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Free IDE Gambas Reaches 1.0
A few months ago, the GPL IDE Gambas reached 1.0 release candidate phase, and now reader drfreak writes "Gambas has now hit 1.0 and looks promising as GNU/Linux's answer to Visual Basic. Now, if it ran in Windows too, it would truly crush VB for database applications. Check it out at gambas.sourceforge.net." A 1.0.1 release came out on January 3rd to fix a few bugs.
NI think that the project is good enough to try to get a new design (and a new logo).
This project with a more professional look can be a great success.
Any thesigners out there?
My city: Barcelona.
Rant and hiss all you want. This application has the potential to move an entire generation of mid-40ish "Windows and VB4 still works for me" people - who are basically stating the truth - to Linux / OSS enviroments.
And no Blahblah about Eclipse Basic being somewhere close to RAD or QTDevelop being a sort-of half way kinda RAD tool and "whats all the excitement about, I only need Perl and a few bazillion extra libs and dependency resoltions to write nice TK-Apps that are ugly as hell" will change that.
As for me, I'm sold. Congratulations to the Gambas team.
I haven't used it for a while, but back then it didn't have an MDI interface, which I didn't like.
I prefer all the windows to be under the control of a single parent window. I guess it's the same reason why the GIMP interface is kind of annoying.
However, on Linux, if you give the app it's own desktop to sit on, it's manageable.
-- The doctor said I wouldn't get so many nose bleeds if I just kept my finger out of there!
This project aims at making a graphical development environment based on a Basic interpreter, so that we have a language like Visual Basic(TM) under Linux(TM). The phenomenal quantity of bugs and inconsistencies that makes Visual Basic so delightful persuaded me to start this project ;-)
It seems that Microsoft is aware of the poor quality of its language, as VB .Net is not backward compatible with older versions of Visual Basic. I think they have thrown away the Visual Basic interpreter source code, and that VB .Net is just a .Net runtime compiler whose syntax looks like the Visual Basic one. Well, it's just my own opinion... ;-)
I want to clear up any misunderstanding immediately. Gambas does not try to be compatible with Visual Basic, and will never be. I'm convinced that its syntax and internals are far better than the one's of its proprietary cousin ;-)
I took from Visual Basic what I found useful : the Basic language, the development environment, and the easiness to quickly make programs with user interfaces.
But I dislike the very bad level of common Visual Basic programmers, often due to bad pratices imposed by the bugs and strangeness of this language. So I will try to make Gambas as coherent, logical and reliable as possible, and I hope that Gambas programmers will make effort in return ! ;-)
At the moment, I'm looking for programming help. The kernel of Gambas is now stabilized, if not well documented. There is a component example to help people learning how to write components.
I hope other people will join me to help to increase the possibilities of the language. There is so much to do !
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I don't like the "spread-out" IDE layout they've got going on here. It reminds me too much of the GIMP, and not in a good way. Perhaps it's my Windows background, but I want a single window with toolboxes and sidebars inside that window (see Visual Studio or KDevelop). This "Let's have a bunch of floating windows with nothing tying them together" approach just makes me think the developers are trying to copy Mac apps rather than Windows apps, with the main drawback of not having a single app menu across the top of the screen to tie everything together (yes, I know that various desktop environments can optionally move app menus to the top of the screen, but how consistent are they? Will they keep the menu from the "Project" window up top when I have the "Toolbox" window focused? Do they know that the "Properties" window and code window are related, and should raise together?). I'm not saying that copying from either is bad or wrong, just that if you're going to do it, do it right.
I guess VB is belittled not because of features, but because of the horrid quality of common vb apps.
...and so on...
And for the poor quality of the language.
And 'cause it tends to change and be incompatible from version to version
Will gambas apps be better than vb apps? If they are written by the same monkeys I don't think so.
The release of gambas IS great news, however, simply 'cause now we can reply to the endless "there is no simple RAD solution under linux" rants with "then use gambas, you fool!"
Ciao, Renato
I don't believe any open source solution in any near future could crush the Microsoft alternatives in the software development field.
The problem is that HERE marketing matters. Home users are free to pick a web browser or operating system of their choice. But when a big system for some business/industry is being developed, the platform decisione are made by the middle-to-upper management. And these guys really -believe- what Microsoft marketing people tell them. So the programmers, people who actually know a thing about the options don't really get the voice in most of the projects. "So... This guy at EXPO told me Visual Basic would solve all these problems. So we write the application in Visual Basic." There is no way the majority of the "big fishes" in programming could accept a hardly known free software language instead of the "famous, widely used Microsoft product" without the right marketing, and without some large funding behind the marketing...
Unless Sun, IBM or someone else with enough $$$ and not too much love for Microsoft backs up the project and takes care of marketing and promoting it. But the chances are very slim.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
Oh well ... but they *do* have funny wallpapers ... and notice the clever placement of the windows, guess MDI has its advantages after all :)
It's called "tile" and the goal is to make Tk look native on all platforms, in a 21st century sort of way.
http://tktable.sourceforge.net/tile/
Combine that with starkits, and you have 0 dependencies. Just distribute one file.
http://www.welton.it/davidw/
One glance at your post tells me you are trolling. So one look at a screenshot that is probably meant to showcase as much of the application as possible tells you that it is cluttered and unusable?
I'm impressed.
I'm also getting tired of this constant whining about not doing it the MS way. Interestingly I never see these kind of complaints about OSX software, though even MS products are not using an MDI interface on OSX. So not doing it the MS way certainly doesn't say anything about the usability of an app.
I can never understand this attitude towards VB.
The reliability of apps written in VB has nothing to do with the language, and everything to do with the programmer. If you slap some code together, run it to make sure there are no syntax errors and then release it as version 1.0 how is that a fault with Visual Basic?
Without wanting to blow my own trumpet, I get many emails thanking me for my useful, stable programs, every one of which is written in VB. They're not simple apps, either - my major project is over 6 megs of source code.
VB allows me to code efficiently, quickly and with a minimum of errors, and until I come across something which allows me to code even quicker, even more efficiently and with even less errors I'm sticking with it.
I'm not claiming to be some guru level programmer, I'm just pointing out that it's a bit hard blaming VB for bad software just because beginners can dash in and code the World's Best Program in their lunch break.
Anyway, look on the positive side: If all those beginners started out with C# you'd have thousands of crappy, bug-ridden programs written in that language, and the 'VB generates crap' argument would go up in smoke.
Hal Spacejock: Science Fiction with Nuts
No, it's not ok.
I wonder how tightly this is tied to the Basic implementation, and if it would be possible to switch the underlying language to something decent - say, python - without basically rewriting the whole mess?
Alright, slow down, here comes some hard to grok stuff:
Everything cool? Ok, let's go on...
Do you think that it's possible that the Linux community consists of DIFFERENT personalities with DIFFERENT opinions? Just maybe? And that the people who hate VB still hate VB and others who didn't think VB sucks to start with started this project?
I know, I know, this was too hard for you, but maybe try to sleep a few nights over it, maybe one day you will be able to understand such difficult concepts...
Loads of top-level tool windows is a usability nightmare. It os not intuitive at all, and a new user has a hell of a time figuring out what things are in what window.
There is a reason both the Gnome and KDE projects have HCI guidelines. And this app doesn't follow either of them.
That's not true. You have to license the software if you wan't the IDE. You can develop very happily from the command line and compile and distribute or sell till your heart is complete via the .NET SDK. You get free compilers and headers and access to 100% of the features of the .NET runtime.
Plus there are *never* any runtime or distribution royalities.
Ohh, one more thing. If you are a VB programmer or a C# programmer, you should investigate Mono with GTK#.
For anyone who's never seen the error message above: can Gambas programs be compiled and distributed without being packed solid with loads of seperate controls and libraries? Or would the user have to download and install gambas him/herself?
I actually downloaded the source a few days ago and compiled and installed it. I find that it is a extremely well done VB like environement for linux. Any day I can get a decent programming ide complete with the source and licensed under the GPL it is a wonderful day.
1. The app uses multiple windows but guess what if you don't like that then make it a single window interface. The ide is written in gambus so a little refactoring and you can have a single window interface.
2. It is extremely complete for a 1.0 release and the design of the interpreter, debugger, libraries are all rather complete.
3. I can build a gui front end to a my sql table with barely a dozen lines of code.
4. The language is not actually VB it is improved and corrected VB.
5. It had a project packager that is extremely well done.
6. The forms designer is fairly top notch and easy to work with.
Ok when all you cry babies get done writing your own interpreter, compiler, ide and make it work even half as well come back and talk to me, till then shut up. No I have no involvment in the project other than using it a little but I applaud the developer for his efforts.
It is a gift people, treat it as such...
Got Code?
God, you people can be such bastards.... .NET? .NET compatibility, Python plug-ins etc.
Here is a guy, single handedly building a full, self-hosted, VB-like development environment on Linux as a gift to the community and all you people do is shit all over his project.
Why Basic? Why QT? Why MDI? Why funny pictures on the main page? Why not
Python is better! Realbasic is better! Mono is better!
It's open source for crying out loud!! Don't like MDI? Change it! (after all it is self hosting) Think REALBasic is better? Fine, go buy that then! Prefer Mono's VB? OK, sit around and wait a bit longer. Don't like the site's informal look? Where is your mockup of a better one then?
Let's face it. The only reason you're all bitching (most of you anyways..) is that you're too THICK to change any of it! I'm reading the developer forum and I see no patches coming in from any of you offering SDI, GTK+,
Bunch of ingrates....