[cplat]

I'm familiar with PureBasic (although didn't use it a lot). I got introduced to it in the 2000s (2000-2007 or something), along with DarkBasic, GameMaker, and the likes.

In today's era, however, I have not yet found a need to use a proprietary language.

[mdp2021]

PureBasic for Windows and Linux was released in 2000 (the Mac version is probably a little more recent, that for Amiga a bit older, and the latest for Raspberry PI is a few years old); a community got active in 2001.

> In today's era

In today's era it's still priceless to have a tool that * compiles to a native machine code executable; * is lean and fast - you can get results quickly and from a light efficient interface; * does pretty much anything (and in case you are missing anything in the native libraries, you can interface with external C libraries)...

And (subjectively) can be a real pleasure to use.

[anonzzzies]

That's true, but still almost no one wants to pay for that pleasure. People rather suffer day after day to save 50 bucks. Not saying purebasic is solid as I have never used it, but there are definitely times when I long back to the times when I could pay a few 100$ and get something that was batteries included and vetted without the breaking churn of people just dumping libraries online and hoping for the best.

[mdp2021]

Please note that there are free versions, with code size as a limitation. One can test if it is worth it, maybe upgrade if the need arises for bigger projects:

https://www.purebasic.com/download.php

https://www.spiderbasic.com/download.php

[cplat]

Yes, which is why the rest of my sentence is important. I said, “I haven’t found a need to use a proprietary language.” I didn’t claim that one will never be needed by anyone. :-)

[d3VwsX]

You could use Godot (has a nice set of GUI widgets in addition to the game-specific stuff) or Lazarus (Free Pascal IDE) for instance. I did not use Lazarus much, but Free Pascal as a compiler and the language is nice and stable and supports a long list of platforms, generating native code (including cross-compiling between many different pairs of platforms).

https://www.lazarus-ide.org/

[fuzztester]

it looks like spiderbasic is from the same company as purebasic.

there is a link at the bottom of the purebasic web site to the spiderbasic web site:

https://www.purebasic.com

mdp2021's comment also indicates that:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42349737

[cplat]

Yes, I’m aware, which is why it reminded me of PureBasic with which I’m more familiar. :-)