Talk:FreeBASIC

Documentation

The documentation that comes with the download is minimal (nearly useless). Sort of assumes you are currently very familiar with a previous version of BASIC such as QuickBASIC. Partly made up for by large number of small example programs included.

The FB Wiki tries to provide documentation.
A good complete Table of Contents appears at: http://www.freebasic.net/wiki/wikka.php?wakka=DocToc
A complete Alphabetical Keywords List: http://www.freebasic.net/wiki/wikka.php?wakka=CatPgFullIndex
This is a good resource, but does not make up for lack of a good set of downloadable documentation.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.87.201.21 (talk • contribs) 21:35, May 17, 2006‎ (UTC)

Next time, check the downloads section: http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/fbc/FB-manual-chm-19.may.2006.zip?download Both wikis are community efforts, just complaining won't make they better, feel free to contribute.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.42.54.96 (talk • contribs) 04:29, May 20, 2006 (UTC)

Don't forget the FBhelp program. Armslurp (talk) 01:26, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Good "free" compiler, with limitations

FreeBASIC does indeed do pretty well for a "free" compiler, but it's not a fully-optimizing compiler (according to the authors). Still, it's pretty good. I don't know of any official benchmarks, but maybe you can hack/tweak this one. Armslurp (talk) 01:26, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Why is the page flagged as needing citations/references?

As a FreeBASIC user I am rather confused as to the flagging that has been in effect since February 2008 for a supposed lack of references or citations. It should be noted that FreeBASIC is not the only free, open source program which is distributed solely via internet and therefore has little or no attention in mainstream public media. FreeBASIC, like many such programs, is barely known offline. Thus, any and all citations will come from the internet. The links provided should be enough, I should think.

In case anyone is not convinced, let me draw your attention to the entries for several programs in a similar position as FreeBASIC. First is gparted; there are only two sources cited there, one of which is to the gparted LiveCD site itself and the other to a site entirely unrelated to the software gparted. The entry for FreeBASIC has more links and they are more relevant (even if they are mostly if not all directly from FreeBASICs own pages). The second example is the page for QuickBASIC, a language FreeBASIC drew on heavily as far as syntax and design. The page for QuickBASIC only has two citations and they are both from the site of the creators of QuickBASIC - Microsoft's Knowledge Base!

Given these two examples alone, I would say that in all fairness either the pages for QuickBASIC and gparted should also be given the same flagging or the flagging should be removed from the page of FreeBASIC. I personally think the latter is more reasonable, given that there is a lot of internet content that will never be described in any "reliable third-party" publications, which does not make it any less worthy of coverage in Wikipedia (and without the annoying and meaningless flagging of the supposed lack of citations).

I have removed the flagging and ask that it not be reinstated until some reasonable discussion has taken place.

Notthecheatr (talk) 23:50, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree RealWorldExperience (talk) 20:02, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I think it's only a problem if Wikipedia:Verifiability is not given, but to me all the current info seems easily verifiable. --Allefant (talk) 20:47, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Notability tag

Can I ask with what justification the notability tag has been added to this page? Marinedalek (talk) 21:45, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Looks like it was removed while I was typing the question! Marinedalek (talk) 21:45, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Article is misleading

FreeBASIC may have support for object-oriented programming in the future, but does not currently. I think this should be reflected in the article.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Dsalemno (talk • contribs) 22:59, 2008 July 30 (UTC)

Can you provide verification for this? If so, then make the changes needed to state this. --coldacid (talk|contrib) 02:09, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

I am following up to admit my erroneous statement. It seems upon further investigation that object-oriented programming is a paradigm and does not necessarily have to be supported by the programming language itself. One could simulate object-oriented constructs inside of a procedural language. A language that fully supports object-orientation does not need the custom architecture as it has already been built to provide object-oriented constructs in a more concise manner. (Dominic Salemno) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dsalemno (talk • contribs) 17:20, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Plagiarism

Some parts of the article are literally copied from the official FreeBASIC website. In the intro: 'When used in its "QB" language mode, FreeBASIC provides a high level of support for programs written for QuickBASIC. Many programs written for QuickBASIC will compile and run in this mode with no changes needed. However, for compilation in the FreeBASIC default language mode, most substantial programs will require changes.' Under Features: 'FreeBASIC fully supports the use of C libraries and partial C++ library support. This lets programmers use and create libraries for C and many other languages.' Since the content of that website is not under Creative Commons but copyright of the FreeBASIC Development Team, these sentences needed to rephrased and proper citations need to be added. Please check WP:PLAGFORM. Best regards, ChristopheS (talk) 10:03, 24 January 2012 (UTC)