Well, what is "newer" than OOP is ,NET, AJAX, and web-based applications. Visual Studio for .Net goes farther than the previous Visual Studio did, but you guys probably knew this.
What you might have missed is that RealBasic and kbasic have emerged to move OOP programming in BASIC to the cross-platform arena. I'm still reading the preliminary documentation on kbasic, but it admits that it is relying on Qt for its ability to do this, and though I haven't read up on Qt yet, it comes with its own GUI.
So, if you want to stick with Microsoft, then you have to give up cross-platform objectives, at least for the time being, because .NET and COM are not cross-platform in nature. Nor is DirectX.
It's just my considered opinion, but PowerBasic is so closely tied to the Windows' environment, and yet still needs to really come to terms with OOP, COM, .NET, DirectX, the Vista APIs, and other concepts that are also tied to Windows, that it's future is almost certainly aimed at continuing down that road. And it does not really have the resources to travel too many paths at the same time.
At the same time, from a BASIC programming perspective, it has at least three rivals that are cross-platform capable to a greater or lesser degree: the two mentioned above, and FreeBasic.
Now what would you do in their shoes? In order for PowerBasic Compilers to be as capable under all three OSes (Window, Linux, and MacOS), they have to have a common interface and the same range of commands, functions, and syntax. But the three systems are different under the hood, and to satisfy existing users of PowerBasic, the company would have to somehow contrive a means by which Linux and MacOS look and respond like Windows. That's a tall order. If it introduced a diminitive compiler for Linux (and possibly the MacOS), people have already said they would not buy it. It would not be enough.
So why should PowerBasic risk it future trying to produce something that people may turn down, and invest heavily in development where the market share is still too small to properly evaluate? Some people speak of needing Pb/Linux as though it were the way into the promised land of Windows to Linux transition. I guess I was one of those people myself, once. But getting into Linux is as simple as downloading and burning a LiveCD distro, and BASIC programming does not have to wait for PowerBasic to commit itself to the same end.
It is becoming increasingly rare for me to boot straight into Windows. More often, I boot into Ubuntu, start up VirtualBox, and start Windows there. Then I move freely back and forth between the two environments as I need to . I have several BASICs, including PowerBasic, on my Windows virtual setup, and have kbasic on both Windows and Ubuntu. It took me some time to get everything set up, but it is an extremely easy environment to work in.
Want to hear something wierd? Yesterday I creaded a monthly calendar in Word on my virtual Windows, but I needed to resize it to print two to a sheet. I could not do this in word, I needed to change it to a graphics first. I found a shareware program to do this for $40, but decided I could probably do it another way, I adjusted the image size displayed and picked full screen mode in word so that the whole calendar showed up, switched back to Ubuntu, set up the screen capture there for a three second display, went to full screen mode for the Virtual Windows, which now showed the calendar full sized, waited a few seconds, minimized the virtual window, and saved the screen capture to a file. Worked like a champ. I then copied the image to my virtual Windows' desktop, started Picture It! which I had installed there, cropped the border around the calendar, rotated it, resized and positioned it, copied it to the other half of the sheet, and printed it on my printer. Now I am ready to run off copies.
The thing is, I could have done this with just Windows, or just Ubuntu, but by using both, I could use the best tool available on either side to get the job done. The only problem was that Picture It! could not read or write to the Ext3 partitons - it saw the contents as unacessable. It apparently uses a different method for reading and writing to files, so I could not access the image directly from the Ububnu's Desktop. But that was a minor issue.
I'm way off topic here, but I think it won't do much good to stay focused on what PB may or may not do with their product line. We have options, some good ones, and it is time to consider them.
I found a link that offers a 10-week tutorial course on Visual Basic 5/6 on CD for $19.95. They also offer the first four chapters as a free download. That might help someone get started and get past some of the initial issues.
http://www.kidwaresoftware.com/lrnvb6.htmI also found a link for getting Visual Studio 2008 Express as a DVD .ISO image. This might give someone an essential tool for getting started with Visual Basic or some other Microsoft Development Product:
http://www.microsoft.com/express/product/default.aspxThere is actually a lot of postings related to Visual Basic and Visual Studio on the internet, and I won't try to explore those any further. Anybody can get to these by searchinf for them. What is interesting is that a lot of these resources involve a fee of some sort. It's not common to find free stuff when it comes to Windows and other Microsoft products combined. It's more likely to find similar information at no charge when discussing Linux and products that work it that environment.
