After a long time I decided to fix some little bugs in my MaxIDE X editor.
While doing this I discovered that in the source code I started (when?) to implement some functions to make it compatible (or better, usable!) with BlitzMax NG… so I decided to complete this feature.
Meantime I tested BlitzMax NG downloading the most recent source (mainly PUB, BRL and the tools BCC and BMK): it seems to work without problems (excluding the loooooong compiling time! and the mess about downloading the ‘right’ MinGW version…)
I tested NG compiling and running some basic examples (the original from the standard BlitzMax version) and I found that one (bench.bmx) is really faster when compiled in NG: about 23% on my machine (AMD PhenomII) (it’s an algorithm to find Prime numbers… so basically very CPU intensive.. no doubt that in the time the MinGW compilers are getting better!)
So I can say without problems that BlitzMax NG is just ‘ahead’ not only because is ‘future safe’ (about the 64bit support, mainly on the Apple side I think), but just because it allows better performances.
What we miss?
Well, at the moment (like I post in www.syntaxbomb.com) is the lack of a ‘more recent’ packaged .zip file: the one on line is about 1 year old, and in the meantime Brucey did many fix and updates.
Downloading, configuring and compiling it could be an interesting exercise, but honestly I didn’t found it so funny!
I prefer (even as hobbiest!) the old & working mantra “download, install and run“.
Of course Brucey can’t make everything, and miracle are not in his to-do list I suppose.
Even an ‘automator’ application to download and compile automatically things (a bootstrapper like it’s called) in this case could be more complicated and no so useful.
Another thing is to update the examples, make them Strict or SuperStrict (I made an alpha-application to do this, but never completed)
And on www.blitzmax.net I started to add the ‘differences’ between BlitzMax vanilla and BlitzMax NG.
Meanwhile I will continue my work on my MaxIDE X to make it ‘compatbile’ with BlitzMax NG.
