User:Eriksiers

If it's not listed, it's read-only... at best
Language	Proficiency
BASIC	My preferred language family
PowerBASIC	My overall favorite BASIC, and my overall-preferred IDE
REALbasic	What I use for Linux GUI
FreeBASIC	What I use for Linux-everything-else
Visual Basic	What I use for Windows GUI... for now
QuickBASIC	My preferred DOS IDE
Batch File	Somewhere between "decent" and "good"
UNIX Shell	Nowhere near as good as I need to be
C	I often write in BASIC, then translate
VBScript	I'm... okay...
PHP	Still learning
WeiDU	Still learning
Assembly	Read-only, for the most part
Pascal	Read-only, for the most part
Ruby	Read-only, for the most part
GML	Minimal knowledge
Visual Basic .NET	Minimal knowledge
Befunge	Shrug

Not My Favorite Languages
Languages	Reasons
QB64	Bloat, unnecessary library requirements, weird C++ code generation. Definitely not ready for prime time.
Liberty Basic	I have my reasons; let's leave it at that.

Somewhat obviously, my name is Erik Siers. I'm one of the BASIC cheerleaders on RC. (I can do other languages, but I prefer BASIC by a lot.)

I've been working on a VB4/5/6-to-ANSI-C/C++ translator for a while. A long while -- first got the idea several years ago. No released code as yet, but it's progressing... slowly. Really slowly. One problem is that I'm writing it in VB6, so that it can translate itself (a Self-hosting compiler). I also need to do it without using any API calls whatsoever. (Not that hard, but I've already had to kick myself a few times.)

(Another problem is that I have very little motivation to actually work on this project.)

I could use some help, actually. Anyone familiar with non-.Net Visual Basic, C, or (especially) C++ would be very much appreciated. If you wanna join the party, drop me a line.

Current events

I'm considering learning Lisp, or perhaps Scheme, or maybe Smalltalk or Prolog. This is meant to be a "career-enhancing" move, not a "for the hell of it" thing. Any advice or suggestions? (On my talk page, please.)

Operating Systems

I use a lot of OS's:

• Slackware Linux 13.37
  • Also Red Hat Enterprise Linux on my rackmount server -- but only until I get around to putting something else on it... maybe Slackware, maybe not
• Windows XP
  • Also Windows 7 and WinXP x64, for testing my programs
    • Win7 is way too slow on my system to be usable
• MS-DOS 7.1 (from Windows 98SE)
• Mac OS 8
  • Also System 7, on a different machine

I also toy around with numerous other operating systems under emulation (too many to list, but including every 32-bit version of Windows, and a few Linux distros).

My code contributions

Unless otherwise specifically indicated, I disclaim any rights I might have to any code that I have posted to Rosetta Code, and assign any appropriate copyright to Michael Mol. (Everything posted to RC is automatically covered by the GNU FDL anyway.) This specifically applies to code that I have posted. Other people's code that I have made changes to belongs to them, not me, and I disclaim any rights I might have to those changes.

• My very first RC edit was adding BASIC to the task Convert an integer into words (now Number names).
• My 100th edit was the QuickBasic -> QuickBASIC redirect page.
• My 250th edit was the Windows Scripting Host -> Windows Script Host redirect page.
• My 500th edit was re-adding the implementation template to PowerBASIC Console Compiler. (Sigh.)

So far, I've only created a single task -- Sorting algorithms/Pancake sort -- but I have ideas for a few more.

REALbasic

It should be noted that all REALbasic examples that I've written (which can be found by looking through my user contributions page) were written in REALbasic 5.5.5, which is several years old. (For comparison, this might be considered somewhat akin to writing in C90 instead of C99 (or C1X), or writing for the original VB.Net instead of VB2010 -- my examples will probably work under modern versions... but they might not. YMMV.)

Unsorted Code

Some stuff that I wanted to put up here, but don't have any idea how to categorize (or else they don't fit any one category very well, or whatever).

• Prime numbers
• to OS (I really need to update this one...)
• My email
• Alternate (broken) VB solution to the unbounded knapsack problem

Links

I put up my programming links on their own page. Have fun.

This is my Wikipedia user page.

This is my Sourceforge profile.

Sorting

Some neat pages that graphically display various sorting algorithms.

• http://sortvis.org/
  • Software to generate these images available here.
• http://www.sorting-algorithms.com/
  • This one offers a few different ways to compare various algorithms.
• http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Sort_algorithms
  • Also http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Animations_of_algorithms
  • And also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Nmnogueira#Graphics_and_Diagrams

My Sourceforge projects

• EEShell2 -- a replacement shell for 32-bit Windows
• IgrokYa -- a file type identifier (like file(1); originally part of Proxlat (below))
  • I've been working on this one recently; pretty close to an alpha release, I think
• KanjiFinder -- a tool to help English-speaking users find Japanese kanji
  • data files nowhere near complete
• Proxlat -- a general-purpose binary translator
  • effectively abandoned as freakin' impossible
• QuickRun a simple program launcher (started as part of EEShell2)
• Visible -- a Visual Basic-to-C/C++ translator
  • work stalled
• Erik's tools -- a small handful of tiny utilities I wrote
  • I really need to update this one...

Quote of the Day

Be a yardstick of quality.
Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected.
 -- Steve Jobs (R.I.P.)