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