I Need a New Programming Language

Bear in mind I jus' a grumpy ol' cat.
Unless you are working on a 'standard' platform you will have to write your own drivers. (Hmmm and how long will that platform remain standard? Which is why I have staunchly resisted anything to do with MS from an engineering point over the years)
I don't think it matters a hoot what language you use...they are all only as good as the tools supporting them.
I'd rather work in assembler with a decent emulator, so that I can run and debug on my actual hardware than use C without an emulator. Those are the two ways I work at the moment. To me 'Visual Basic' is a crock of shite and a huge retrograde step from Quick basic on which you could knock up quick engineering interfaces and test programs that worked.
I refer you back to line one of this post...
Del

Hi Sciesis2

I went about the same route (Fortran , HP {Rocky Mountain} Basic ,some C

I opted for Delphi, which allowed me to use Pascal 7 code directly (using Console mode) and a few changes. I even can use my screen & input drivers.

With our background of DEY (Do Everything Yourself) it is easy to write a screen driver that outperform the standard Windooze driver)

The Delphi has a Rapid Development Mode similar to C# , visual basic etc.

I don't like C - VOID give me the creeps and I read curly brackets as comments.

Your post doesn't compile.... missing ;

Del

Is your use of the screen "real-time interactive" or just "good quality output"? There are several languages and many packages available in Linux that could be very helpful. Having done the work in minimal ANSI Basic suggests that most any language would handle the math. A few more details on how you feed the program and how you expect to use the output would be helpful.

It might be helpful if you Google perl, imagemagick (yes, it is spelled that way) and povray.

My recommendation is either Java or C # (C Sharp) or VB.

If you want to make it web based, try JSP or ASP.

- MS

absolutely you want Visual Basic 6.

1) most of your BASIC knowledge is still valid.
2) It is designed to do exactly what you are asking to be able to do.. lay out screens with minimal bs, and do a resonable amount of math.
3) It has the largest body of knowledge of any programming language, available on the web for helping you. Start here. (free site, lots of great downloads of tested code and forms)
4) everything you learn is transferable to VBA when you want to write apps in excel. (again, lots of help avaialble.)
5) it is also probably the fastest and easiest to learn, so start there, and anything y ou learn won't be wasted when you move to a different language. (no question C++ is fastest running)

chris

Unfortunately, VB6 is no longer available as M$ has abandoned it.

If all you are trying to do is update the original programs, then VB would most likely be the quickest route, since it was derived from the original Basic. However, for some sophisticated math, C (the original, not all the "object oriented" variations) may be more appropriate. Have you had a look at SciLab or Octave (a couple of OpenSource answers to Matlab)? They may already have the solutions you are after- very, very extensive libraries of functions (and mostly written in c...)

And, of course, if you REALLY want a learning experience, there is always Forth (but there is a reason Forth is free and has never been commercialized...)

well for sophisticated math.. you probably want to hook up with Matlab..

oopsie.. I missed that completely in your post... sorry.

Try both varieties of PowerBasic. Easy to program, good compiler, versatile, very fast, not too expensive. Their site gives a lot of information. I've been using it for varied tasks and it never disappointed me.

To try and keep the "porting" time down to a minimum, I would suggest using a language similar to Java. The idea in Java IIRC was that individual programs would run through a local emulator. The local emulator provided/supplied all necessary IO functions, while the software you wrote would just call the standardized IO referance names.

If this project is just for some heavy computations, you may want to look at MatLab - where all the computer programming is "done" already, and all you have to input is formulas and data.

Probably the easiest SW for screen bulding is National Instrument's LabView. It is not cheap, however.

Why don't you just use an open source Pascal compiler like this one.

DEC LSI 11 - that brings back some memories of teletypes, punch tape and magnetic core memory cards....

What does your output look like? You mention CGA which implies that you're drawing something, not just displaying numbers. This is the big question.

If you're just taking input and producing numeric output, go with a console program in C. It'll always be available everywhere.

If you're trying to produce formatted numbers, creating something portable and long-lived becomes trickier, but fortunately it's not much harder to format numbers than it is to just print them out sequentially.

If you're drawing graphs or pictures, it becomes much more complicated than it should be. Drawing a line is simple, but setting up a graphics context (huh? most people think quite reasonably) is different and painful in every environment you're programming. In this case, I would select Java. You cannot trust Micro$oft to provide a stable platform for the next ten years. At least with Java, the pain you suffer from getting it to do what you want now will have a good chance of providing a long-lasting result.

I tried loading a Visual Basic compiler onto this XP machine, but it didn't want to cooperate. It was a 60 day "student" variety which my wife had when she took the course several years ago, so I shouldn't be surprised... so forget that.

I did manage to get a Java System up and running, so I will probably go with that.

My immediate need is just number crunching with some e^x level complexities so no real graphics as yet... although some of my work will be graphic, printable, and incorporated in manuals in the future. I had the video memory map all figured out for CGA back in my Pascal days. I guess I will have to research the information for these modern computer thingies.

Sorry Del, but I don't have the time to develop floating point arithmetic, trig functions, and all the heavy math in assembler, although, I have a couple of projects where I will use a micro controller to eliminate a whole bunch of discrete logic. Here I very likely will use assembler to write the code.

Now if I only had unlimited budget, and unlimited time to work on everything I want to do.

I told my wife that I needed a new computer. My old Windows ME machine would not run todays software, and could not get on broad-band internet with it. OK!! So we got a brand new HP, 64 bit machine, with Windows 7. It is now on HER desk, and I have her old XP machine with a dead Ethernet port. Thats OK! I got a wireless USB attachment so I can at least get online again, and I don't have to grumble because she is playing games when I need to get on to do some work (aka play on CR4).

Anyhow, thanks alot guys... I appreciate the help.

Bill

You may want to consider trying a Linux distro on the XP machine- even newer distros of Linux work well on older machines. There is also an application called "Wine" that can run older dos programs- maybe your old VB compiler will run under this. You can write in Java in Linux and port to Windows relatively easily, I believe. Python also seems to be transportable. There are Basic compilers for Linux that can give you pretty much the look and feel of Visual Basic. You do not need to destroy your XP operating system to load Linux- you can set it up as a dual boot and run both on the same machine. You may even find your ethernet card coming back to life...

And it sounds like you really ought to be looking at Scilab for your math functions- pretty straight forward, and very extensive library of math capabilities. Scilab runs on Windows or Linux.

The best part- Linux and Scilab cost nothing (except the time required to download, and the cost of a CD/DVD)...

you can download vb6 as a torrent file. you load the torrent file into a client. the file gathers portions of the download from as many seeders and peers as there are on that file sharing network.

you could also programm in vba (in excel)

good luck

Chris