Page 1 of 1
Tutorial?
Posted: Mon Jan 13, 2025 11:30 pm
by JackieBlue
Hi.
Is there no tutorial for Spider Basic? Not even a hello world? I do not even see a way to get started in exploring it. I have quite a bit of experience (although dated) but looking at the documentation there is nothing to really get you started. The language itself makes sense since it is just a BASIC derivative but I don't see how to create user interfaces or the basics of program flow. Anywhere to point out to? Thanks.
Re: Tutorial?
Posted: Tue Jan 14, 2025 12:43 am
by swan
When you installed SB a bunch of examples were also installed. Look under ProgramData/SpiderBAsic.
Re: Tutorial?
Posted: Tue Jan 14, 2025 1:51 am
by JackieBlue
Thanks, but I would not exactly call those tutorial. Especially if you are trying to evaluate.
Re: Tutorial?
Posted: Tue Jan 14, 2025 9:04 am
by falsam
Without installing Spiderbasic, you can test each example by clicking on the play button.
https://www.spiderbasic.com/showcase/onlineviewer/
Re: Tutorial?
Posted: Tue Jan 14, 2025 3:19 pm
by Paul
No, there are no tutorials.
It is assumed you already know how to code in BASIC and there are code snippets/examples in the Help File and Examples folder showing how to use every command available.
By looking at the snippets/examples you get a very good idea how to write applications in SpiderBasic.
If you don't know how to program in BASIC, that's when you will have problems since the snippets/examples won't make much sense.
Re: Tutorial?
Posted: Tue Jan 14, 2025 4:28 pm
by Fred
You can also look at
https://www.purebasic.com/documentation ... rview.html
as it's very close to SpiderBasic
Re: Tutorial?
Posted: Tue Jan 14, 2025 8:56 pm
by JackieBlue
Thanks folks for the response. Yes, I know Basic (starting with Commodore and through VB 2017 or so) and several other languages, including C although I have not programmed professionally in a long time. I was hoping to find a tutorial first, especially for the UI to get up to speed quickly. Looking at the code it seems that generating the UI is not straightforward but perhaps the gadgets make it more so. I will continue to look at the code but even a superficial glance at some examples results in SB not being a good fit for what I have mind for my use case. PB might be a good option (I have looked at in the past) but I can do the same in .net. SB seems to be better suited for a mobile app rather than web development since data can only be saved locally and not on the server.
If I do end up deciding on SB I will see about provided a couple of short tutorials to get people started. There are lots of people who might have great uses for SB but have limited experience reviewing code.
Re: Tutorial?
Posted: Tue Jan 21, 2025 7:25 pm
by bembulak
Hi & welcome to the Party!
As SpiderBasic (SB) and PureBasic (PB) are so similar, you can look for any PureBasic Tutorial. This will get you up and running quickly! The integrated help is also a great resource. And there's the “examples” folder, that come with the installation. There you'll also find a lot of help.
I know — it's not what you might have been looking for. But most of the folks here are long term PB users (

I just looked this up, and it's 25 years now for me) and therefore might need less help to get started.
However, feel free to post here anytime. We're all willing to help. And in regard to the new mobile-UI: I love it, but I also struggle sometimes.
Edit: I don't know, how much of these are still online (wayback-machin might help) and valid for current versions of SB/PB, but it's a start:
http://purearea.net/pb/english/tutorials.htm
And there's Gary's book:
https://archive.org/details/Purebasic-A ... rogramming