PureBasic - A Beginners Guide

This book provides a quick introduction to the PureBasic programming language. PureBasic's popularity has increased significantly in the past few years, being used for many purposes such as rapid software prototyping, creation of commercial applications and games, Internet CGI applications, while some people just use it for small utilities. This book has been written, with the complete novice in mind. We all need to start somewhere and I believe PureBasic is a fantastic first leap into the programming world. With PureBasic becoming more and more widely used, many people are starting out and finding they need the occasional push in the right direction or need an explanation of a certain feature or oddity. This book is to guide novices through their first steps and to give the seasoned programmer a quick overview of the language.

Although this book covers the essentials of the PureBasic language, I've kept this book's scope quite narrow to make sure it's not information overload for new users. Sometimes this text will refer to concepts and syntax in a simplistic way to be used as a stepping stone to more advanced texts or as a complement to the existing PureBasic helpfile.

For example I won't talk much about how easy it is to use DirectX or OpenGL directly in PureBasic, otherwise this book would be triple in size and although topics such as pointers, threads and the Win32 API is talked about later in this book, don't expect too many fancy examples as I've only given an overview to such advanced topics.

PureBasic raises the bar to not only what a Basic language should be but also what all languages should be. Clean, uncluttered syntax, small compiled executable files and a fantastically active community of programmers. Hopefully this book will give you a clear understanding of the core features of PureBasic and the design goals and philosophies behind its creation and hopefully make you want to learn more.

Despite this books limited scope, I think you will find this a great first book on PureBasic which will also give you a solid grounding on programming in general if you were to migrate to other languages. You will learn everything you need to start writing useful standalone programs. By the time you've finished this book, you will have learned not only the essentials of the language itself, but also how to apply that knowledge to day-to-day tasks. You will also be better equipped to tackle more advanced topics as they come your way.