Hey Charles,
Long time no news!
Is everything fine on your side of the web?
@Charles Pegge I hope you are fine!
Hi Pierre and Theo,
I am well but not spending much time on OxygenBasic. Though I'm quite interested in supporting UTF-8 encoded Unicode. It avoids some of the problems associated with UTF-16, such as surrogate-pairs, and may eventually displace it.
I have been following the discussions on the PB and PUMP forums but I don't think there is a large enough community to sustain the development of a new PowerBasic. What do you think?
I'm spending most of my time on building projects, and generally engaging in as much physical activity as I can to recondition my 70 year old muscles :)
Hi Charles,
About sustaining development for a new PowerBasic,
I was hoping for a lot to join your team,
true that we are all getting old, and many of us are reluctant to change.
Life is life...
At a time, I was thinking of building a kind of DDT engine and
emulate most, if not all of PB functions.
PB had a real good error detection while compiling,
this is the only thing I could really miss,
I sometime think that O2 could have more adepts with a little shine on that side.
I still believe that you got the best compiler.
I'ts a pure beauty.
Glad to know you are fine Charles.
Take care...
( Take care you to Theo)
QuoteI still believe that you got the best compiler.
I'ts a pure beauty.
I agree...
And i don't want to change it with any new 32/64 bit compiler
I am user of Oxygen Basic more than 10 years.
all best
Hello
@Charles Pegge,
Yes, that is absolutely true. I also appreciate your development work a lot, even though I am not able to use it at the moment. I follow it with interest, so it would be unfortunate if you decided to abandon it.
I understand both your family circumstances and your health situation; please feel free to ask me for advice on either matter whenever you need. As always, I wish you the very best.
Additionally, I am aware that England is facing significant challenges at present, and I would not recommend going there. The situation appears even more difficult than in Germany, which is also experiencing a downturn, as you can see.
I have seen
@Charles Pegge today, he was logged on to the forum, but it seems he didn't write anything.
Ich habe Charles heute gesehen 👀. Er war im Forum eingeloggt 💻, hat aber anscheinend nichts geschrieben 🤔.
#Charles #Forum #OnlineAktivität #Beobachtung #Community #HeuteGesehen #Internet #Mystery #WerIstOnline #Neugierig 🤳🖥�👤❓👀💬🌐🤔🕵��♂️
Hi Theo,
I am still here, lurking in he background. I won't abandon Oxygen, but time is limited, and AI poses a significant challenge to our traditonal techniques of software development. At least I will continue to be a user of OxygenBasic foe my projects but I need more physical activity and less time computing, to maintain good health.
As for UK politics, we have a very inept government, a serious housing shortage causing property to become unaffordable, and a mad net-zero policy that makes our electricity the most expensive in the world. It's not sustainable.
PS:
PBusers.org is now up and running. The registration issues have now been resolved:
https://pbusers.org/forum/index.php.
Nobody expects PowerBasic to come back on-line even though the domain has been renewed for another year.
QuoteAt least I will continue to be a user of OxygenBasic foe my projects
me too
at least i try to make thing called Deep Basic using Deep AI and translate it to OyxgenBasic
in first for fun.. :D
oh boy
on that forum Charles gives a link is a
dude called Alverez and his PluriBasic ..translator i guess
such a mess , so why bothering with Pluri when we can use PB or OB or even Java
OMG ::)
I checked that Forum its quite empty at this time.
The Richheimer Forum has more people but i can't enter.
So i will stay with you all here.
After all this Forum is the most beautiful, just from Design.
And it contains still the most Content.
@Charles Pegge I understand the Point Charles, the situation in germany is a comparable mess.
If you need hints or vitamins you can ask me i can give you adresses where you can order.
At least watch you take enough Magnesium and D3 during the winter.
Hi Aurel!
Theo, do you mean PUMP forum won't let you register?
In case you did not know, there is also https://pbusers.org/forum/
One thing for sure Charles, it would have been great to have more coders to adopt o2,
to make the snow ball go bigger and bigger.
It is still the most beautiful implementation of what BASIC is meant to be in my mind.
Hallo Pierre
Since I am using KI I do not really need the Forums for technical questions anymore.
The new Grok 4.1 and the new Gemini 3.0 are exceptionally capable of writing mostly bug free code for everything at a fingertip. Before I used Qwen3 Max which is also very good.
Also in Powerbasic. So why waste Time with Richheimer & Co. ?
If he does not want my code i will poste it here.
TO be more clear. The quality of the code that Gemini 3.0 spits out is so exceptional that you could even do a large project like an assembler or linker or an compiler in your free-time.
It doesn't mean you get something great in no time- for that you will anyway need the experince of time - which for example charles has. He could make significant improvements now using AI with his project.
I had no idea about JSON and http-Protocol when i started, and i made the MCP-Server 01 which relies heavily on this stuff. Of course i could have done it in Python with much less trouble. But i wanted a reliable compiled Executable that runs without any dependencies. So any .NET or Python or C# was not an option.
I could then have used Purebasic which has libraries for JSON and HTTP, but the string engine is zero-based thats a problem for me so i used Powerbasic and made my own libraries.
See:
PS: Its free for download, you can all just download it.
> but the string engine is zero-based thats a problem for me
What this means?
> so i used Powerbasic and made my own libraries.
The code that you posted uses ansi strings, so it can't be used with unicode.
It also uses several global arrays. Not good for reusable code.
QuoteHi Aurel!
Hi Pierre ! :)
yeah i agree with you 100%.
by the way ..i try to do some Deep AI translation to o2 and seems that work
but i must be very precise
all best...
Quote from: José Roca on November 19, 2025, 09:43:06 PM> but the string engine is zero-based thats a problem for me
What this means?
> so i used Powerbasic and made my own libraries.
The code that you posted uses ansi strings, so it can't be used with unicode.
It also uses several global arrays. Not good for reusable code.
I definitely did not use the code i have posted, but a much more advanced version.
The code i posted was just the first strike that i got from the KI.
The final code is more like a spider-web takes sll's and includes from multiple places of my hard drive so it can not be easily shared. Yet if you need something you can always ask.
Quote from: José Roca on November 19, 2025, 09:43:06 PM> but the string engine is zero-based thats a problem for me
What this means?
Purebasic has only 2 variants of using Strings(Data).
You can use the normal zero-terminated strings or you can use "Memory".
As the typical BASIC User i like to keep all data in strings,
where it has a name is easy to handle and the Compiler will take care of allocation and deallocation.
The problem with 0-terminated strings is just that they can not be used for binary data because it may contain a ZERO.
For me these strings can only be used for Textboxes. So i would have needed to use the Memory System which is too much C-like with all disadvantages. So i avoid that unless for a prototype.
"Hi Charles,
I wanted to join those who are saying that O2 is truly something exceptional. I feel the same way. Even though I've only tested a few features so far, I am very happy with it. I would be very sorry if the project were ever abandoned.
I noticed some of you have been discussing AI. I tried to write a few programs in O2 with the help of Copilot and Gemini, but they tend to 'invent' functions. They write code that simply doesn't exist in O2. For instance, I tried to perform some image transformations on comics, and even then, they were making up non-existent O2 functions.
I just wanted to say hello to everyone here on the forum.
A big hug to you all!"
Postscript. I had Gemini translate what I wrote above... he got offended, he wrote me that if I send him working examples, he won't make things up anymore :-))
This was completely predictable, Nicola. 🤖
Forums used to be the go-to places for hard-to-find technical expertise. Now, with AI, you can ask any question, and if one AI doesn't know, you simply try another until you get the answer you need. 💡 You really don't need forums for that anymore. These days, most of our discussions here are just casual conversation. Of course, if there are updates—like programming news from Charles, Josée, or Jürgen—that's different. AI can't provide personal project updates. But aside from that, there's barely any reason left to visit forums. It's pretty clear: AI isn't just replacing tax advisors, lawyers, and more; it's also making all kinds of technical advice obsolete. 🚀🧑�💻
#AICommunity #TechForums #KnowledgeSharing #ProgrammingAI #DigitalTransformation #FutureOfWork #Innovation 🤖💬🚀💻✨🤔
Hi Nicola,
I like Oxygen too, but I wonder whether AI will soon replace fixed programming languages entirely.
You could split the task into several stages for Gemini to produce more coherent results: produce algorithms then C++ then Oxygen code.
so called "AI" almost know nothing about Oxygen basic
and i think that this is good ...yes
Some people really think that AI can replace live programmer
in some cases probably will.
IF the coder aka prpgrammer don't know how to properly
ask AI then that one will get bad result.
And that is all hype about AI.
btw
number of downloads on sourceForge jump on 300 last week.
that is good i think... ;D