Gambas Almost Means BASIC | Hacker News Reader

Gambas Almost Means BASIC

gambas.sourceforge.net

163 pointssenko47 comments

I was very impressed with Gambas when I was looking for a QBasic throwback to install on my son’s machine. We wrote a little arithmetic game with a UI and it took half an hour and reminded me of what programming was like before all the bullshit kicked in.

heck yeah GORILLAS.BAS was the first source code I ever saw and that’s how I taught myself QBasic, I still remember waking up at 2am because I realized how to solve the bug I was stuck on, all I had to do was move the line of code to the outside of the loop!

of course I couldn’t wait until morning but then I got in trouble because the keyboard was too loud

my game only had 5 levels so I proudly called it a “shareware demo”, I wonder if it’s still out there somewhere, etched onto the long abandoned platter

Heck yeah. There's a pretty decent chance it's still available somewhere. I can still find code I wrote almost 30 years ago for a tiny BBS software.

As someone who spent a lot of time playing with VB6 as a kid, Gambas is an amazing throwback. It feels like the VB6 I remember, even though my memories are vague and tinted with nostalgia.

In other words, it's not a perfect recreation of VB6 -- it's even better, because it includes a lot of modern conveniences that make it feel more comfortable to use. The IDE feels surprisingly polished and, while the language is definitely still BASIC, it has some nice enhancements that make it feel a bit less clunky IMO.

I'm probably not going to implement anything important in it, but it's a fun way to relive my VB6 nostalgia when I'm in the mood for it.

I have to try this. Language is similar to VB6. I've used many languages from ASM, C, and C++ to Python, PHP, Ruby, C#, and Java. However, my most productive language by far (oddly enough) was VB6. I've done some amazing stuff in VB6, including a (never released, thankfully, since Blizzard was litigation happy) Warcraft 2 clone that was complete enough to allow you to load/play custom maps.

While I suspect this doesn't have the same flexibility and user friendliness VB6 had (you could pull in the Windows API via DLLs pretty easily, including DirectX), it should be a neat little throwback, if nothing else.

For what it's worth, Gambas does have a built-in way of interfacing with shared libraries: https://gambaswiki.org/wiki/howto/extern

It also has the concept of components, which can be programmed in C/C++ to wrap external libraries: https://gambaswiki.org/wiki/dev/overview

I am a golang programmer myself, but you can't beat GAMBAS it's GUI programming qualities, it is so effortless to make a great quality prototype for a GUI application.

The language is very complete, even for me a as spoiled (having a very complete standard library) golang user.

GAMBAS is fun without being a childish toy, one can make very serious applications with it.

Gambas doesn't support Mac unfortunately. If I want a quick way to write cross platform GUI apps, nothing beats FPC/Lazarus.

FPC/Lazarus is to Delphi what Gambas is to Visual Basic.

Also worth mentioning FPCUpDeluxe, which eases the installation of FPC+Lazarus and other components. https://wiki.freepascal.org/fpcupdeluxe

Xojo can also fit this niche. Same basic like language.

For three years now Xojo has said "Android support coming soon". Doesn't build much faith that it's actively supported.

How does it compare with Lazarus?

Gambas is one of the most comfortable options for self-learners. I don't like BASIC all that much, but the platform in itself is very nice. It does reminds me of the RAD era of programming. Technologies like Gambas, Neobook, Embarcadero and Windows Forms are not all seen with some contempt, but I enjoyed working with them very much back in the day. You could just get stuff done. One IDE, one language, one toolset... literally the most get-shit-done era of programming...

Gambas is a phenomenally good VB-like. It has a repo of libraries, extensions, and sample code for everything from databases to games. It compiles to native code and uses Qt for its widget set. It really goes above and beyond VB while providing the same feel (even if it is not 100% source compatible).

Man, blast from the past.

I'd -love- something like this that could hook into other languages directly. Python/Rust/Go/Zig/Whatever. It wouldn't even need to compile, just output the working code all together. I'd probably pay a lot of money for it, in fact.

Hey! You should definitely check Abstra! It is a Python Visual Basic on your vscode that outputs webapps https://www.abstracloud.com/editor

How is this in any way similar?

Is Gambas not also a drag and drop GUI builder, but for BASIC?

It is also it's own IDE, doesn't rely on microsoft's IDE, and it creates a native application, not a website.

Qt designer is drag and drop GUI builder… is C++ now the same too?

Not C++ the language. But Qt designer is like Gambas, but for C++.

So all these things are indeed similar.

If the end result is a webpage, it's more like frontpage.

Interesting - I remember seeing this .... 20 years ago? Impressive to see it's still going and progressing. :)

That explains why it’s on sourceforge, I guess.

My first experience with it was 2005-2006? I recall printing out the documentation and probably have a binder of around here, somewhere.

There's BaCon, a shell script (!) BASIC-to-C converter: https://www.basic-converter.org/

Barry Kauler, the fellow behind Puppy Linux and EasyOS, has used it to create utilities: https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=64923

Gambas: Visual Basic on Linux - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22574385 - March 2020 (82 comments)

Related in-law:

All about QBasic and QuickBasic - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32349516 - August 2022 (149 comments)

I credit Visual Basic with sparking my interest in computers and programming. It hit the perfect balance of power and approachability for beginners. Curious to try compiling some of my ancient projects.

Back in the early 00’s I was stunned to find this inside a project at a famous yummy pizza company.

It’s probably still there.

That's funny. Was it a point of sale system? I remember seeing some funny dev toolkits used for POS stuff...all kinds of weird ANSI fonts thrown in there too.

Yes, I think it may have been for terminal config and setup. Different peripherals and term types.

The UI looks refreshingly lightweight. Is there something like this for C#?

That was exactly my thought: that is looks super lightweight - which is a pleasant surprise nowdays. Still, I would prefer another language than BASIC.

LINQPad? It can run C#, F#, and VB code not just LINQ queries. It doesn't have an easy UI designer though.

Sharpdevelop works but hasn’t been updated since 2012 or 2016

MonoDevelop maybe?

There’s no macOS version I wonder if it’s possible to build one?

It's a lot more like HyperCard than VisualBasic, but Decker is a FOSS rapid prototyping environment that runs virtually everywhere: https://beyondloom.com/decker/

> Gambas almost means BASIC

It means "shrimp" in Spanish, as you can see from the logo.

It’s also a recursive acronym that stands for

> Gambas almost means BASIC

Means prawns actually. In Portuguese too.

I'm convinced that shrimp, prawns, and lobster are all actually the same creature, sold at different stages of its life to create artificial market segmentation.

Poe's law and HN guidelines bring you gentle clarification: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decapoda

also in french (the mother tongue of the creator)

Not only Spanish.

It's pretty neat that there's a Playground on the site menu, with a lot of different examples, within a very accommodating editor platform.

Some are kind of funny (regex!)...and I mean there's even a system command running `ls`. Overall it seems a helpful reference and even lets you pick between stable and daily. It seems to show a lot of care has gone into presentation and user help / experience.

Every couple of years this pops up and I'm reminded how cool it looks and the nostalgia of the easy days of VB6. I think to myself how I'll give it a spin for some little project just because. Then I realize again that it isn't compatible with Mac and am disappointed.

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