What Language should we use

[Peter McMurray]

I have loved Pick Basic because I came from an Assembler background and one foray into COBOL was too much for me.

The lack of Static typing and classes we worked around from the beginning by defining our own application wide dictionaries in 1977, using those to define File record classes and then using those to define the program variables.

However! times change as Dawn has pointed out with MVOn. If I were starting out now I would use F# without hesitation and still use Pick as the database.

I want to do an APP for my current interest in Music. Constantly I discover that an APP is for Android or Apple or Windows but rarely all 3 and it may work on a phone but it is a pain, or more likely not available, on my lovely Surface 4. I just spent $95 on An Anddroid Pendo to get around the issue.

Javascript was used for my favourite App, Rand Scullard's Interactive Circle of Fifths, and he told me that he would now use JQuery. Great solved,maybe!

Microsoft have accepted the world and produced a wondrous integration set. We can now use Javascript as a true powerful language  totally compatible with Android and Apple via TypeScript which is perfectly capable of handling a million line program, heaven forbid that I should ever meet such. Yes Dawn Angular 2 is written in TypeScript.

https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2017/B8088/

Now I can truly consider writing order interfaces for drivers out in the field with just a blessed iPhone. The MD can use a lovely pie chart on his iPad ( do I remember the awful time I had when one MD demanded we interface his wretched Apple Lisa. Luckily I was able to find Apricot and the mess that Apple made of RS232 ). All with my beloved Pick database that may even be in SQL Server.

[Kevin Powick]

Since you know BASIC really well, why not stick with it?

Basic 4 Android (B4A), and Basic 4 iOS (B4I) from Anywhere Software is quite impressive and very affordable.

Trial downloads available.

https://www.b4x.com/

--

Kevin Powick

[stope19]

You might consider Xamarin (https://developer.xamarin.com/guides/cross-platform/) and target all of these platforms at once. Really, you could use lots of different languages/frameworks, and personal biases will almost certainly impact any selection.. :)

On Saturday, 3 March 2018 10:42:23 UTC+11, Peter McMurray wrote:

.. Constantly I discover that an APP is for Android or Apple or Windows but rarely all 3 and it may work on a phone but it is a pain, or more likely not available, on my lovely Surface 4.

[Peter McMurray]

I have looked at many including Xamarin. However when the biggest companies in the world of User Interface programming work together to produce a fantastically beautiful result in TypeScript then it is game over.

The ease of designing coupled with supremely powerful pre-compile checking makes it a simple choice for business software.

I suspect that those suggesting alternatives such as ANother Basic have not looked at the product.

Of course the other products will survive as millions if not billions of dollars worth of software is already invested and just as people did not switch from COBOL to .Net easily many will not. But starting with a clean slate it is a nobrainer particularly for Pickies who used the MV database wisely.

[stope19]

I'm not sure why you even started this thread - with your 'it is game over' statement it seems you mind is firmly made up, so what was the point of soliciting other options?  (although how you see a superset of JavaScript as being the solution to User Interface programming is beyond me). Good luck with your project.

[Kevin Powick]

Agreed. 

Peter starting this thread was pointless.

Personally, I would have suggested other products, but I know that Peter M. is primarily a Windows user that, like most MV developers, has focused on BASIC for decades; hence my suggestion.

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Kevin Powick

[Peter McMurray]

Why did I post the thread?

For the same reason that Dawn posts about MVON# to get a feed back on how people are integrating the new products.

I have never come across anything so extremely advanced in the programming arena as TypeScript for the user interface. 

How does one best take advantage of it with D3 for example. On many occasions I have said the the ideal way to handle the database is through short FlashBasic subroutines called via JSON. I do not like the idea of accessing the database directly with .Net calls in MVSP. Perhaps I am wrong.

Then the only company that has grasped fully the concept of Unicode natively on Pick is JBase.

In MVOn# the concept of the Pick database is turned on it's head by using SQL Server.

TypeScript is far more than a superscript of JavaScript. It is a dynamic programming tool that can even check the program logic flow. It introduces the ability to use concepts that one has to work hard to implement in Pick Basic. Concepts that I have used all my programming life.

Static Typing. Classes. Single Page Application all of which I used in my Assembler days and with Stuart Evans introduced to the Pick arena in 1977 albeit the terms are more modern the concept is the same.

MVOn# uses SQL Server whilst preserving the MV database concept to gain the advantage of the massive investment in database handling. TypeScript represents the same advantage in the user interface arena. Of course it can be backend as well but we use MV. Companies such as Angular now write the framework in TypeScript not some lower level language. I remember being blown away when we finished Pobol for Pick and Stuart turned around and said if it is so good it should be written in itself. The single most brilliant idea he had and forty years on I still do it.

[Peter McMurray]

The topic gets better. JBASE does it again https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSEvFvu4f1s&feature=youtu.be&utm_source=MultiValue+List+2017&utm_campaign=e6372b5bc0-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_01_02&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_606d4a3a6a-e6372b5bc0-220274301 

This link appeared today an there we have them talking about a Javascript like extension for Dynamic Objects in MultiValue.

[geneb]

This is probably the most unique and interesting presentation of features
I can ever recall seeing.

It makes me wonder how well it works with thick clients calling it from
.Net...

g.

--
Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007
http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind.
http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home.
Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies.

ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment
A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes.
http://scarlet.deltasoft.com - Get it _today_!

[Kevin Powick]

7 awkward minutes for something I could have read about in probably less than 1.

At least it was different.

--

Kevin Powick

[Ian Harper]

Yea I won't watch that.

Here's the release notes if anyone wants to read about these features:
http://www.jbase.com/support/release-notes/

[Peter McMurray]

Sadly those are not the release notes for 5.7 Ian. It is obvious that the complainants have completely missed the point of both the TypeScript and the JBase releases. by the way JBase 5.7 release docs and products will be available in a few weeks, the excellent taster is well worth watching if one pays attention to what is actually said and considers the impact of TypeScript. Here is one simple example of the massive changes, plus consider this, are there any other editors that actually test the logic flow?

Arrays in TypeScript

TypeScript supports the following concepts in arrays −

S.No.	Concept & Description
1.	Multi-dimensional arrays TypeScript supports multidimensional arrays. The simplest form of the multidimensional array is the twodimensional array.
2.	Passing arrays to functions You can pass to the function a pointer to an array by specifying the array's name without an index.
3.	Return array from functions Allows a function to return an array