Text 1147, 110 rader
Skriven 2009-02-18 12:16:38 av Mike Luther (1:117/3001.0)
   Kommentar till text 1146 av Roger Nelson (1:3828/7)
Ärende: Re: OS/2 Basic
======================
Roger ..

 HG> There's more!
 HG> Don't forget the CA-Realizer v2.0, according to the description
 HG> "The Complete BASIC Application System for Windows and OS/2" released
 HG> by Computer Associates.

 RN> I've been away from OS/2 for 14 years.  That will end sometime this year 
 RN> and then I'll look into compilers for it.  I'm still 
 RN> smoldering over the loss of my IBM BASIC Complier in 
 RN> the storm of 2004.
 RN>  
 HG> I have it here.
 RN>  
 RN> Thanks.

In reference to the CA-Realizer v2.0 there is one more little pig trail. One of
the floppies that was released with it was upgraded with a needed change in the
application for compatibility with something back when it came out.  I think I
have that modified install diskette or whatever the file was which has to be
substituted for it if you use in with later versions of whatever this was.

If my memory is correct, I got mine from Will Hartzell up in the Dallas,Texas
area.  If needed maybe I can dig up all this too.

You folks might also want to know that as was mentioned here I think,there was
an early release of Visual Basic for OS/2 by IBM.  I have it here and did early
install it to see if I could go forward from the early release of Microsoft's
Basic compiler for OS/2 that was created by Gordon Letwin when he crafted the
M/S compiler and also worked out the original OS/2 operations after he was
'recruited' from the HeathKit folks.  It was from his HDOS (conversion from
CP/M) at HeathKit that this suddenly 'appeared' as MSDOS!

I actually have a copy of the hardbound book "Inside OS/2" by Gordon Letwin
which explains a *LOT* about all this mess.  "Please don't poke, tease or feed
the the animal!", from the sign on his door at Microsoft.  When he was busy
doing all 'this' when Misrosoft erupted from OS/2 and IBM back when ....

What you also need to know about the IBM Visual Basic for OS/2 is that it is
*NOT* a compiler.  It is an interpreter application!  It takes a very long time
to load whatever you give to it.  Makes a HORRIBLE platform especially for
using with any design which uses SHELL techniques for calling additional
executables from within a running OS/2 executable in Visual Basic.

There is a bit more to this story, told me by an internal employee which way
back was working with Bob Zale of PowerBasic.  I cannot confirm this with Bob. 
But as it was told me, when Bob, who was the creator of TurboBasic, who split
and took it all with him to become PowerBasic, was working toward the future,
designing the path for it, he actually completed a complete release for
PowerBasic compiler suite for OS/2!

Based on his promise to me that it was there and was soon to be released at the
Las Vegas show and offered that was *WAY* beyond either the M/S Basic
Professional Compiler for OS/2 which I was using at that time or even Visual
Basic, I was convinced that I should move a huge suite of programming to
PowerBasic formum in that conversation with Bob.  I did so.  That to also
cooperate with development work with him, OS/2 and so on.

Now .. the horrible part.  Again this is as told to me by ex-employee source, I
cannot verify it. OK?  For the Las Vegas show that year, and as I was
completely shaking with what was to be the whole future ahead for me, us, so
told me, Bob went to Vegas and set up for the release.  I was *NOT* there.  I
could not afford to even go there.

Suddenly, the evening before the show opened, someone from IBM stepped up to
Bob.  They told him that if he released the CD's and instruction books he had
already brought en masse for the show, they would bury him in financial misery!
 They would convert the entire Visual Basic application to a formal compiler! 
And they would give the entire Visual Basic suite away FOR FREE both in OS/2
and Windows.  They would destroy him financially!  Scrap the whole OS/2 stuff
or else.

As told me, Bob had nothing else he could do.  He completely abandoned the
entire PowerBasic product line for OS/2.  More important, he then also made the
deal to cooperate with Bill Gates and morph the entire PowerBasic product line
to Windows!  Which he absolutely did.  Although the PowerBasic DOS product line
has continued to evolve for DOS and is a VERY VERY generally stable and
desireable product. And is hugely successful for Windows as well.  Sigh ..

I wish to very much state that I have nothing against Bob Zale here over this
issue and OS/2.  That despite the fact that my entire career at that point in
history went down the drain as to what I feel could have been the most
beautiful development platform that ever would have come out for OS/2 until we
have been presented Watcom C++ and GCC+ and so on.  For which, incidentally,
there are a couple things that still cannot be done in OS/2 that are duck soup
in DOS and Basic!  Strings and character sets are really not the same thing
when you get down to the assembly language part of handling number 65, number
66 and so on, especially with arrays which go from positive to negative array
pointer values in variable length string arrays in Basic for example.   ;)

We won't even go into Class rooms and Public (rest rooms? Grin!)

As a person who has time and again seen the real hurt from people and business
sources who destroy lots of parts of many folks' lives, I really have a great
deal of sympathy for what I was told happened to Bob that horrible day in Las
Vegas.  I don't blame him at all for what I have been told he had to do just to
survive.

But from actual experience at Visual Basic for OS/2 .. it is not what I think
the programmer of today should really consider for work in this era.  I've
never actually used CA Realizer, though I have it here and properly paid for
all of this.  Whatever ..


--> Sleep well; OS/2's still awake! ;)

Mike @ 1:117/3001

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