Gambas, designed by Benoît Minisini, is a new graphical development environment for Linux that aims to improve database development times. More here.
Gambas speeds database development
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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could some gambas-programmer tell me how it feels to use this language – it’d be nice to have an impression of programming gui compared to using C and GTK-bindings… what about speed?
I used to do a lot of Visual Basic programming back in 1996-1998. I am adding the Debian repository as I type. I’ll tell you later
Gambas is new? This thing is over two years old. IT’s never promoted ehough, tho.
It looks like a cool project I guess, but why BASIC? Having used many different languages, I think something like Python, Ruby, or Pascal would be a better choice. BASIC sucks (no offense to anybody personally, I just think the language is dumb).
I am adding the Debian repository as I type. I’ll tell you later
Yeah, it would be interesting to read about your or others’ experiences of this.
From the article:
it’s very like Visual Basic, and that’s not a coincidence. Gambas is by no means a Visual Basic clone for Linux, but it does take many of the better features to provide a true rapid development environment.
Haven’t tried it, but that doesn’t seem so dumb choice to me at all. Visual Basic (and especially VB.NET) has especially lots of newbie-friendliness, easy to use features. (On the other hand, something like C or C++ is quite newbie-unfriendly.) (I agree that (especially) Ruby rules, however
it could suit and should be used more in this kind of projects.)
Benoît embarked on a very difficult path.
To make a complete Visual Basic like (and better) IDE for Linux.
And he succeeded.
Very nice person too.
We should have more people like him.
I’ve played around with Gambas – and was is extremely impressed. Very stable. Very nice indeed.
Newcomers to Linux with previous VB/VB.NET definitely should give this a try and spread the word.
And very unlike the well-funded well-advertised Mono
In Gamba you can get a proper GUI running fast!
If only there was other powerful and easy IDEs for Linux.
There are a few I got acquainted with:
VisualTCL – another IDE that looked good. TCL is definitely an interesting script language to learn. See aMSN.
Eclipse – ok pretty, finally got it running what next? Extensions and Plugins not easy for the newbie.
Revolution For Linux – Now that is disgustingly expensive for a language that is purely educational. Noone in their right mind would do a commercial app with this.
– so why the price tag and 30-day trial? Why not 100% for non commerical use?
Even AMZI Prolog – gives a 90 day trial which in fact never seem run out
And IBM Smalltalk for VisualAge was same thing – a trial that never runs out.
Because for them – its more advantageous having their technology spread so they can charge support from real companies (and not casual hobbyists)
Other Linux IDEs are (not for the novice): MonoDevelop (very clean but not ready for GUIs unless you use other extensions GTK#?), KDevelop, Glade, QTopia/Trolltech QT (nice people – if you use it for open source its free – which is fair) .. Kylix (same thing free if open source) … Anjuta (C/C++/GTK/Gnome) .. OpenOffice IDE – dont expect your VBA here – their freak “Basic” is more Java than anything else.
I’m so happy of this. Lots of dumb pseudo-programmers and s-kiddiez can now program on linux. And with all the power of a basic dialect.
I can’t wait to have the same library overlapping, crappy components overriding and applications wrote withouth a minimal ability, just like I did on win98
(kudos to the author anyway)
Is Visual Tcl still actively developed? It didn’t look like it was, the last maintainers resigned last year.
Tcl/Tk is a nice combination, very lightweight but powerful. Tk GUI’s are actually pretty easy to code by hand: the GUI builders (VTcl and SpecTcl) don’t add much value. I’m not sure why it’s not more popular as a langauge (on any given day, my install of Thunderbird shows about 3,000 unread messages on comp.lang.tcl and about 18,000 on comp.lang.python).
I actually use aMSN, too. It compares very favorable to MSN Messenger.
Well, as I’ve said yesterday (was it yesterday?) I installed it. I have a gnome sid (downloaded the latest test installer) with gnome running. I added the repositories found on gambas web site and installed it using synaptic. (I am not a linux desktop expert, my knowledge goes to OpenBSD and some linux servers). Either case, it worked perfectly. (A few dependencies satisfied and it was done, all thanks to the magic of this thing called Synaptic).
The bad news is that it’s RC2 (when the author just announced RC4). Anyways, I just played for 15 minutes with it, so don’t expect a review. I like what I saw; very clean, very simple and above all, it “just works(tm)”.
I haven’t tried DB stuff yet, I simply started a new ´Window´ project (you can do Console stuff) and created a couple of forms and added some controls (buttons, tabs, etc.) and wrote some BASIC code below that. It’s ´like´ VB. Unfortunely, I stopped using VB a “long time ago in a galaxy far”, therefore, not only I’ve forgotten most of it, but I’m not even used to it anymore. I keep adding “;” after each sentence, something Illegal in Gambas (hint: this ought to be possible!) I find basic´s inhability to end a line with “;” quite annoying. But that’s just me. I’m more involved in C# now a days and going ´back´ to Basic is kind of difficult. (yes, you forget it all).
All in all, the package is impresive and very easy to use, provided you have BASIC’s knowledge. Nice applications could born from this thing, really; just the same way they did with VB. The changelog between RC2 and RC4 it’s not “HUGE” so there are mainly bugfixes and some new stuff, but as far as i’ve read, the core is the same, so is the IDE.
If you need to start a PRJ under linux, and have BASIC knowledge, this is the way. I will play some more with it and will report back with more feedback. I even compiled an “EXE” (as the menu says) and executed it ./myexe. The window instantly appeared. I don’t know what the dependencies are (if I copy you the tiny ´exe´ and you don’t have gambas). There should be some VBRUN.DLL equivalent, but I don’t know which one is it.
Very good work. For those who hate BASIC, then stay away from it, you’re not going to like it. But if you have VB (or any other BASIC xp), and are playing with linux, you will definitely like it. If what’s written on the documentation about DB access is true (that is, very easy), using this thing with MySQL should be a walk in the park.
Well, that’s my 0.02c.
I meant Debian Sid (with gnome) :p
Well you know…
I think it would have been a smart move for it to beable to target .NET/Mono, that way it can be more of a drop in replacement for VB.NET
That is Miguel’s own ambition – MONO
And we have MonoDevelop a clean enviroment.
Further to that – there is the parallel development of dotGNU. Which I have no idea how it is going
The question is about choice, some people don’t want the extra efforts inherited with the .NET framework: implementation (GUI’s dont work), political (FUDs and more FUDs), semantical/syntactical: .. VB.NET is *VERY* different from the various variants of Basic. Gambas Basic is much closer to VB6 than VB.NET.
Unlike some comments here – Gambas is a healthy positive addition to Linux.
Noone will import ActiveX, Windows Hosting Script, and so on .. but remember one of the tricks that made Microsoft win the development enviroment was Visual Basic.
Now you could have a quick financial calculator done in under 10 minutes. Things started going extremely ugly when big projects and application were being developed on Visual Basic. Siemens, EDS, Sage have had their share of embarrasing disasters.
Ive been doing the VB thing for a few years and recently went to Real Basic due to VB’s runtime crap but I have always wanted a development environment that was easy to use and rapidly make my apps for work. Well gambas to me has pulled this off. I visited it back in the 0.90 series and just recently in the 0.99 series and am really impressed. Its easy to use and could produce some cool stuff foe linux. How about some of the games on linux? You could accomplish that with gambas and I think it just opens up the playing field for more opportunities to get more things going for the benefit of all. Ive tried c, c++, python and all and the only one besides a “basic” language that was somewhat easy to do and work with was python. I dont know, Im no c++ guru but I can write some programs with basic and if gambas gives me that ability to do that in linux then thats awesome for me. Im sick of writing stuff on windows, I want to contibute back to something worthwhile and something that gives me the pleasant experience that linux does. Just my 2 cents to all of you that think basic aint no programming language….hell the next little game or app you fall in love with might be by me written in gambas.
Does the IDE have some kind of Intellisense (auto-completion)?
Yes it have and is very usefull
Yes it does.