Subject: Re: Pro Compiler Oddity
From: Chris Richards <[email-masked]>
To: AMOS posting <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 21 Sep 1993 10:17:36 -0500 (CDT)

On Tue, 21 Sep 1993, Heiner Amthauer wrote:

> Hi Chris,
> 
> well, it's  know problem, that the compiler has some bugs. Your's is quite
> interessting. I had this 2 problems with the compiler:
> 
> 1. A proggy i wrote with AMOS Pro V1.0 does not work either with AMOS ProV2.0      nor the compiler
> 
> 2. A proggy i wrote with AMOS Pro V2.0 worked perfectly nice but the compiler
>    crashed while compiling it (NOTE ! not the compiled proggy crashed but the
>    compiler crashed WHILE compiling !) (i repeat myself, i know :). This should
>    never happen anyway. The file was only 13k size.
> 
> So, you see, at the moment the Pro compiler is more a bug than usefull stuff,
> but Francois promissed to work on it.

I got the compiler a week or so ago and one of the things that surprised
me the most was how well it worked.  I had heard of all kinds of problems,
but the only two that seem to have affected my programs (knock on wood)
are the way a few of my banks changed length (not a bug -- thanks for the
explaination) and the MAX command.  MAX does some pretty bizarre stuff so
I had to change to IF THEN statements which was not too hard to do.

I'm glad Francois will continue to debug the Pro Compiler, and that the
issue of whether he was dropping AMOS has been settled.  The way the Pro
Compiler is integrated into the editor is great.  No more SAVE AS to RAM
disk, compile, and OPEN NEW to compile -- just one menu selection.  I
especially hated it that if you hadn't TESTed your program you had to
re-SAVE AS, etc.

I got Blitz Basic II a few weeks ago (just before I heard it might be on
the cover disk -- as usual my timing is great) and even though it has some
great commands (like sprite collision with color register detection) I
still program in AMOS just because of the editor.  When I get around to
doing something with Blitz I'll post a decent comparison.  Actually, I
don't mind having gotten Blitz Basic II in an actual box rather that on a
cover disk.  I think with programming languages, if you don't have a good
manual to refer to you aren't going to go very far.  It's like people who
try to use AMOS somely from the cover disk version and the few articles
that have been published with it -- it's possible to do some good work,
but it sure is difficult to use everything the language has to offer.

Chris R

> 
> greetings
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------   
>   Heiner Amthauer  email: [email-masked]