Hacker News Reader

Comment by joshstrange | Hacker News Reader

I have no clue who this is for but the red flags are popping up all over the place for me.

First page is incredibly flowery about what it is, to the point I still have no freaking clue what this is. Is it JS? Is it BASIC? Not clear at all.

Then I clicked the menu to see the docs and was surprised to see a “Pricing” tab “Uh, what? A paid language/transpiler? Immediate no”.

I started looking for docs and couldn’t find them, finally found them linked at the bottom of the Support page… Obviously that’s where it’d be…

Lastly the docs are hot garbage. A page of links to single pages without navigation to the rest of the docs. What year is it? Oh and “Getting Started”? Yeah, it talks about their custom IDE, and that’s the final nail in the coffin (that was already pretty sealed up).

View on HN

> I still have no freaking clue what this is. Is it JS? Is it BASIC?

> (Website:) SpiderBasic is new web client-side programming language based on established BASIC rules. Its allows development of very complex, windowed based web applications, including mobile app for iOS and Android [...] SpiderBasic is a compiler which generates optimized JavaScript

It is a BASIC based language (and tools - e.g. an IDE, if you wish) that compiles into Javascript.

«windowed based web applications»: since the original PureBasic, the language and tools that compiled to native executables, (also) allowed to build windowed applications (complete original GUIs), SpiderBasic, the product in the same family for the Web, also allows to have windows and desktop-like controls in a webpage (optionally).

> the docs ... a page of links to single pages without navigation to the rest of the docs

??? The online documentation is hypertextual, each page linking to the relevant other pages - as it should be. In real practice, documentation is directly accessible from the IDE (optional but a real asset).

> It is a BASIC based language

By which they mean Object Pascal, but I suppose expecting a line-number BASIC these days is a bit much.

You could say it's BASIC from details such as "the statements separator is the colon".

About OO: the language is not made to do that - it uses a different paradigm -, but in SpiderBasic you could exploit the OO features of JS e.g. using inline JS.

I’d love to see the age of each commentor. So many of these comments reflect either lack of depth (experience), or simply near-sightedness.

Like joshstrange I want to love this but it's hard. I echo the comments about the front page. It's a lot of marketing speak, but I could really use a 25 word version on what this is going to do for me and how I'm going to use it.

If I go to the examples, I get the chance to see a ton of example programs. But I'm dumped into an IDE that I've never used. One change would be to put a run button as a top menu choice. It would be really helpful if the programs had a comment at the top about what the program will do.

I also looked in the FAQ pages hoping for a "how does this work" "how do I use this" etc. and also just got two questions about "how do I pay for this".

Josh got downvoted pretty hard, (and I guess I'll follow), but he had some spot on comments.

> a lot of marketing speak

I have just re-read the page, I cannot see a single instance of «marketing speak». What do you mean?

> I'm dumped into an IDE that I've never used

To get started, [F1] for the documentation (also cursor-contextual) and [F5] to "compile and run" will suffice¹. It's a lightweight IDE, a "type in the text editor and run, you can learn features and configure preferences later - easy first, complex if you need" thing.

¹: <menu> > 'Compiler' > 'Compile/Run [F5]' (first row)

¹: <menu> > 'Help' > 'Help... [F1]' (first row)

> if the programs had a comment at the top about what the program will do

The purpose is just "minimal code for a simple demonstration of the area in the filename": "2DDrawing.sb", "Accelerometer.sb", "Array.sb", "CanvasGadget.sb", "Cypher.sb"... A few dozen example files to cover the the language and libraries. The documentation also contains code snippets (as in "this is a common context for this command"), but the example files are full small programs.

> "how does this work" "how do I use this"

The documentation in the website is at https://www.spiderbasic.com/documentation/ - it is linked in the first paragraph and it is in the "Support" section of the top menu. Otherwise, with the software installed, the documentation is offline ([F1] opens it).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com