Extras > White Paper > Why BASIC

Yes, speaking of BASIC — why did you choose this? Isn't BASIC a bit "amateur"?

We don't look at BASIC this way. In fact, calling a programming language "amateur" is an arrogant point of view. Tibbo's goal is to put the ability to create or customize embedded systems into the hands of as many people as possible.

And what is wrong with "amateur" anyway? I recall the days when programming for PCs was considered to be a domain of professionals. No mortal "word processor" user could dream of creating his or her own software. And then several companies — Microsoft, Borland — released a completely new kind of software development systems — such as Visual Basic or Delphi. These were actually easy to understand and master. Suddenly, just about anybody could write a Windows program! We can argue that VB, Delphi, and similar systems democratized software development for PC! This is exactly what we are trying to achieve for the embedded market. Now, you, the designer, and your customers, systems integrators, and their customers, end users — can all partake in this added flexibility!

System integrators? End users? You expect these to do some "easy" programming too???

Let me tell you — this is not as far fetched as it sounds! Take any professional industry segment... say, security systems, as an example. Supposing, you supply an access control panel. Typically, you sell to a Systems House, or System Integrator which add their software to complete your solution. The Integrator, in turn, will sell to Installers who do actual system installation. Finally, there is an end user who buys the system.

Now, what makes access control a good example is the fact that no two access control installations are ever alike. Customers always want customization. In most cases, this is done by adjusting myriads of configurable options (we talked about this already), but still doesn't add up to a 100% fit. Yes, customers accept this, but only because there is, for the most part, no other choice.

Tibbo BASIC and Taiko provide you with the way out. Create your system based on one of our modules, write a "default" application in BASIC, and provide the source code to trusted parties. Let the Systems House guys add some bells and whistles. Give value added resellers a chance to implement their ideas within your system (rather then think quietly about building their own solution). This will create immense new marketing opportunities for you! In fact, you can create a whole new micro-economy around customization of your product! Large software vendors like SAP understand this and build programmability into their systems. Strangely, the embedded market largely hasn't figured this one out!

Here is another concern — BASIC is considered to be a rather slow solution! Modern PCs have a lot of resources so even if you are writing your program in BASIC you get acceptable performance. Embedded systems are different — they need to be agile, use up minimum resources. How do you address this issue?

True, a "classic" BASIC interpreter would not perform well in the embedded world. This is why we had to create our own "Tibbo BASIC". Yes, it is all ours — we did not license any compiler from any third party (in fact, Tibbo always writes all of its firmware and software). Tibbo BASIC is specifically optimized to run on lightweight Tibbo devices and perform in an embedded environment.