Powerbuilder 10



  • Came out in 2004.

    • it has no intellisense
    • it has no proper search method (project, solution)
    • it crashes. a lot.
    • it crashes when you save
    • it doesn't save when it can't compile
    • it didn't compile because you didn't know the method names
    • you didn't know the method names because it HAS NO [BEEP]ING INTELLISENSE in 2004 and neither did it HAVE A [BEEP]ING SEARCH

    It SuXXors.

    Also, unhelpful error messages.

    if lower(s_foo) = 'bar'

    results in "Syntax error", without any indication whether that was the lack of brackets (no), the exact spelling of lower (no), single vs double quotes (no)  or the lack of then (that was it).

    And I'm stuck with it for now. I can't wait to get back to Visual Studio. VB5 came out in, what, 1998? and it was WAY better than this crap. Don't these guys occasionally look at what the competition is doing?



  • <FONT color=#0e774a>www.isug.com</FONT>
    <FONT color=#0e774a></FONT> 
    <FONT color=#0e774a>This way even if your company are cheap bastards they will get PowerBuilder 11 for free.  I am fondly remembering my time with CBuilder and like to formally thanks MS for VS</FONT>


  • Thanks, I'll give that a try,

    I just found an interesting way to crash powerbuilder (and if I say interesting I mean extremely annoying): initialize a variable like this

    string ls_foo = as_paramname // as_paramname is passed to the function

    Apparently you can't do this, which is ok to me. But you don't get an error, no warning, it just goes boom, even with the latest servicepack.



  • intellisense is a trademark I think. The correct term is code completion.



  • I don't care if they call it Code Crap-o-matic. But if someone at Sybase is scratching his head wondering why nobody programs in Powerbuilder anymore, well, this is the stuff that makes an IDE good or great (or in their case, crap). Sure, they probably have it now, but that's way after they lost the battle.

    </rant>

    (the rant is not aimed at you Henke, thanks for helping ;)



  • Also, a full build on my 2010 laptop takes forever. 15 minutes now and it's half way.

    I worked from 2004-2007 with this crap and I'd completely forgotten how toxic this shit was. Argh.



  • @b-redeker said:

    I don't care if they call it Code Crap-o-matic.

    That's not what it's called?



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @b-redeker said:
    I don't care if they call it Code Crap-o-matic.
    That's not what it's called?

    No, because it isn't there. BTW, didn't you think that was a pretty good Blakeyrant impersonation?

    Oh, and the full build took more than an hour in the end.



  • @serguey123 said:

    www.isug.com

    I just looked at their site and on first glance, their logo seemed to incorporate a hand grenade (which turned out to be a globe). And on my PC at least, the KnowledgeCenter dropdown menu displays behind the video clip on the main page (oops!), so I had to go to another page to see all of that menu (which I realise IS for ISUG members only, but …). Maybe just me, but it seemed to fit the tone of this thread perfectly …



  • Interestingly enough, Powerbuilder 6 doesn't crash a lot, doesn't crash when you save and has a search functionality. Talk about aging like milk.



  • [quote user="Renan "C#" Sousa"]Interestingly enough, Powerbuilder 6 doesn't crash a lot, doesn't crash when you save and has a search functionality. Talk about aging like milk.[/quote]

    I worked with PB 6.5 for a year before migrating to PB10, and I remember it being a good thing, except for the crashes. 6.5 was pretty stable indeed. That's the weird thing, I remember thinking it had a lot of functionality that 6.5 was sorely missing, but now, having just programmed in VS2008 for a bit, I feel like both of my hands are tied behind my back, I have a blindfold on and I'm typing with my forehead.

    So of course it's not fair to compare PB10 (2004) to VS 2008. But I remember working on a side project in VB6 at the time and that was always a relief, IDE-wise.



  • @b-redeker said:

    [quote user="Renan "C#" Sousa"]Interestingly enough, Powerbuilder 6 doesn't crash a lot, doesn't crash when you save and has a search functionality. Talk about aging like milk.

    I worked with PB 6.5 for a year before migrating to PB10, and I remember it being a good thing, except for the crashes. 6.5 was pretty stable indeed. That's the weird thing, I remember thinking it had a lot of functionality that 6.5 was sorely missing, but now, having just programmed in VS2008 for a bit, I feel like both of my hands are tied behind my back, I have a blindfold on and I'm typing with my forehead.

    So of course it's not fair to compare PB10 (2004) to VS 2008. But I remember working on a side project in VB6 at the time and that was always a relief, IDE-wise.

    [/quote]

    How about VS 2003 then, which still had functional intellisense and quality find and replace functionality.  It could also compile code without crashing and didn't (usually) take more then a couple minutes to compile (obviously project size and the possible use of 3rd party compilation tools can affect that part).



  • @b-redeker said:

    [quote user="Renan "C#" Sousa"]Interestingly enough, Powerbuilder 6 doesn't crash a lot, doesn't crash when you save and has a search functionality. Talk about aging like milk.

    I worked with PB 6.5 for a year before migrating to PB10, and I remember it being a good thing, except for the crashes. 6.5 was pretty stable indeed. That's the weird thing, I remember thinking it had a lot of functionality that 6.5 was sorely missing, but now, having just programmed in VS2008 for a bit, I feel like both of my hands are tied behind my back, I have a blindfold on and I'm typing with my forehead.

    So of course it's not fair to compare PB10 (2004) to VS 2008. But I remember working on a side project in VB6 at the time and that was always a relief, IDE-wise.

    [/quote]

    I'm usually full of shit, but on the serious tip, I'd like to relate a brief experience which you may or may not immediately discard as me being full of shit (See what I did there? The recursion? Oh, never mind...)

    I once had the displeasure of working on a total clusterfuck of a project, augmenting the staff of the most dysfunctional team I've seen since I moved away from home, and their shit code would actually crash Visual Studio 2005!

    I have no idea why, as I would've rather ponied up for a friendly game of Russian Roulette than I would to chase down this problem, but something in their many, many, but only slightly different, 4,000+ line Page_Load ASP.NET/VB.NET handlers, coupled with the hundreds of type casts per file (and a huge pile of WTF whose name should not be spoken) caused VS 2k5 to stop being able to compile once I applied a VS service pack. That is the only time I have had to explicitly NOT apply an upgrade, security be damned, due to a steaming pile of a codebase.

    I guess my point here is that it is, indeed, possible for the code to be such a twisted shitfuck of a pile of puke clusterfuck dickshit that the parser/compiler/whatever will just commit suicide and call it a day. I've seen it, and it seemed like a pretty good choice.



  • I just found out that Sybase was recently acquired by SAP. That is worrying. Extremely worrying.

    On the other hand, I just read some hopeful things about PB12. I'll just give the trial download a whirl and see where that gets me.



  • PB12 does have Code Crap-o-matic, although it's officially called AutoScript (I have to say I like my name better). It's not turned on by default though; you have to dig deep in the menus and find a tab on an options screen. Even better, when I'd finally found it, it turned out PB10 had it too (even better hidden). Go figure.

    It's still fairly underwhelming though, PB12 looks to be exactly the same as PB10 except for a couple icons that have been improved. However, there's also PB12.Net which actually uses Visual Studio (sounds good!) but unfortunately it refuses to migrate my project. No useful error message of course, all it tells me is:

    Migrating target Z:\pb12.net\ib.pbt
    Migration complete.
    Unable to add target Z:\pb12.net\wpf\ib.pbtx

    Hmm. I'm not giving up too easily though, now that I know I missed the Code C-o-M. To be continued.


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