An old NEWBIE

midnightrambler905 · Post by **midnightrambler905** » Aug 07, 2009 21:03

Hello People, I gotta say only found freeBasic a couple of days ago, and I am both impressed and overwhelmed at the same time.... so much to read, so much to learn, and too many things to do LOL

I am an OLD programmer who wants to get back in the game... I was just wondering if there would happen to be any FB users in the Toronto (Canada) area. Would love to develop a relationship with 1 or more FB users - a mentor and/or collaborator.

(hope this is the right place to post this message)

vdecampo · Post by **vdecampo** » Aug 07, 2009 21:19

Greetings midnightrambler905! Welcome to the community.

You posted your message in the correct forum.

There are lots of FB users both old and new. Being 40, I like to consider myself in the middle somewhere. :)

Ask your questions. We will be glad to help. Try to post questions in the relevant forums because some people check certain forums more frequently.

First off check and make sure you are using the most recent compiler version. The latest offical version release is 0.20.0 however many use the latest SVN version.

Couple things you may want to read first off...

http://www.freebasic.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10830
http://www.freebasic.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11353
http://www.freebasic.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=13819

Have fun!

-Vince

midnightrambler905 · Post by **midnightrambler905** » Aug 07, 2009 21:38

I read those posts already (among MANY MANY others so far). and already got the freeBasic compiler going with fbIDE so far. but man oh man are my skills rusty and old -- where is that WD40 when you need it LOL

crysstaafur · Post by **crysstaafur** » Aug 07, 2009 22:49

In the past 4 years, this community has remained the best imho. If you run into issues, there is always someone out there willing to help, even they are having a hard time with the same topic. The teamwork here is wonderful.

I wouldn't worry about age either, there is a strong number of coders here who were around the days of the tandy cc2, commodore64, and gwbasic. I am 34 and still coding as if that 9 year old boy coding his first program on a cc2 is still alive in me somewhere. :)

While I'm not from canada, < proud Texan here ;) >, it really wouldn't surprise me if there was some folks from Toronto, given the diversity of peeps here.

If you need webspace for storing anything, even a page, holla I'd be glad to provide, as others have done for me in the past. :)

dragonalong · Post by **dragonalong** » Aug 08, 2009 5:36

Hi, folks! I'm another old country programmer who has finally gotten the time to log on and participate. I'm 54--old enough to remember when it was (gasp!) Oxford BASIC. I teach high school math now, but my first career was in banking and insurance on Burroughs mainframes.

I've had FreeBASIC for some time now, but I rarely had time to play. Teachers don't write much beyond lesson plans and it's a 24-7 job most of the time. Here lately, I've gotten to where I'm doing some serious programming with it and I wanted to contribute. My age has to be worth something, right? And, while doing the teaching thing, I completely missed learning to use API's. COBOL doesn't (didn't?) support them. :-) I hope I can get some help there. Back in the day, we did the very earliest MBP (message based processsing) on Unisys mainframes running teller terminals in the bank. I wrote a goodly chunk of PULSE for my bank.

I've had to write myself a quick sort, and a binary tree quick search, and a huffman compression routine, and a merge sort and... so I looked around to see if I had anything to offer and, dag nabbit, it looks like you folks don't need anything I have. Oh well, perhaps something will come up.

My name is Dave and I live in San Antonio, Texas. Howdy!

AGS · Post by **AGS** » Aug 08, 2009 7:47

Commodore 64, yes, I remember it well... BASIC with line numbering. AmigaBASIC was a nice step forward though. It fit into RAM and ran at an amazing speed (if you ran your programs from RAM that is). AmigaBASIC was a Microsoft product. Some things never change...

The 'old' people are taking over the forum :)

dragonalong · Post by **dragonalong** » Aug 08, 2009 13:39

AGS: Oddly enough, I actually pre-date the Commodore. I learned BASIC on a PDP-11 owned by the local university, with a Telex machine and an acoustic coupler. In my first job, we were still actually wiring boards on an old 1401 the bank was using to run its Savings system. My first "owned" machine was a TRS-80!

midnightrambler905: I hear you about the rusty part. I've pretty much wire-brushed the worst of the rust off and I'd be pleased to help you do the same. You have but to ask. I don't know much about games and graphics, but I helped write a lot of the stuff we use today, databases and the like.

Take care, Dave

Roger Hunter · Post by **Roger Hunter** » Aug 08, 2009 15:17

What a bunch of youngsters we have here!

I'll be 75 this November and got into programming backwards. I started on mainframes using fortran IV, then later PL/I. Finally moved to PCs and stayed with fortran up to F77, then moved to TrueBasic when I needed graphics.

I stayed with TB until I got involved with EDG's project. He wanted a free, reliable language so that researchers worldwide could use and modify his programs for their own needs. FB was the best choice I could find for that.

He preferred Perl....

Roger

midnightrambler905 · Post by **midnightrambler905** » Aug 08, 2009 15:51

Im gonna take you up on that offer.... I put a post in the HARDWARE INTERFACE/COMMUNICATION forum (TIP: event driven RS232 class).

it was following an existing thread, and was an existing program. works to write out to a serial device, but i want to be able to pull data froma a barcode scanner. While I can see Com.EventReceive, I cant seem to get it to work and get compiler errors with everything that I try to change (not sure, but i dont see a Receive subroutine in the RS232.bas file too).

A little background... I have an old DOS app that is in dire need of a re-write (hence my interest in freeBasic) and one of the features I would like to add is barcode scanning. My original thinking was to create a simple program to capture barcode data and take a flat file in for each code scanned. This way I could still use the old code (written in dBase III+ & clipper) until I improve my skills with fb and am able to re-write it all. (really hoping to be able to find a local person for some real help in person)

.... Tony

dragonalong · Post by **dragonalong** » Aug 08, 2009 19:53

Roger Hunter: <grin> OK, you win the "old programmer's home" prize! I did a little work with Fortran too. I hated every second of it. Not my kinda language. Then again, I was 19 and impatient. Oh yeah...ask a kid today what 80-col cards are... :-)

Perhaps we should form a "vacuum tube and keypunch" users group?

midnightrambler905: OK. You've really picked one of my own rusty spots, but I'll "see" you there with what I remember.

Take care, Dave

Roger Hunter · Post by **Roger Hunter** » Aug 08, 2009 20:03

dragonalong;

LOL!

My first job with the government involved calculating things on big expensive electric calculators that looked a lot like typewriters.

The when I went out on a research vessel they had a Burroughs computer for navigation. Hundreds of vacuum tubes. One night it hung up so I thought maybe turning it off and back on would help.

My next trip, months later they were still working on it....

Roger

dragonalong · Post by **dragonalong** » Aug 09, 2009 4:26

We had a B500 at my first job that we could actually cycle the power switch manually fast enough that it never dropped a cycle. We used to do it just to freak out the straights...
Now and then, to fix problems, we could go to the front panel and bit-fiddle... Those were the days, my friend!

I think my Mom worked on that calculator when she worked for Dow during WWII... (grin)

You know, I can do pretty nearly anything you could ask for in BASIC at the console-level. You want it, I've probably written a thousand of them. But this API stuff is eating me alive. I feel like I'm in college again, we're coming up on the mid-term and I've missed a couple key lectures! VB spoiled the dickens out of me.

I'm starting to make progress though. Patience! I keep telling myself.

Take care, Dave

Roger Hunter · Post by **Roger Hunter** » Aug 09, 2009 13:08

dragonalong;

I know the feeling.

I avoid the api stuff because I want the programs to be portable to other platforms.

I'm having enough problems just finding things in the FB maze, especially when the answer turns out to be "Oh yeah, you need the library written by so-and-so".

Roger

Mentat · Post by **Mentat** » Aug 09, 2009 13:41

dragonalong wrote:Oh yeah...ask a kid today what 80-col cards are...

They're for people with a bad combination of a hole puncher and too much time on their hands. :P

dragonalong · Post by **dragonalong** » Aug 09, 2009 19:49

Roger Hunter wrote: I avoid the api stuff because I want the programs to be portable to other platforms.

I'm having enough problems just finding things in the FB maze, especially when the answer turns out to be "Oh yeah, you need the library written by so-and-so".

Ordinarily, I'd avoid it as well. It's too much work when all I really wanted was some thing sorted, especially when it's just for my use.

But, when you code for the hoi poloi, you gotta make it pretty!
MichaelW gave me a great answer that will answer many of my questions...I think. Now, to go write code to test it out.

Take care, Dave

An old NEWBIE

An old NEWBIE

thanks vince

Older newbie

The good old days....

thanks Dave

Is older better?

Vacuum and punchcards

Re: Is older better?

dragged kicking and screaming