Path: csiph.com!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: John Ames Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc Subject: Re: Fancy-smanchy installers that don't work? Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2025 09:00:25 -0700 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 29 Message-ID: <20251015090025.0000151f@gmail.com> References: <7dlhrlxmm6.ln2@Telcontar.valinor> <10c908i$3600i$2@dont-email.me> <68ea7364$0$12948$426a74cc@news.free.fr> <10cg2nd$1dscj$5@dont-email.me> <10chrko$1ujff$1@dont-email.me> <1NucnWt3DZqBMHH1nZ2dnZfqnPGdnZ2d@giganews.com> <10cig9g$23kb8$2@dont-email.me> <10cjsig$2gp1i$2@dont-email.me> <34ecncooOcDVeXP1nZ2dnZfqn_WdnZ2d@giganews.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Injection-Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2025 16:00:29 +0000 (UTC) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="9cd691b0dfb46c0c45944ca2963f1ca5"; logging-data="3917193"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1/+Y6UJDa4aj1f4OuaP9f/MqUiLD9v+/KY=" Cancel-Lock: sha1:+f3SJ+BsCU5gYJteM3k/EDhYYp0= X-Newsreader: Claws Mail 4.3.0 (GTK 3.24.42; x86_64-w64-mingw32) Xref: csiph.com comp.os.linux.misc:76200 On Tue, 14 Oct 2025 20:01:12 -0400 c186282 wrote: > Did lots of BASIC programs, but was kind of out of that before it > ever became "visual". Turbo Pascal ... and BASIC went into the bottom > drawer. > > However IF you keep it strict and straight you can do very complex > stuff with BASIC and it works as well as lots of other languages. VB's biggest strength was that it combined a well-known, accessible language with an extremely straightforward UI builder, and did it some- thing close to "the right way round," presenting methods as browseable and editable components of the UI objects they applied to rather than making you dig through an object definition in a source file in search of the appropriate callback function.* Especially back in the Bad Old Days of Win16 programming, it was far and away the simplest way to go from zero to functioning GUI application... * (Of course it was defined the usual way in the raw source text, but the IDE handled things so that you didn't need to bother thinking about it...mostly.) ...but, unfortunately, the language spec was a little bit of a mess from the get-go, and only got worse the more stuff they bolted onto it, plus the runtime was more than a bit buggy :/ Shame, as I still haven't seen anything in the modern day that offers a comparably simple way to build GUI programs.