NS Basic/Desktop Kudos - General

These are unsolicited comments from people who have used NS Basic/Desktop. The most recent comments are at the end of the file.

"Got the hang of it. Nothing left but filling in the blanks, to convert my palm program to PC. Got all the form stuff figured. Nice product...thanks for your followup...personal touch" Terrence Fagan

Your tools are really invaluable, the cost is always really low for what you offer. -- Fabrizio Cesare, Italy

Well done. You make a great job ! -- Uwe Gerhardt

I already ordered NS Basic and i already have one application running in a saw mill here in North Quebec. It works pretty well and a lot lot lot less heavy than VB net, express etc... Nice software -- Benoit Filteau

Your software is awesome! I've been working with Visual Basic for over 12 years now and I found your product to be as easy to slip into and work with as that product. -- Richard Edwards

After playing around with the demo it looks like this is my VB killer. I loved VB6 though it really had far more capabilities than I ever used. NSBasic may actually be a better fit for me than VB6. I tend to do simple programs: typically serial apps to connect to data loggers and other electronics that I make so serial comms and database capabilities are the most helpful. Never tried SQLite but I learned my way around Postgres and Mysql pretty easily. -- Patrick Meloy

I really like the concept of Instant EXE, but their support is not so good. I have a feeling they might be going away soon. Anyway, I have to move to another toolset and have a history with NSBasic 2.x for Palm

I'm focused on calculators because they gave me hope as a young adult and vision into the future, as in the case of forecasting. When I was a kid, my father gave me a little plastic adding device. I figured out how to use it and could forecast when we would get to grandma's house by watching the signs for miles to go. I never once had to ask "are we there yet." I want to build tools that students can use to bring vision in these troubling times. I'm sure that their parents could use some hope too.

Anyway, I'm disabled and waiting for my disability social security to kick in, and thought I'd take on this project while I still have time to do something constructive. I've considered several basic platforms, but none of them have helped me the way you have. Thanks!!! -- John Franklin, PhD

I've spent the afternoon testing some fairly complex VBScript and it works great with NS. And a lot better than having to recode it all .Net. -- Shane Dark, UK

I really think NSBasic/Desktop deserves more credit than 'just' being called a wrapper around Microsoft Windows Scripting Host.

Yes, the used VBScript-environment is exactly the same. But this is not really a bad thing, as VBScript is a mature and stable environment. Also, let's not forget that it's really easy to learn and master, yet still offers a lot of built-in functionality and respectable performance for most real-world applications.

NSBasic extended the language a lot. First of all by extending built-in statements that are not part of the official VBScript language, most of them for writing GUI programs.

Speaking of GUI programs, NSBasic added functionality to actually create GUI programs. So you can add Forms, GUI-objects, etc. all using VBScript code. Also, NSBasic delivers a very nice IDE, that creates this code for you "under the hood" while you drag-and-drop and position those GUI-controls. This generally saves you a lot of time and improves your productivity, while you can always resort to writing the code manually in those cases where it is appropriate. Version 4 even supports resource files, so that you can embed external files into your executable. Nice stuff.

Let's also not forget the extendability of the product. It supports existing ActiveX controls, but recent versions also support a lot of "classic" (native) DLL files. NSBasic/Desktop comes with a lot of great ActiveX controls that really enhances the possibilities a lot, yet can freely be re-distributed.

Finally, I really enjoy the fact that the program generates stand-alone executable files. Of course, if you use ActiveX or DLL files then you need to distribute them (and in the case of ActiveX DLLs register them in the registry) with your application though, but that is not NSBasic's fault.

I am a serious software developer at profession. I usually develop in Microsoft's C# at work. I've bought NSBasic/Desktop for personal use though and I think it can hardly be beaten for extremely rapid development of smaller to mid-sized GUI projects. People are probably using it for bigger projects too.

I still enjoy NSBasic though and think it's reasonably priced (in fact, with the current sales price, I think it's very good value. Compilers from many commercial non-Microsoft BASIC competitors cost quite a bit more).
-- Vincent