DBP does compile to assembly, you know. your programs get compiled to assembly with a hell of a lot of calls to the DLLs when you use any command/function. but all the actual code, math, your own functions etc. is compiled to assembly, not interpreted like the old DB.
purebasic is damn fast and it has a very nice commandset too. it compiles to assembly and has some more advanced features like pointers and inline ASM (able to write assembly directly into the purebasic code). just because basic is "higher level" doesn't mean it can't do everything C++ can. as an example, blitzmax is somewhat object-oriented even, it has member functions / procedures in TYPEs, and types can inherit from other types.
as for the DB vs BB crap - i'm not going to bring it up. but if you want, there's a demo of B3D on the blitzbasic site, and you can download it and see what you think. since you're so interested in all these languages
and why are there so many languages? simply because there are so many different people who all like doing different things different ways.
DARKBASIC:
function f(x)
print x
inc x
endfunction x
C++:
int f(int x)
{
printf("%d\n",x);
x++;
return x;
}
TURBO PASCAL:
function f(x : integer) : integer;
begin
writeln(x);
inc(x);
f:=x;
end;
same function, three different languages. fortran is kind of a dying language that looks a bit like BASIC. delphi is the newest incarnation of pascal/turbo pascal and is somewhat like visual basic in its target audience. then there are languages like perl, lisp, and python, which are used mainly for scripts.
here's something interesting. the same program, written in 621 different languages. there are a lot of BASICs
http://www.99-bottles-of-beer.net/
OK enough of that damn DBP fanboy banner. i'm NOT a DBP fanboy in any way. i haven't used DBP in over a year, and i don't really plan on using it again.
