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Programming IT Technology

Free IDE Gambas Reaches 1.0 359

Posted by timothy from the activate-the-gimp-name-complainers dept.
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.
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Free IDE Gambas Reaches 1.0 More

Free IDE Gambas Reaches 1.0

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  • Best logo (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Uukrul ( 835197 ) on Wednesday January 05, 2005 @05:05AM (#11262116)
    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?

  • So now it's ok to like VB? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Ok, so when you have all the features you laughed and belittled in Visual Basic on linux, there ok all of a sudden?

    • Re:So now it's ok to like VB? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by RenatoRam ( 446720 ) on Wednesday January 05, 2005 @05:15AM (#11262144)
      I guess VB is belittled not because of features, but because of the horrid quality of common vb apps.

      And for the poor quality of the language.

      And 'cause it tends to change and be incompatible from version to version ...and so on...

      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!"

      • Code monkey (Score:2, Funny)

        by Uukrul ( 835197 )
        Code monkeys do the best that they could as you can see graphically [frmb.org].
      • We already have a nice, cross platform language and graphical toolkit - Tcl combined with Tk. Or Python, if you like that.
    • Well, with VB you can atleast release your program under whatever license you want without paying fees to a Norwegian company :-)
    • VB was only ever meant to be a rapid prototyping tool. You knock up a quick'n'dirty VB version as a proof of concept, then you write the proper version in a more robust language. Unfortunately the management/lazy coders almost always step in with "but we have a working version there.. lets release that".

      If people used VB in the way it was meant to be used noone would have any complaints about it. (well, fewer complaints at least..)

      • Re:So now it's ok to like VB? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Spacejock ( 727523 ) on Wednesday January 05, 2005 @06:07AM (#11262282)
        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.
        • You missed the point in my post. Coders write quick'n'dirty VB apps with the intention of redoing them in (for example) C++ later. The management then come in and want to release the quick'n'dirty version. I'm not suggesting you can't write robust VB code, I'm saying lots of people don't.

          Besides which, Microsoft realised people use VB as a proper language instead of a RAD tool now, and they smartened it up a lot a few versions ago. Go back to the mid 90s and VB was NOT a stable dev platform.
          • >Coders write quick'n'dirty VB apps with the intention of redoing them in (for example) C++ later.

            Back in the VB5/6 days i never heard anyone who did VB stuff that this is only meant as prototype. it was allways meant to be released as VB App. (with some DLLs written in VC++)

        • 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?

          There is one simple solution to all problems of your VB app: On error resume next; YEEHA!

        • Don't worry, if this was the Apple section, the same comments would be being made about RealBasic.
        • VB has really terrible exception handling which DOES make it hard to write reliable code. It also has pathetic data structures which makes it difficult to write efficient 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.

          What else have you tried? I'm doing some VB work at the moment, and I'm finding it bloody horrible - I'd much rather be using python or (ugh) PHP.

          VB is full of irritations - the almost-but-not exception handling (ON ERROR GOTO); the horrible inconsistencies, like a different syntax for calling f

      • VB is a Rapid Application *development* tool, not a Rapid Application *prototyping* tool.

        Of course, many can and do create prototype and throw-away applications using VB, but it is good tool for developing many serious Windows applications.

        If the design is right and the code is clean and maintainable, what exactly would be the advantage in recoding it in C++ (assuming execution speed is not an issue and even then, just critical parts can be written in C++ and put in a DLL)?

        I have developed app in VB and

    • VB with source (Score:2, Interesting)

      by oliverthered ( 187439 )
      Well I have two problems with VB.

      1: It's slow and easy to write bad code in so it shouldn't be used for anything other than a UI in a multi-tear system and shouldn't be used for large(anything more than a few hundred function points) systems.

      Gambas is still slow, so no wins there.

      2: VB was incredibly buggy, even for the things it was good for (rapid prototyping, simple to maintain UI's) it would sometimes crash for no apparent reason bot adding an extra hidden text box or a random print seemed to fix thi

    • Re:So now it's ok to like VB? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by juhaz ( 110830 ) on Wednesday January 05, 2005 @06:24AM (#11262314) Homepage
      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?

    • Re:So now it's ok to like VB? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      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...
    • I have always seen VB as a Bad Thing (and I see this in the same light).

      IMHO BASIC is not and never has been a suitable language for writing real world applications. Gluing all the extra functionality needed onto a language such as BASIC has always seemed like a really bad idea to me and IMHO a lot of the VB syntax is very inconsistent because of this.

      Additionally, I think that VB has probably single handedly cause a lot of buggy software to be introduced:

      - Any muppet can create something in VB that _lo
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • Right. There is a programming elite, and that elite should be trained to keep the unwashed masses from touching a compiler.

          Ok, badly worded - I didn't mean "prevent", I just meant to not make it too easy. The problem is that 9 times out of 10 the people buying the software aren't the people who are going to use it. So the buyers will pay for the cheaper software if it *looks* good, even if it's a bugridden pile of crap. This is bad for everyone in the long run.

          What ever happened to freedom? Open Sour
    • The vast majority of programmers I know say that the Visual Studio line has the best IDE interface they've ever seen, and write all their code in it, regardless of the target platform.

  • Killer Application (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 05, 2005 @05:06AM (#11262121)
    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.

    • Tk getting a makeover (Score:5, Interesting)

      by DavidNWelton ( 142216 ) on Wednesday January 05, 2005 @05:52AM (#11262244) Homepage
      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/ [sourceforge.net]

      Combine that with starkits [equi4.com], and you have 0 dependencies. Just distribute one file.
    • Well it does and it doesn't. Certainly it has the potential to move simple VB apps over, but apps that use OCX / ActiveX controls? Forget it.

      And that's part of the problem. VB was until VB6 such a hopelessly shitty language that it was impossible to extend it in interesting ways. Either you resigned yourself to using the meagre toolkit that it came with or you supplemented it with 3rd party controls (written in C++) that you bought elsewhere. Consequently only toy VB apps stand a chance of porting easily,

    • ...TK-Apps that are ugly as hell...

      Am I the only one who likes the Tk widgets? They're not ugly, they're clean and simple. They're just as nice or perhaps even better than the Win32 widgets.

      I think NeXTSTEP had the coolest widgets for its time, and these days there are some pretty nice GTK themes. But yeesh, why bash the Tk and Motif widget sets? Do you really find them that ugly? My only complaints about the look and feel of some Tk and Motif apps is when the designer has no concept of layout and makes
    • Absolute Bingo. Nice post.

      I see a major opportunity for Gambas and the hundreds (or thousands) VB/ASP shops that cannot afford to take the .NET plunge. An intermediary step would be a Godsend (with eventual consideration to a .NET interpreter..maybe).

      There are only three items that are missing: MSSQL support, Windows environment support, ASP/Apache.

      Even if companies do not decide to run it on a Linux platform, they would still want to switch their VB to Gambase because: a.) no lockin, b.) Support is o

  • Looks Good (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ibentmywookie ( 819547 ) on Wednesday January 05, 2005 @05:07AM (#11262122)
    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.

  • project's aims (from site) (Score:5, Informative)

    by mincognito ( 839071 ) on Wednesday January 05, 2005 @05:09AM (#11262126)
    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 !

  • Cluttered IDE (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Osty ( 16825 ) on Wednesday January 05, 2005 @05:12AM (#11262137)

    Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I don't like the "spread-out" IDE layout they've got going on here [sourceforge.net]. 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 [kdevelop.org]). 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.

    • Re:Cluttered IDE (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Lussarn ( 105276 ) on Wednesday January 05, 2005 @05:36AM (#11262209)
      I don't think they are copying either windows or mac, they are merely following what have been the unix way for the last 10 years. On unix we have virtual desktops and they are there to be used.

      • BS (Score:4, Insightful)

        by brunes69 ( 86786 ) <slashdot AT keirstead DOT org> on Wednesday January 05, 2005 @06:45AM (#11262373)
        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.

    • "Let's have a bunch of floating windows with nothing tying them together"
      Wrong! The Virtual Desktop is there to tie them together.

      So, yes you're right. It's your windows background...

    • Re:Cluttered IDE (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Tarwn ( 458323 ) on Wednesday January 05, 2005 @06:26AM (#11262319) Homepage
      I agree with your sentiments, despite what other may say. That is/was the biggest turn off for Gimp for me. I actually find it to be an obstacle in using the program because there is nothing tying them together (maybe it's a coneptual gap, I don't like having to think about it every time). I don't necessarally need my applications to all have slide-out tool panes like Visual Studio, but a background container with the option to dock windows on the sides or toolbar does wonders for keeping all the various bits of the application together, allowing me to focus on doing what I am doing without accidentally switching focus to a browser or terminal I left open.
      Sure once I get everything shuffled to another window I don't worry as much, and some people might be comfortable "outside the box" with their applications, but I would prefer to stay inside the box, thank you. I don't think this is a revolutionary interface design concept, I think it is an interesting one that doesn't quite work as well as was expected.

      If I am going to work on an application then my preference would be to siomply work on it, without pausing every 5 seconds to think about where to find a toolbox i sent to the background. Now in window 3 of 4 and crap, did I lose 4 somewhere?
      That's one of the elements I liked about Paintshop Pro: the floating, dockable, collapsible menus. Everything was kept in the one application area and you could pretty much put the boxes anywhere you wanted, but being inside that window made the toolboxes naturally belong to the application. Plus I could get more screen acreage simply by allowing them to collapse, without losing them into the background.
      • Another way of looking at it though is that monitors just arnt big enough - plugging two in at once is a help

        My prediction for the year is the 27 inch flat screen monitor being a surprise hit...

        Speadsheets wear out my wheel mouse, toolbars get disabled on every application, icon docks / start bars autohide and now we have twenty mdi window applications.

        Give me more screen!!
    • Perhaps it's my Windows background, but I want a single window with toolboxes and sidebars inside that window (see Visual Studio or KDevelop).

      Agreed. But some of these let you undock windows so you can essentially make it look like a bunch of windows anyway. Personally, I want a single full-screen background saying "now I'm in the IDE", since I usually have a dozen other programs running. And that makes it natural to place stuff on the "edges", be they separate windows or not.

      Kjella
    • Well, not that it's entirely an only-OSS problem, of course.

      But I completely agree with you on many aspects. I first tried the GIMP years ago, and I was dissapointed majorily. Ok, it was free, and the concept of OSS appeals to me, but ultimately, you want something that is easy to use. It was not as much the lack of features (which, btw, is almost gone; projects like OpenOffice, Linux and GIMP have catched up and have almost all the features of whatever proprietary thingy), but more the way it is presented

    • Re:Cluttered IDE (Score:3, Informative)

      by raindog2 ( 91790 )
      Some of us who use and develop Gambas agree with you. I began work on an MDI IDE [kudla.org] for Gambas a year and a half ago, and released actual working code, but the language was such a moving target at that time (version 0.57) that I had to abandon it. I hope to produce one for Gambas 1.0 in the near future, and Benoit plans to add MDI functionality to the IDE in the development series for 2.0.
  • Consider that already REALBasic 5.5 is loads ahead of this project in that much of the syntax is VB like, yet you can release one app simulataneously on Mac OS 9, OS X, Windows and Linux.

    I don't see the advantage here... sure it's not free software but it works DAMN well. I have created a few small utilites internally for my company as well as a little CD Cataloging program just to teach myself the ins and outs of the language, but for those times I want to make something run as a non-web based application
      • Consider that already REALBasic 5.5 is loads ahead of this project in that much of the syntax is VB like, yet you can release one app simulataneously on Mac OS 9, OS X, Windows and Linux. ... sure it's not free software but it works DAMN well.

      You're right it ain't free - It's $600 for the version that will work for all three OSes, or a grand if you want a 12 month subscription. Kind of steep for those of us who just fool around with computers for fun rather than work.

      • You're right it ain't free - It's $600 for the version that will work for all three OSes, or a grand if you want a 12 month subscription.

        That's peanuts and pocket change compared to what many corporations used to pay (and in some cases, still pay) for X-Designer and BX Pro to drag-and-drop design GUIs for their in-house Motif apps.

        Many still use these expensive apps now that most support native MFC and Motif-in-MFC.
    • Heck, if you're going there, why not just buy something that actually produces cross compatible code (i.e. will run on anything, not just platforms three platforms). There are a handful of RAD GUIs for wxWidgets [wxwidgets.org].

  • OO language (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Underholdning ( 758194 )
    I finished university just before everything had to be object oriented, so I have my base in procedural languages. Granted, I can see a lot of advantages in OO, but why does everything has to be OO these days? Both Gambas and Visual Basic are now OO languages. If I wanted OO I'd chose Java or C++. But what if I don't want OO?

    • Re:OO language (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Vo0k ( 760020 )
      'cause OO is way easier for team writing and huge projects. It's way easier to split the project into many "single man" or "single small team" tasks, then bind them all together through an easy to use and strictly defined methods with well defined "responsiblity" areas. The difference isn't all that big, except of some "protectionism" (private, public), simplification of some processes (inheritance instead of notorious evil "copy&paste") and strict defining of "responsiblity areas" (objects), instead of
    • Then don't usethe OO bits of the language. Very few languages _force_ you to make everything an object - you can usually fall back on procedural code.
    • But what if I don't want OO?

      If you are a professional engineer then you will always use the right tool for the job. This is why a professional knows numerous languages, and only some of those are OO.

      In addition to his object-oriented tools, he'll also know his way around procedural, purely functional, dataflow and logic-oriented languages as well, to cover the major paradigms in computing. And orthogonal to that, he'll also know some languages at each of the various levels of abstraction, from low-leve

      • If you are a professional engineer then you will always use the right tool for the job. This is why a professional knows numerous languages, and only some of those are OO.

        In addition to his object-oriented tools, he'll also know his way around procedural, purely functional, dataflow and logic-oriented languages as well, to cover the major paradigms in computing. And orthogonal to that, he'll also know some languages at each of the various levels of abstraction, from low-level assemblers through generic sc

    • These days, modelling is a pretty much mandatory for group projects. OO help tremendously because it (if used right) enforces an organization of functionality that is far more easily modelled than a "functional" language.

      It's also easier for me to keep it neat and tidy. I like that. :)

  • I don't believe... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Vo0k ( 760020 ) on Wednesday January 05, 2005 @05:20AM (#11262168) Journal
    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.
    • A search for asp on google reveals 557 000 000 hits
      A search for jsp on google reveals 115 000 000 hits
      A search for php on google reveals 864 000 000 hits

      Yet the big players promote jsp and asp. Google is in no way scientific but php is very big without industry support from the big players.
    • 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.

      Why is this modded insightful? There are lots of examples where open source software became widely used without extensive marketing campaigns.

      Marketing doesn't always start with a huge corporate marketing department doing brainstorms. It's also about developers and users who are enthousiastic about a piece of software and pro

      • We're not talking about "generic software" or some "pet desktop app". We're talking about a new programming language that has the intention of replacing one that is strong on the market already and is meant for pretty specific usage - mostly in areas where the last word belongs to suits, where multi-million-dollar transactions are made and so on. If your failure/success cost is difference between earning and losing a million dollars, will you pick a mostly untested in such an environment, written largely by
    • What ive always heard from managment "No one ever got fired for picking Microsoft" Thats how they will continue to look at it. If microsofts solution fails "oh well its MS we have no other choice". If something other than MS is used and fails "why the hell didnt you use MS?"

  • Worse than INTERCAL (Score:2, Interesting)

    by KiloByte ( 825081 )
    The last time I used BASIC was 20 years ago, when I was six -- and I'll be damned if I ever come back.
    We got so many programming languages -- good ones and bad ones, that is simply doesn't make any sense altogether to use a Cobol-lookalike. Repent, folks!
  • I think VB is a doorway for programmers who eventually get serious. Anybody who knows anything knows that VB isn't the language to program enterprise-class software. Still, VB is a good way to get the kids interested, and some of them grow up to be engineers. If this language really is the Linux equivelant to VB, you OSS guys should be happy, considering how this, (or something like this) may affect Linux's future.
    • Anybody who knows anything knows that VB isn't the language to program enterprise-class software.

      will you please tell the CTO of my company that????

      our traffic and billing system, the crux of our entire company, is written in VB... most of the sales apps are VB except for the ones written in FoxPro.

      and all of them suck horribly. and the saddest part is? we keep buying thisd crap-quality software because the vertical market we are in that is all that is available.

      really low quality, or VB based. and

  • Funny wallpapers ... (Score:3, Funny)

    by invi ( 198857 ) on Wednesday January 05, 2005 @05:33AM (#11262204) Homepage
    Oh well ... but they *do* have funny [sourceforge.net] wallpapers [sourceforge.net] ... and notice the clever placement of the windows, guess MDI has its advantages after all :)

  • Crush VB for database apps? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Jugalator ( 259273 ) on Wednesday January 05, 2005 @05:39AM (#11262215) Journal
    Now, if it ran in Windows too, it would truly crush VB for database applications.

    Hrm.. Like the Windows flag is burnt [sourceforge.net]?
    I wonder if it was really that necessary to be so childish, right on their front page.

    It doesn't help their cause anyway, or defeat generalizations about "Linux being for childish basement geeks".

    Oh well... To my question: Why would it crush VB .NET 2003 for database apps? Do you mean db apps in general? Or just a specific kind of db apps? What's so revolutionary about this package in that area? I couldn't find anything on their Gambas feature list even mentioning databases, except:

    "Finish and clean the database component."

    Oh, the irony!

  • Wow (Score:2, Informative)

    by md81544 ( 619625 )
    Purists may smirk at this, being VB-like and all, but I just compiled this from source and had a play... it's incredibly well done. I'm really impressed. I'd love to see something like this which builds proper executables and allows C or C++ for the language.

    I haven't had a chance to investigate further (should be working, after all!) but does anybody know what you need to distribute to get an app working on another box? Does the RPM it creates install all the required libs etc or do they need Gambas i

  • Okay, I installed 1.0 off Debian. I can't even create a new project, because the directory browser window in that step makes it very unclear what directory I'm trying to pick right now as the project directory. And, it won't even work otherwise: either it tells me to pick a valid directory (umm, I suppose I did?), won't let me pick a valid directory (I can choose it all right, but clicking on Next won't do anything!) or randomly picks "/" as the project directory, and it obviously fails because it can't cre

  • Cluttered IDE (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Quixadhal ( 45024 ) on Wednesday January 05, 2005 @06:48AM (#11262378) Homepage Journal
    I have to agree. I abhorr interfaces like the Gimp (which is a fine program, shackled with a not so fine UI), and find it far too easy to lose the various toolbars under other things. It might not be so bad if clicking on any one UI element would bring the entire thing to the top...

    --off topic--

    This just reminds me that Linux peope STILL can't develop their own breakthroughs. We STILL feel compelled to try and mimic whatever comes out of Redmond, or those fruity mac people (*grin*, my Mom has one so I feel justified in that jab).

    What's the number one complaint people have with Microsoft's GUI? Inconsistancy. What's the one thing Linux (or any Open Source movement for that matter) will never really have? Consistancy. Yeah, call me a doomsayer, but as long as everyone clings to the adage of allowing everyone to code whatever they like, there will never BE a consistant standard interface on the Linux desktop.

    Shoot, X is almost (more than?) 20 years old now and we still can't get a single consistant cut-and-paste buffer that works across every X application!

    Sorry for the rant, but I'm just horrified that the desktop movement has made so little progress since I started using Linux back in 1994. Back then, an X11R5 desktop on a 486/66 with 16M of ram using TVTWM as a window manager would run circles around the equivalent win95 box. Now, every time I pull up X with KDE and type "free", I cringe seeing how much memory it sucks up. I use linux for my servers, and love it... but I use that other OS for my desktop as I don't have to fight with it every day.
  • I certainly agree that there is a need for an "easy entry" development environment both for truly new users, and for folks who are new to Linux but have some programming experience. And this tool appears to be a decent answer to that.

    However, I don't see the "upgrade" path. One of the strong points of Visual Studio is that you can move from Basic to C to C++ to C# within a familiar IDE and with the same supporting toolset. I don't see a plugin or other strategy for dealing with that here.

    As for Eclipse

  • VBRUN300.dll Not found? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by geminidomino ( 614729 ) * on Wednesday January 05, 2005 @07:16AM (#11262440) Journal
    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?
  • > looks promising as GNU/Linux's answer to Visual Basic

    The problem is that the MS world has largely moved onto .NET and C#
  • "Mono basic [go-mono.com] (mbas) is a CIL compiler for the VisualBasic.NET language, an extended version of Visual Basic. It's based on the MCS compiler and still in heavy development, though many language features are already supported."

    Mono basic will be based on VB.NET, not awful old VB.
    Mono basic will actually be rather compatible with MS VB.NET in language and class library.
    Mono basic will be able to take advantage of code written in or for Mono/C#, and any other languages that get ported to the mono platform.

    So w

  • Just one guy (Score:3, Insightful)

    by spectrokid ( 660550 ) on Wednesday January 05, 2005 @07:50AM (#11262534) Homepage
    I think it is amazing such a big project can be done by just one guy working on it part-time (read his personals). If he can do such a thing on his own, then how comes we haven't had super-duper RAD tools with IDE in Linux for years?
  • There are many IDE's for Linux, but most of them only supports a few languages. Has there been any efforts to agree on a standard grammar for parsers and lexers and syntax highlighting? Which possibilities are available? (Sorry if I am asking a stupid question here, I am not a computer scientist)

    I am referring to something like semantic for emacs http://cedet.sourceforge.net/semantic.shtml [sourceforge.net].

  • ...Now, if it ran in Windows too...
    I admit I am not a typical PC user [who is?]
    1. I get by fine with Open Office
    2. I use VB but lately find NetBeans IDE also handy for knocking out little apps...vb for apps others might use, NetBeans to please myself

    Perhaps because my intentions are not primarily commercial, and I am not hung up on strict compatibility with everyone else's productivity apps, I see making tools that run on proprietary/monopolistic OSes as supporting the evil wizard only because he has so many

  • First of all, my warmest regards to the gamba team. And I wish them all the success.

    But I thought I should point out that there is a beautifull platfrom for cross-platftorm RAD. This is PyQt [riverbankcomputing.co.uk], used in conjunction with Qt Designer [trolltech.com]. It combines the power of Qt [trolltech.com] as a GUI dev platform, with the power, extendability and simplicity of Python [python.org]. I think that gambas aims at a simpler approach though, so I am not saying that it is useless. What I am saying is, if you need a very powerfull yet simple RAD with graphic

    • Dude I love python as much as the next python coder but QT designer does not actually support python natively does it? Last time I used it I could build a interface with it then I had to write a bunch of code to load the screens, set event handlers and a bunch of other crap. This gambas thing is one language but it is all integrated not a afterthought hack.

  • To all the cry babies (Score:5, Insightful)

    by codepunk ( 167897 ) on Wednesday January 05, 2005 @08:48AM (#11262865)
    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...

  • Gambas 1.0 - a free gift (Score:5, Insightful)

    by UglyMike ( 639031 ) on Wednesday January 05, 2005 @09:40AM (#11263243)
    God, you people can be such bastards....
    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 .NET?
    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+, .NET compatibility, Python plug-ins etc.
    Bunch of ingrates....

  • On related news... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Spy der Mann ( 805235 ) <spydermann.slash ... com minus distro> on Wednesday January 05, 2005 @05:34PM (#11269614) Homepage Journal
    Cross-platform (non-RAD... yet) C++ IDE "codeblocks" [codeblocks.org] (developed by a former Dev-C++ developer) version 1.0b4 was released yesterday.

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