Why BlitzMax is Great
BlitzMax Forums/BlitzMax Programming/Why BlitzMax is Great
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| I've suspected in the past that MFC and Cocoa were intentionally designed to be as complicated as possible. Here it is, straight from the horse's mouth: "The Windows API is so broad, so deep, and so functional that most ISVs would be crazy not to use it. And it is so deeply embedded in the source code of many Windows apps that there is a huge switching cost to using a different operating system instead... "It is this switching cost that has given the customers the patience to stick with Windows through all our mistakes, our buggy drivers, our high TCO, our lack of a sexy vision at times, and many other difficulties [...] Customers constantly evaluate other desktop platforms, [but] it would be so much work to move over that they hope we just improve Windows rather than force them to move. "In short, without this exclusive franchise called the Windows API, we would have been dead a long time ago." BlitzMax removes that complication and lets you build cross-platform desktop programs using the native UI for each platform. Last edited 2012 |
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| Phew! Way to go BlitzMax, you have stretchy legs. |
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| Linux will overtake Windows one day,and im up for that.It might not be as user friendly at the moment(Nvidia),but a FREE operating system.Give me that anytime.Yes the windows API is good,but FREE outweighs the cost. probably miles off what your asking for,but hey ho. Last edited 2012 |
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| It does worry me that its TTL is potentially limiting for anyone starting out today though. I'm just wondering here, please bear with me... I assume (and it is just an assumption) the Windows implementation of MaxGUI is based on Win32 so how long will it be before Win32 libraries no longer compile, or are no longer supported by Windows? Surely it can't last forever. Could the current release of Windows be the last we can get onto? Given Apples 'it only works as long as we want it to' stance, I'd say there's more chance of the Cocoa libs going first. Switching to wxWidgets comes with the same problem since no one is supporting those modules any more. I do worry that the next version of Windows, OSX or a Linux fork could suddenly be out of Blitzmax's (and especially MaxGUIs) reach. Don't get me wrong, I've spent most of this year re-creating an old test bed into a very expensive (non game related) piece of commercial software and I'm very happy to be working in BMax/MaxGUI but I have to have an eye out for where I jump ship to one day because this is a long term project with long term aims. |
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| >>>Linux will overtake Windows one day,and im up for that.It might not be as user friendly at the moment(Nvidia),but a FREE operating system.Give me that anytime.Yes the windows API is good,but FREE outweighs the cost. That's like saying instead of a nice comfy sofa, you'd rather sit on an upturned bin because free outweighs the cost. Free things are usually free for a very good reason. |
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| sorry gums. Get a life sad man. Last edited 2012 nowonder u wife left u. Last edited 2012 |
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| Yea and your the puppet GfK for paying for you think is the best.IDIOT |
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| sorry gums. Get a life sad man. Last edited 11 minutes ago nowonder u wife left u. Yea and your the puppet GfK for paying for you think is the best.IDIOT Are you TRYING to get yourself banned? |
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| sorry Dave Kirk you r admin ban me if it pleasys you. Last edited 2012 |
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| It's not just the MFC that's complicated. MFC was actually designed to make it easier to use the Win32 native gui by wrapping it in classes. Whether it achieves this or not is another matter, but the whole underlying windows api ( not just the gui ) is extremely, and unnecessarily over complicated. EDIT:- Saying that, as long as you write code that's within the MS guidelines, then it is very stable. The trouble is finding where those guidelines are. Last edited 2012 |
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| sorry Dave Kirk you r admin ban me if it pleasys you. Any admin or mod up for the challenge? |
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| Any admin or mod up for the challenge? It's already done. Moving on...[edit] Oh, and for the record, I'm not admin. Last edited 2012 |
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| I assume (and it is just an assumption) the Windows implementation of MaxGUI is based on Win32 so how long will it be before Win32 libraries no longer compile, or are no longer supported by Windows? Surely it can't last forever. Could the current release of Windows be the last we can get onto? When that happens, Windows itself is dead. I guarantee you Windows 8 will be the most spectacular failure in the history of the tech industry. |
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| 1) Windows 8 is a solution looking for a problem. It's simply a vehicle for MS to jump on the app-store bandwagon. 2) Bmax *is* great! it's been my main language for years. personally and professionally. 3) If Mark would only think bigger, by now there would be a dozen O'reilly books written about the language ,annual Bmax conventions with lots of free corporate schwag, visual studio plugins and a LLVM backend. Last edited 2012 |
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| Seems Nice_But_Dim is living up to the second part of his username, but not the first. I was looking over Noobody's Blitzmax code for his ZauberCraft voxel engine recently and it impressed me how well laid out that code is and how easily Blitzmax allows code to be structured in a comprehensible fashion. It's a sharp contrast to the spaghetti coding I usually end up needing to do in Blitz3D. |
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| If Mark would only think bigger, by now there would be a dozen O'reilly books written about the language ,annual Bmax conventions with lots of free corporate schwag, visual studio plugins and a LLVM backend. ....and lose control of his baby. I'd like to see something like that too, but trying to see things from Mark's point of view, I think there are a few very obvious reasons why it hasn't happened. BlitzMax would have to go open-source first, and that would take it away from BRL almost immediately. |
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| It would be nice if Linux were friendlier because unfortunately its technical nature/geeky reputation really stops it going mainstream. I kinda gave up on trying to use it to make Blitz exe's because just using the basic stuff was just too fiddly. Even getting it to run was fiddly. It needs a big dose of usability, but I like the idea of it. As for Mark, the blitz product IS his own personal baby and it's totally up to him what he wants to do with his time, or where his heart is, or what interests him. Maybe he just doesn't want it to `go bigtime`, maybe he decided that's not the kind of company he wants to run, maybe he decided he doesn't like marketing and advertising and has a different philosophy. Whatever it is, it's his business to run how he chooses regardless of whether we like it or not. I think a lot of people agree there is much more that could be done to market it and make it trendier and more cutting edge and so on, but apparently that's our agenda and not his. So we gotta just accept it because I really haven't seen any change in this area for years now. I think Monkey is a cool step forward in terms of technology and platform support and all that, but the persona of blitz and monkey is `small` and quite reserved, maybe Mark likes it that way. One thought that just came to me is that perhaps at some point Mark will open source BlitzMax and then the community will take over and create a `BlitzMax 2` with various improvements and a better website etc. Last edited 2012 |
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| One thought that just came to me is that perhaps at some point Mark will open source BlitzMax and then the community will take over and create a `BlitzMax 2` with various improvements and a better website etc. After what happened with Max3D I pretty much doubt BlitzMax going open source. (And I don't mean it on a negative side, I think Mark is completely right by not making it open source). Back on the thread, blitzmax is awesome. I look at the trouble people have to just make simple java or c++ stuff to run cross-platform, and I can't think why bmax couldn't be used instead... Mark did one hell of a job writting the tough stuff for all of us, and making it really compatible no matter what OS you're on. Just by that, he deserves a multitude of respect. |
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| When most people think of "marketing" they think of promotion. It actually goes a lot deeper than that because if you have a lot of noise and fireworks with no compelling story, it doesn't catch on. Look at anything Nokia does for an example of this. The first step of marketing is actually asking why the product exists and who it's for. Actually, Monkey does this better than BMX, because it has a clearly defined user: people who want to make a 2D game on a variety of platforms. Sadly, that is not the segment I am a part of. |
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| After what happened with Max3D I pretty much doubt BlitzMax going open source. (And I don't mean it on a negative side, I think Mark is completely right by not making it open source). It depends very much on what your motivations are when you open something. Open sourcing a project in the hopes that the community will just take over and finish your work is doomed to failure, because it abandons resposibility, leadership and any sense that the project is still alive. Open sourcing something that remains fully supported and actively developed and is open only to take advantage of extra expertise, and give the users more freedom, is a good thing for any project. In this case the bigger issue is that with 100% of the packaged modules now permissively-licenced, open-sourcing the compiler too would render BlitzMax effectively freeware. If Mark has unit sales as his primary income (?), this would not be a sensible move (note that most open source projects don't make their money from unit sales, so this isn't a downside for them). Quite why BlitzMax is that way round when Monkey is the exact opposite - the generally considered "right way" round - is beyond me, but... eh, his business. Last edited 2012 |
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| For me, this is why Blitzmax is great... You will recognise some of the interface Josh since its based on your property grid (and I used your splash screen) and the side tabber is what I put into the archives a few months back. It's very early days yet for this project (started back in February) but if I continue at this pace I hope to have a public beta early in the new year.. http://youtu.be/ZrjJUTRw3Vo If you don't know what it is, don't worry about it :D |
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