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Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Petrarch of the VBB on July 18, 2002, 12:53:14 pm

Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: Petrarch of the VBB on July 18, 2002, 12:53:14 pm
I am now getting into programming, and after experimenting with QBasic, I wan't to make proper stuff, so where can I get Vis Basic? Is it free? Does it come with windows? Can it be downloaded? Etc.
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: Martinus on July 18, 2002, 12:57:53 pm
I did a little VB programming and depending on what you want to achieve you are either going to love it or absolutley revile it (as I did :) ).

It is pretty damn expensive and is bought as a stand alone product. What were you considering programming? I might get a better idea of wheter or not it will do the job.
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: Petrarch of the VBB on July 18, 2002, 01:01:24 pm
Well I dont know what I want to program, i just want to learn one of the languages, and VisBasic seemed as good as any.
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: vadar_1 on July 18, 2002, 01:04:57 pm
Visual Basic... is...... well: THE TOOL OF THE DEVIL!!!!

Although it is the next step after quick basic, you may want to consider C however (or pascal, i learned pascal first.... old language now)
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: Martinus on July 18, 2002, 01:06:53 pm
Nah I'm going with Kazan on this. Learn C or C++. It's very powerful, there are loads of free compliers, it can be compiled for a lot of platforms other than PC's (Gameboy Advance for instance) and best of all you will be able to edit the FS2 code. :)

There are a lot of tutorials for it too :nod:
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: Top Gun on July 18, 2002, 01:56:22 pm
Learn Perl (http://www.perl.com); the Language of the Gods. It's free too.
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: vadar_1 on July 18, 2002, 02:13:27 pm
php is just the better version of perl, and its very close to C
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: Stealth on July 18, 2002, 03:29:56 pm
ummm.... a friend of mine knows VB, i'll phone him tonight and ask him and post here...i'm not familiar with visual basic at all though...
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: Kazan on July 18, 2002, 03:37:35 pm
visual basic is not a programming language, it's a joke
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: Stealth on July 18, 2002, 06:32:54 pm
Quote
Originally posted by vadar_1
Visual Basic... is...... well: THE TOOL OF THE DEVIL!!!!


did you make that "1337" program of yours in VB or C++?
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: Kazan on July 18, 2002, 06:40:46 pm
stealth your signature hurts my eyes
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: Stealth on July 18, 2002, 06:42:46 pm
hey KaZan,

you mean the colors?  i think they look cool though... perhaps it is a bit long though... you think it's a bit long?
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: an0n on July 18, 2002, 06:43:40 pm
Use pastels. Ie, instead of #FF0000, use #FF7777
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: Stealth on July 18, 2002, 06:49:00 pm
i'll just shorten it about 11 lines :)

is this too bright?  cause if i have to then i'll change the colors...
i mean, i know it's the same colors, but it's a lot less of them, so does it help :D
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: JC Denton on July 18, 2002, 09:26:25 pm
While we're on the subject of programming languages...

What books do you reccommend for someone wanting to learn C/C++?  Keep in mind this is for someone with only minimal to zero experience with "real" programming.

And what about DirectX?  (say nothing, Kazan, absolutely nothing)  I'm wanting to try to upgrade FS2 to the DirectX 8.1 interface, but I'm a bit clueless.  I actually have a neat idea to replace the particle trails with pointsprites, but I need to figure out how to make them behave the way I want to.

Look on MSDN and there should be a demo of the pointsprite effect.  If not I can zip it up and let you all see it.

I've tried VB, and it's geared perfectly for processing data for shipping, ordering, invoicing, business stuff, but I agree that if you really want to have fun take a stab at C++.

btw, does anyone have anything on this new C# Micro$oft has in their Visual Studio .NET?  All I know is it's pronounced c sharp. :D
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: Kazan on July 18, 2002, 09:30:29 pm
don't touch C# or .NET

DX is ok since we're on windows, i'd rather you put effort into an OpenGL renderer - especially when OpenGL 1.4 drivers are available
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: JC Denton on July 18, 2002, 09:41:43 pm
There are plenty enough other people here that are better experienced with OpenGL than I'll ever be, and besides, someone's got to understand how that demon DirectX works anyways, right? ;)

So, for a complete newbie, whadda ya recommend for learning C++?  Besides a training course at a college or somthing?
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: Kazan on July 18, 2002, 09:44:16 pm
"C++ for You++" by Deitel and Dietel
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: penguin on July 18, 2002, 11:14:03 pm
Penguin's Official Guide to Every Language Worth Knowing and a few that aren't ;7

Like the King James Bible, this is not open to interpretation, as angels told me all this.The End.
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: Kamikaze on July 18, 2002, 11:19:43 pm
GO LISP!!!!!! (yea, lisp is a cool programming language!)

LISP: a symbolicly oriented language, used for AIs. Very easy at first.
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: an0n on July 18, 2002, 11:21:18 pm
*slo-mo dives*
FORTRAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
*gets up*
*slo-mo dives again*
COBOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: Kamikaze on July 18, 2002, 11:22:25 pm
Quote
Originally posted by an0n
*slo-mo dives*
FORTRAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
*gets up*
*slo-mo dives again*
COBOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


LISP is cooler for recursion than your FORTRAN! :ha: :p
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: an0n on July 18, 2002, 11:25:00 pm
Binary tape readers and punch-cards 0wn j00.
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: Stryke 9 on July 18, 2002, 11:27:40 pm
Binary!!!

1001101011011010
0010010110111000
1010101001001101
1001001100110101
1010101010110010!

Assembler 4eva. Or something.
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: penguin on July 18, 2002, 11:34:53 pm
The First Amendment
LISP, if for no other reason than Freespace SEXPs are based on it.  However, Lambda Calculus is for Computer Science academic weenies (the angels told me that too).[/list]
COBOL and FORTRAN were intentionally left off the list.  I have little experience with COBOL.  Sadly, I have had far too much experience with FORTRAN *rinses mouth*
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: an0n on July 18, 2002, 11:38:50 pm
And what about binary tape and punch-cards?!?!
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: penguin on July 18, 2002, 11:45:48 pm
Quote
Originally posted by an0n
And what about binary tape and punch-cards?!?!
Been there, done that.  I am so goddam old, it sickens me.  Trust me, CD-ROMs and broadband are better.

BTW those are media, not languages ;) You could punch your Java source onto a deck if you were into really weird ****, I guess.
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: Top Gun on July 19, 2002, 02:44:54 am
I always thought FORTRAN was a pretty good language (for number crunching jobs) althought I understand it can be needlessly hard at times. There never seems to be much documentation on it. ORA has a section on most languages but not FORTRAN.
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: WMCoolmon on July 19, 2002, 03:54:23 am
Quote
PHP Perl for people who only care about building kewl websites

Tsk, tsk, tsk...PHP is for people who want the functionality of Perl without the "You have an error somewhere. Good luck finding it" error messages :p
But, yes, it's only for websites. :(
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: Martinus on July 19, 2002, 06:30:56 am
Assembler is a good language but since I've never looked at the instruction set for x86's I can't tell you much about it on that platform.

I did code some stuff on z80's and PICs. :nod:
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: penguin on July 19, 2002, 10:30:25 am
Quote
Originally posted by Maeglamor
Assembler is a good language but since I've never looked at the instruction set for x86's I can't tell you much about it on that platform.

I did code some stuff on z80's and PICs. :nod:
The Z-80!  w00t!  The first processor I learned ASM on!  The only bummer was Zilog made their mnemonics incompatible with the Intel 8080 family.

I remember when we started using the Z-80A - twice the speed (4MHz) of the original (2MHz).  All of a sudden, our code started to fly!
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: Stealth on July 19, 2002, 01:01:56 pm
i'm not sure penguin, but isn't javascript for websites but Java for something else...
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: ZylonBane on July 19, 2002, 01:07:27 pm
An oldie but a goodie...

A GUIDE TO PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES

C
You shoot yourself in the foot.

C++
You accidentally create a dozen instances of yourself and shoot them all in the foot. Providing emergency medical care is impossible since you can't tell which are bitwise copies and which are just pointing at others and saying, "that's me, over there."

ASSEMBLY
You crash the OS and overwrite the root disk. The system administrator arrives and shoots you in the foot. After a moment of contemplation, the administrator shoots himself in the foot and then hops around the room rabidly shooting at everyone in sight.

APL
You heard a gunshot, and there's a hole in your foot, but you don't remember enough linear algebra to understand what the hell happened.

ADA
If you are dumb enough to actually use this language, the United States Department of Defense will kidnap you, stand you up in front of a firing squad, and tell the soldiers, "Shoot at his feet."

MODULA-2
After realizing that you can't actually accomplish anything in this language, you shoot yourself in the head.

PASCAL
Same as Modula-2, except the bullets are the wrong type and won't pass through the barrel.  The gun explodes.

SH, CSH
You can't remember the syntax for anything, so you spend five hours reading man pages before giving up. You then shoot the computer and switch to C.

SMALLTALK
You spend so much time playing with the graphics and windowing system that your boss shoots you in the foot, takes away your workstation, and makes you develop in COBOL on a character terminal.

HYPERCARD
Put the first bullet of gun into foot left of leg of you. Answer the result.

FORTRAN
You shoot yourself in each toe, iteratively, until you run out of toes, then read in the next foot and repeat. If you run out of bullets, you continue anyway because you have no exception processing ability.

ALGOL
You shoot yourself in the foot with a musket. The musket is esthetically fascinating, and the wound baffles the adolescent medic in the emergency room.

MOTIF
You spend days writing a UIL description of your foot, the bullet, its trajectory, and the intricate scrollwork on the ivory handles of the gun. When you finally get around to pulling the trigger, the gun jams.

COBOL
USEing a COLT45 HANDGUN, AIM gun at LEG.FOOT, THEN place ARM.HAND.FINGER on HANDGUN.TRIGGER, and SQUEEZE. THEN return HANDGUN to HOLSTER. Check whether shoelaces need to be retied.

BASIC
Shoot self in foot with a water pistol. On big systems, continue until entire lower body is waterlogged.

VISUAL BASIC
You shoot yourself in the foot, but have so much fun doing it that you don't care.

PL/I
You consume all available system resources, including all the offline bullets. The Data Processing and Payroll Department doubles its size, triples its budget, acquires four new mainframes, and drops the original one on your foot.

SNOBOL
You grab your foot with your hand, then rewrite your hand to be a bullet. The act of shooting the original foot then changes your hand/bullet into yet another foot (a left foot).

LISP
you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun...

ORACLE
ORACLE sells you a gun, a box of bullets, a holster, a cardboard mock-up of a wild-west town, and a stetson. You find the trigger, which takes 27 people to pull. ORACLE provides 26 consultants, all with holsters, cardboard mock-ups, and stetsons. The bullet doesn't leave the gun barrel and you hire four more ORACLE consultants to optimise. The bullet bounces off of your sandals. You decide to buy INGRES. Richard Donkin shoots you in the foot.

370 JCL
You send your foot down to MIS and include a 400-page document explaining exactly how you want it to be shot. Three years later, your foot comes back deep-fried.

PARADOX
Not only can you shoot yourself in the foot, your users can, too.

ACCESS
You try to point the gun at your foot, but it shoots holes in all your Borland distribution diskettes instead.

JAVA
You can shoot your foot with a standalone interpreter, but a Java applet won't let you access your foot.
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: Petrarch of the VBB on July 19, 2002, 01:34:25 pm
So most of you are suggesting C++ but Zylon, in his infinite wisdom, is suggesting not bothering at all, but just going out and shooting myself in the foot, right.

Well then, where can I get a C++ compiler? A mate of mine tried to learn C++ but couldn't find any and so lost interest, I don't want to do the same. Also, as someone else asked, are there any decen C++ books. I found the SAMS Teach Yourself (whatever) in 24Hours/21Days to be very useful, id there one for C++?
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: Martinus on July 19, 2002, 01:43:06 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Petrarch of th VBB
So most of you are suggesting C++ but Zylon, in his infinite wisdom, is suggesting not bothering at all, but just going out and shooting myself in the foot, right.

Well then, where can I get a C++ compiler? A mate of mine tried to learn C++ but couldn't find any and so lost interest, I don't want to do the same. Also, as someone else asked, are there any decen C++ books. I found the SAMS Teach Yourself (whatever) in 24Hours/21Days to be very useful, id there one for C++?


Go get yourself a copy of GCC (make sure it's the x86 version). It's free and is widely distributed. DO a search on google for it. :)
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: penguin on July 19, 2002, 02:25:38 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Maeglamor
Go get yourself a copy of GCC (make sure it's the x86 version). It's free and is widely distributed. DO a search on google for it. :)
The GCC home page is at http://gnu.org/software/gcc/ Go to the Download / binaries area.  You'll also need Cygwin or MinGW IIRC.

Zylon:
I liked the shoot in foot thing, Saw it years ago.  There was a similar one for operating systems too... :nod:

Stealth:
Java is very much used in the web... the whole Servlet thing, JSP, etc.  Not usually visible to the browser, but it does the CGI-type stuff behind the scenes.  Check out the Tomcat server by Apache -- it's one of the best web engines out there, and it's free http://jakarta.apache.org/tomcat/  There used to be a lot of hype about Java applets, but you don't hear as much about that anymore...

JavaScript is the stuff that runs in the browser context and allows useful things :rolleyes: like spam windows that pop up when you try to shut down your browser.  I don't consider JavaScript to be a real language, but I'm sure I'll get flamed for that :p
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: ZylonBane on July 19, 2002, 03:48:43 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Petrarch of th VBB
So most of you are suggesting C++ but Zylon, in his infinite wisdom, is suggesting not bothering at all, but just going out and shooting myself in the foot, right.
Sigh...  Look, it's a repost of a humor file that's been floating around since before the Internet even existed.

Between this and the responses in the "Spacecrack" thread, I'm starting to think it's Short Bus day at the HLP. :doubt:
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: YodaSean on July 19, 2002, 09:26:31 pm
If you want to try visual basic, there is a downloadable version on microsoft's website somewhere, its called the "control creation edition" or something I think, but you can only run the programs in the VB interface, you can't actually compile them.  I use Visual Basic, I really like it because I enjoy making simple directX games and utility programs and don't have the time to learn c++, which is more complicated and isn't going to make my simple programs run any better :p
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: Stealth on July 19, 2002, 09:27:24 pm
"Personally, I think Unix shell programming has perl/python/java/C++ all beat. Just look at the following chain of Unix commands:  
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; umount; sleep"

    - Kyle
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: Stryke 9 on July 19, 2002, 09:29:51 pm
Aw geez, you and CP. :p
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: Stealth on July 19, 2002, 10:22:51 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Stryke 9
Aw geez, you and CP. :p


eh?  what about me and CP!?

what did i do!?
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: Martinus on July 20, 2002, 08:09:23 am
Quote
Originally posted by YodaSean
If you want to try visual basic, there is a downloadable version on microsoft's website somewhere, its called the "control creation edition" or something I think, but you can only run the programs in the VB interface, you can't actually compile them.  I use Visual Basic, I really like it because I enjoy making simple directX games and utility programs and don't have the time to learn c++, which is more complicated and isn't going to make my simple programs run any better :p


This is what I'm talking about, if it does the job you might just love it. Otherwise it's a royal waste of time and effort.
C is the most powerful, flexible language that I'm aware of. There are thriving communities out there that will be able to answer any questions you can throw at them and there are tons of tutorials. BTW some books on C++ that I've read actually advise against learning C first and just jump into C++. I dunno enough about it though. Penguin, Kazan? What do you think?

BTW Penguin 4MHz!?! :jaw: *hands shake uncontrollably at the sheer power* :D
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: Kazan on July 20, 2002, 10:42:07 am
C is good to know before C++

because oop and non-oop techniques have their places in all programs
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: Petrarch of the VBB on July 20, 2002, 01:28:24 pm
Anyway, today I went out and bought SAMS teach yourself C++ in 24 Hours, it comes with 2 compilers and a debugger, so that should be useful. I've read the first couple of pages, but haven't got into it properly, I've just played around with the compilers. This, however, raises further questions, about the FS2 source. I've been looking at it and want to know, is that POFVIEW that comes as part of it any good? And if so how do I compile it?
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: Kazan on July 20, 2002, 01:31:30 pm
SAMS books = teh suck
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: Petrarch of the VBB on July 20, 2002, 01:33:03 pm
In what way?
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: Kazan on July 20, 2002, 01:40:06 pm
every way
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: penguin on July 21, 2002, 10:15:13 am
meh, any book that teaches you the basics is OK.  You don't really learn until you start on a real project.

The best you can hope for is a book that doesn't give you any misinformation about "the way to do it"  That's why you should avoid MS Press books -- all the brain-damaged "hungarian notaion," and every class name starting with "C" is more obfuscating than enlightening.  (What happens if you need to change a variable's type?  Do you rename all the variables, or do you leave them with the "wrong signature"?)  But I digress...

And athough the FS2 code is in C++, it's not "really C++" -- there's very little use of classes, etc. that make C++ an OOL.  It's using the "better C" features of the language.  If you know C but not C++, you can understand 95% of the FS2 code.

BTW don't flame me for saying that :p  I say it with complete neutrality -- I'm not saying anything good nor bad about OOP.
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: Petrarch of the VBB on July 21, 2002, 02:06:19 pm
Well then, can anyone offer up any siggestions of the pofview wotsit? When I try and compile I get errors saying .h not in this directory, so I move them into that directory, and get twice as many errors! Help!
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: Martinus on July 21, 2002, 02:56:27 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Petrarch of th VBB
Well then, can anyone offer up any siggestions of the pofview wotsit? When I try and compile I get errors saying .h not in this directory, so I move them into that directory, and get twice as many errors! Help!


Are you trying to compile with GCC or the compiler that came with the SAMS book?
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: WMCoolmon on July 21, 2002, 05:33:22 pm
Which version of the source are you using? :confused:
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: Petrarch of the VBB on July 23, 2002, 01:28:12 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Maeglamor


Are you trying to compile with GCC or the compiler that came with the SAMS book?


The One that came with the book, its called Bloodhound Dev C++, or something.

Quote
WMCoolmon


Which version of the source are you using?
Quote


The one with a German unpacking thing.
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: Petrarch of the VBB on July 23, 2002, 01:29:06 pm
Ignore this, it went wrong and i cant delete it.
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: penguin on July 23, 2002, 02:11:32 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Petrarch of th VBB
Are you trying to compile with GCC or the compiler that came with the SAMS book?

The One that came with the book, its called Bloodhound Dev C++, or something.
I never heard of it... you might have more luck with something a little better supported...

Quote
Which version of the source are you using?

The one with a German unpacking thing.
I have no idea what this even means... I guess you're not using one of the versions at http://fs2source.warpcore.org then...
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: Martinus on July 23, 2002, 03:43:34 pm
Quote
Originally posted by penguin
I never heard of it... you might have more luck with something a little better supported...


I think the compilers that they give out with these books are function limited. The version I got with my C++ in 24hrs was labeled 'lite' i.e. 'sh1t'.

Use the GCC compiler, lots of material available to help you out with problems too. :nod:
Title: Visual Basic Availability
Post by: Petrarch of the VBB on July 25, 2002, 02:23:45 pm
The version of the source I have was downloaded from Stealth's page here at HLP, I don't know where he got it from.

And where can I get this GCC compiler of which you speak?