In SX Microcontrollers, SX/B Compiler and SX-Key Tool, kgracey wrote: Hey Bill, Always be yourself and nobody else! I appreciate what you're saying and we're mostly in agreement on the issue. I agree that SX/B is a language similar to PBASIC, but is also another version of BASIC that was customized to fit the SX between Jonny Mac, Bean, Guenther, Peter + Peter, and the forum users. And there's no reason that a Prop BASIC need to closely reflect a BASIC Stamp BASIC. BASIC is a language that would open the doors to the Propeller for so many people, including the massive number of PBASIC programmers we've developed through the years. And I agree that Parallax and our customers would benefit from such a compiler. I'll share our current approach towards the imaginary PropBASIC product at the moment. As a company we've considered and discussed this kind of project several times. On staff we have up to two people who could do the compiler work, yet these people are working on projects related to Propeller 2. We still have some Propeller IDE improvements to make before we had resources available to write a compiler. We don't easily hire these kinds of positions at Parallax - at least in our history the people who can do these jobs have come up in the company for several years. We've got some really good engineers on the team other than the guys who could write compilers, but they're dedicated to PropScopes, WiFi BOEs, and some sensors. Therefore, we're looking towards our community to help us on this one, much like Bean did with the SX (and you were happy with his efforts, right?). The Propeller has had no shortage of tool developers, ViewPort, compiler efforts, FemtoBasic, multi-OS IDEs, etc. The SX has had less a quarter of these external (community-driven) efforts we've already seen for the Propeller. Somebody, somewhere, somehow will provide a BASIC => Spin or ASM tool to ease the entry into the Propeller for many people. And whoever succeeds will hopefully have a business arrangement with Parallax so we could distribute that compiler as part of the Prop IDE -- for free. At this point, I think the user community has a better chance to make this happen than Parallax. I'm personally aware of three PropBASIC efforts out there right now. Not sure how they would handle the complexities of the objects written in Spin/ASM. I'd imagine that this tool would be fairly light-duty in features, mostly creating a top-level file in Spin. Secretly, out of the view of our customers, I'm hoping that people pick up our resources and give Spin a chance. Chip says he could describe the simplicity of the whole language in 20 pages. . .but he doesn't really like to write. The efforts we ARE taking are what Jonny Mac mentioned above - a tutorial showing PBASIC to Spin examples. While we develop this effort perhaps we will see some compiler progress. Jonny Mac has delivered successfully for Parallax many times. . . especially when his heart is in the project. Sincerely, Ken Gracey ---------- End of Message ---------- You can view the post on-line at: http://forums.parallax.com/forums/default.aspx?f=7&p=1&m=373927#m374312 Need assistance? Send an email to the Forum Administrator at forumadmin@parallax.com The Parallax Forums are powered by dotNetBB Forums, copyright 2002-2009 (http://www.dotNetBB.com)