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"Phred" <ppnerkDELETETHIS@yahoo.com> wrote in message 
news:3n2ustF19ihebU2@individual.net...
> In article <430C3F30.93F156AE@optonline.net>, Lou@GoForIt.net wrote:
>>H-Man wrote:
>>I did not see any mention of PowerBasic.  There are several flavors. Check
>>their website.
>
> I've been wondering about this sort of thing lately too -- but I only
> got as far as PDS 7.1 previously.  8-)
>
> So, has anyone here had sufficient experience with the latest VB
> flavour (now .NET I guess?) compared with PowerBasic and Liberty
> Basic, to offer an informed opinion on these products one versus the
> others, please?
>
> Alternatively,  does anyone know of a reliable review comparison of
> these three which is available on the web?  (Or in a still available
> printed form.)

I doubt if you will find a review comparing the various flavors of basic.
If you want to know which one is best, it is largely a matter of opinion.

VB-6 offers several advantages. It allows development using a RAD
environment. Thus you don't spend a lot of time hand coding forms.
It also generates reasonably fast code. And finally, there are a large
number of books available for it.

On the down side, it is no longer being sold and it comes with only a
small number of native components. This means you'll have to
distribute several DLLs with your program and this can lead to
problems.

VB-NET offers an environment that is similar to VB-6. Personally,
I find the .NET WinForms designer to be a bit crude and I don't
care for the fact that there is no support for native code. .NET code
is slow - often very slow. In addition, VB.NET and VB-6 are two
different languages. It is probably just as easy to convert a VB-6
program to Delphi as to VB.NET. The sole advantage of VB.NET
is that there are a large number of books available for it.

REALbasic also offers a decent RAD environment once you get
used to the peculiarities of the text editor. It does not have very
many components with it, but can use Active-X controls. It does
not have a reputation for producing fast code. There are only a
few books available for it but there is a magazine devoted to it.

PowerBasic does not offer a RAD environment. You must either
hand code your forms or use a screen design tool. These tools
create source code for the forms. This methodology is useable
but adds a good bit of time to the process of building windows
applications. It is inherently more error prone then the methods
used by VB, REALbasic, or Delphi. PowerBasic does generate
reasonably fast code, but VB-6 is often faster. I don't know of
any books on PowerBasic other than the one published by the
vendor. PowerBasic is generally similar to MS-QuickBasic.

Liberty BASIC is similar to PowerBasic. As I recall, it uses a
run-time interpreter rather than a native code compiler. The
vendor publishes a monthly newsletter which you can download,
but there has been only one book that covered it and it is a bit
dated.

Back in the days of DOS, I used Basic, C, Modula-2, and Pascal
extensively. After checking out what was available for Windows, I
settled on Borland Delphi. From time to time I check out the other
choices, but so far it is the only system I've found that combines
a rapid development environment with the ability to generate really
fast code. (But, it is not BASIC.)

-- 
Charles Appel
http://charlesappel.home.mindspring.com/
Home of Chuck's Poker Libraries for Delphi,
Chuck's Video Poker and Chuck's Toys