[Lowfer] Basic / VB Issues

[John Davis]

Hi Ed,

Porting to Visual Basic is a bit trickier than simply importing BASIC code,
whether one chooses to use much of a GUI or not.  It is an event-driven
language.  You don't poll for user input when it's wanted and ignore it the
rest of the time, for instance.  (Well, you _can_ ignore it, but that's
perilous sometimes.)  Instead of program flow in the sense you're probably
used to writing, you identify events that must be handled...which can be
user input, Windows messages, or actions taken by code within the program or
from another program...and then write code to handle them.  It's a rather
different philosophy.

Since you're familiar with conventional BASIC, and since Microsoft isn't
doing much (read: anything) with QuickBasic these days, you might be
interested in a more modern implementation of the language anyway.  There
are even BASIC compilers that target the 32-bit console mode of Windows 95
and later.

The one I'm most fond of is PowerBasic Console Compiler
(www.powerbasic.com).  Strings and arrays are limited only by available
memory.  You have access to functions in DLLs and Windows API calls.   There
are communications libraries (Marshall Software), graphics toolkits, etc.,
available if you have a need for such.  Pretty powerful stuff.

73,
John