the libs will be broken. Doing it in
C/C++ reduces this problem as you usually only depends of the 'Object' lib,
which is stable and not subject to change (at least from an API point). |
|
16.
|
It’s possible to extend the PureBasic SDK with
further information’s (e.g. documentation about internal structures, functions,
…) to ease the creation of extension libraries for 3rd party developers? |
|
|
Well, you only need to know about the object
published in the SDK (ImagePlugin, SoundPlugin, Object, PureLibary). All other
info’s are internal to each lib and subject to changes, so it is not a good
idea to make these structures public.
|
|
17.
|
After all that questions about OS / processor
support and specific topics we come to a more general outlook to PureBasic’s
future:
What is your development focus for the future? Do you
plan to enhance game development functionality (3D capabilities) or more the
“professional usage” (application programming)? |
|
|
It will be a mix of both, as you probably
expected. PB isn't a game only programming tool, neither an application only
tool. The 3D side has been recently updated and it will continue like that,
until we reach a mature command-set. |
|
18.
|
What do you see happening to PB short-term (next
12 months) and medium-term (2-3 years)? |
|
|
On short term, we would like to address most of
the recurrent shortcomings of PureBasic on already available platforms. On
medium term, I would like to explore other approach for PB, but I can't tell
more as it's still in early development and it will take some time |
|
19.
|
Assuming there will be more PB versions, do you
already know what (new) direction you want for v6 and v7 or is that too far to
plan? |
|
|
Yes, I basically know what v6 will bring, but as
said I can't communicate for now on it. |
|
20.
|
We know your famous “When it’s done” statement
and that you don’t like public bug-tracking, case-management, etc.…
But what’s your current opinion about a public “PB
roadmap” or other types of regular “developer information’s” (e.g. twice a year
an outlook about what’s planned to extend or to change regarding the
command-set, the IDE, specific tools, …) for instance in the PureBasic Team
Blog? |
|
|
The fact is we did that but it didn't worked
out. When you put a functionality on your Roadmap, people are expecting it for
the next version (which is logical), but sometime we change our mind, or we
encounter unexpected problem and the feature is gone or postponed. Then people
get angry and nobody is happy.
We don't communicate our roadmap, but I don't
think it's a big problem anymore as core features are now stable and mature. It
made sense at time to know if 'unicode' or 'double' support was ever planned
because they are major features without which serious development is difficult.
It's not the case anymore, the vast majority of things we add now are
enhancements, not core features.
|
|
21.
|
There is the “Feature Request and Wish-list”
area in the (English) PB forum. There can anyone post their wishes,
suggestions, etc. – often is added “+1” by other users.
What do you
think about a real voting?
What do you think about specific invitations (of you
to the user base) to make suggestions in a certain area, for example commands
for databases, mathematical functions, graphic functions or compiler options,
IDE features, etc.? |
|
|
We could enable poll in this forum, I will see
if it is doable. Why do special invitations ? If someone feels than a lib needs
improvement he can just post in the feature request forum so anyone can comment
on it. |
|
22.
|
As PB is growing/improving more and more: Are
there any plans to raise the licence fees / introduce upgrade fees? (of course
not for already registered users ) |
|
|
These are private company decisions. I don't
like the upgrade-on-every-version scheme, so I don't do it for PureBasic. If
some people think PB is too low priced, they can send us more money, it's
always welcome ! |
|
23.
|
Shouldn’t there be a better marketing /
advertising of PureBasic, to extend user base and to secure your income for a
fulltime-job working on PB (plus maybe pay some other developers to do specific
parts on PB)?
For example the well-done PB 5.0 full version could be
given to editors of PC magazines for testing, Google Adwords could be used,
etc. |
|
|
This is a recurrent question. I have already
tried Adwords, but it didn't bring any significant sell increase (read: no increase). About marketing it's a
complex matter (at least for me) and I don't have the time to do it. On another
side, I think than PureBasic is becoming more and more popular in the
programming world, due to the fact we are around since a long time. |
|
24.
|
Are you looking forward to expand your company?
PureBasic seems predestined for dividing in several company divisions… |
|
|
Well, it would be great but the income isn’t
enough to take the risk. You would tell me than with a bigger company you would
sell more. May be. May be not. |
|
25.
|
PureBasic already had its 10th anniversary.
People of "the first hour" are getting older (most of us passed the
30 already!?), people are getting totally different interests in their life.
Do you see a "long time" future for PB, and
how does it look like? How do you motivate yourself to code for PureBasic for
such a long time? |
|
|
|
I do see a long time future to PureBasic, and I
bet it will be somewhat different to accommodate new things happening in
computers. To me, web is the platform of choice for the future so we will
probably head somewhat in that direction. |
|
26.
|
Finally, a not so serious question: When are you
touring through Europe (the world), so that PB users can invite you for a beer
at every stop? |
|
|
Haha, it's a good idea actually ! Will think
about it |
|
|
|
| The “End”: |
|
Thank you very much, Fred, for your time, for
the interesting statements and honest words.
Enjoy
Christmas and all the best for the New Year 2013!
You have the "last word" – what would you
like to say to the PureBasic community? |
| A big thanks for being there and supporting PureBasic
! It's awesome to see there are many users still around after 5 or more years
and still doing productive things with PB. Stay sharp and enjoy, we have great
plans for the future ! |
