🚀 go-pugleaf

Inline

On Thu, 25 Aug 2005 12:24:48 GMT, ppnerkDELETETHIS@yahoo.com (Phred)
wrote:

<snip>

>>If I'm correct in guessing that you have done no Windows programming
>>then I reckon your biggest problem is going to be getting a handle on
>>how Windows works

>Yeah.  You guess correctly.  And that could be a serious problem. :-(
>Mind you, if you don't actually *need* to write Windows programs, but 
>just want to stick to more traditional BASIC stuff, maybe that can 
>still be done okay?  

You can do Console mode stuff 
- Delphi is good at that
I must confess, that after PDS 7.1 (and the extra things I used like
direct screen access) I would not want to write Console Mode apps
using .. the console

>(But then, perhaps I simply stay with PDS7.1?  My 
>concern there would be whether it will remain compatible with Win XP 
>and future such OSes.  At a guess, some of it may already be broken?)

I have found one very esoteric bug in the XP emulation of DOS, it is
so esoteric that I'm probably the only person that has found it
- FYI it is to do with using FCBs to rename volume labels

Old OSes will stick around
- people will happily run pure MSDOS for a favourite application
- especially if it is business critical

You would probably be better off getting a a copy of VB and
experimenting, to see how you get on
- I can give you some interesting tips for cheating Windows

After a bit, you'll probably get hacked off working round the VB
Nanny's skirts - at that point you'll enjoy Delphi.

<snip>

>Are there "flavours" of Delphi available that would best suit a 
>beginner, or would it be advisable to simply jump in the deep end with 
>the latest and greatest, if making the switch from BASIC?

Not really - the first thing a VB coder does in Delphi is write things
like Mid(), InStr() Left() etc
- later versions have similar things built in ... 
  but I stuck at Delphi 4

>Also, if runtimes are not really an issue (and isn't .NET supposed to 
>overcome that sort of problem anyway?) then would you suggest staying 
>with a BASIC such as VB.NET (or even VB6 if still obtainable)?

.NET is a 20 mb runtime
- you could look at it - VB5 or 6 would be less unfamiliar

>Thanks for your time.

You are welcome