First Basic

[Wally1]

Is First Basic by Hisoft any good?

 

Thanks

[guus.assmann]

Hello,

 

That's a matter of taste.

Personally, I like GFA Basic better. (Has lots of examples as well).

 

BR/

Guus

[LoTonah]

I've never used that, but I used HiSoft Pro BASIC pretty extensively back in the day.  I seem to remember they're related.

 

I used it because it was Microsoft QBASIC compatible.  Trying to get any Atari VDI stuff working gave me migraines and I never got the hang of WERCS (I may be remembering the name wrong) which was their resource construction kit.  But that was just for fun, my main thing was writing programs that could work on Atari and the PC.  My Atari programs looked just as ugly as a standard text-based MS-DOS programs, though... but they worked great.

[English Invader]

Not really into programming that much myself but I believe GFA is a lot more relevant to today's homebrew scene than First Basic.

 

If your aim is to make programs that other people will want to use, GFA (or assembly language) would be a much better investment of your time.

[Wally1]

Okay thanks guys.

 

Merry Christmas!

 

[Wally1]

Is it different from Atari ST basic?

 

[lp060]

https://www.facebook.com/groups/gfabasic/

http://www.atari-forum.com/viewforum.php?f=69

https://gfa-basic.forumactif.com/

http://www.atari-wiki.com/index.php/GFA_Tutorial

 

No annoying line numbers. Has a proper editor and includes a compiler.

Edited December 24, 2019 by lp060

[Wally1]

Are ST Basic and First Basic the same thing?

 

[English Invader]

3 hours ago, Wally1 said:

Are ST Basic and First Basic the same thing?

 

No, they're not.  ST Basic was the original Basic language designed for the ST but it had a number of flaws (not to mention bugs) and Atari started shipping First Basic with the ST when they realised how crap their Basic was.

 

One of the main failings of Basic on the ST/Amiga is that it's not included in ROM and therefore takes up a lot more RAM space and runs more slowly which is why assembly is a lot more useful for ST/Amiga programming. 

[Wally1]

Thanks for your thoughtful response.  I tell you 68k asm is good for some but I am not one of them.

 

Happy holidays.

 

Maybe I will try again.

 

 

Edited December 24, 2019 by Wally1

[Christos]

On 12/24/2019 at 11:52 PM, English Invader said:

 

One of the main failings of Basic on the ST/Amiga is that it's not included in ROM and therefore takes up a lot more RAM space and runs more slowly which is why assembly is a lot more useful for ST/Amiga programming. 

That is completely incorrect though. Actually if it were in ROM it would run slower because ram is quite a bit faster than rom. 

Assembly is the preferred way to program 8, 16 and early 32-bit systems because it will be much much faster than basic, c, Pascal etc. Using anything else is basically a trade off between time, speed and what is acceptable performance.

[ParanoidLittleMan]

In case of Atari ST executing some SW from ROM or RAM is with same speed. There is 500 nS cycle time for memory access when CPU runs at 8 MHz.  That's enough for accessing RAM even together with accessing it from video circuit, because RAM cycle time self is 250 nS .

And second claim of Christos is not correct too. C was preferred in case of 16 bit Atari ST, PCs with 80286, and so on ... TOS is done 80% in C. Most of Atari ST SW is coded in C, some even in Basic, and about 50% of games is done in C too. For instance most famous Dungeon Master.  And here need to say that not all C compilers are same, some produced significantly faster code.  Surely ASM is what can produce fastest code, but price is time. Faster code = slower programming. And what matters in business is time - making it ready faster ?

The real trade is doing it in C, with speed crucial parts in inline ASM.  That's possible with most C compilers, even with GFA Basic.