[Gambas-devel] press F5 without having written any code

[Charlie]

Salut,

I follow your discussion , since she was started.
I think it's  great idea from Rob........ but realy I don't see the need 
to have that.

>On Monday 19 May 2003 04:48, Benoit Minisini wrote:
>  
>
>>When you have a form named Form1 in VB, and you type Form1.Show, what
>>happens in the background ? Exactly what you must do by hand in Gambas: the
>>form is instanciated, and the instance is given the same name as the form.
>>    
>>
>
>Indeed, and that's why I hope to automate and hide the process in Gambas.  
>There's no need for the user to see it if it's the same in every project.
>
To see on debugging all what happend,
was and is always nessecary for developers.

>  
>
>>1) The newbie is confused, because class and instance of this class have
>>the same name. So the newbie don't really understand what he does exactly.
>>    
>>
>
>True, and it's kinda hard to reuse forms in VB.  Nonetheless, there are a lot 
>of VB programmers who are going to be interested in Gambas and I see no 
>reason to hinder them with good programming style ;)  The truth is, even in 
>your examples to date you don't have any examples of form reuse, and I expect 
>most VB programmers are used to the idea that forms only ever get loaded 
>once.  So I think that making it optionally easy for the user (since this is 
>BASIC after all) is more important than Java-like reuse of everything.
>
>  
>
>>2) The form is instanciated when you try to use the form class as a form
>>instance. You save two lines of code and one variable at first, but when
>>    
>>
>
>Far more importantly, you save a learning curve.  People expect to be able to 
>just create a form, hit F5 and have it come up.  That's the beauty of VB, the 
>ability to make it do something visible without writing a single line of 
>code.  VB's appeal has never been clean design or good programming style or 
>any of that stuff, it's been the fact that it's easy to learn and use.  And 
>Linux programmers who value "technically correct" solutions are already using 
>C/C++/Java, whereas VB programmers currently have nowhere to go.
>
>  
>
>>you want to exit the program, you must be very careful not to make a
>>reference to a closed form, elsewhere this form is recreated, and your
>>program does not exit ! (I had this problem many times in my VB programs)
>>    
>>
>
>Having never actually unloaded a form in VB except to force an exit (by 
>unloading the main form), I never ran into this problem.
>  
>
Made the same experience like Benoît.
Closed programms, staying still in the Task-manger, because the main 
form is unloaded, but not one or more of the other forms called?

Even MS has an workaround for that, doing somthing like:
for i = 0 to forms.count
    unload forms(i)
next
(my be thats not the exact syntax)

>  
>
>>Maybe I could have the same behavior with forms on Gambas. But I think that
>>the disadventages are greater than the advantages.
>>    
>>
>
>We have different goals.  You're looking to make something that's like VB, 
>only good.  I'm looking for something that will make VB programmers as 
>comfortable under Linux as Openoffice makes Word users.
>
>  
>
>>Modifying the IDE will not help you... It is a functionnality that must be
>>add to the interpreter: something like auto-instanciating class. But I
>>don't even know if it is technically possible at the moment !
>>    
>>
>
>Sure I can.  As far as the "press F5 without having written any code" issue 
>goes, I can add something to the properties dialog that says "Make VB style 
>project with this startup form:", create a file called "vbproj.class" which 
>is hidden from view in the IDE and contains a sub main that instantiates and 
>shows the desired form.  vbproj.class becomes the startup class as far as 
>Gambas the language is concerned, just as myfilename.vbp is the "startup 
>class" of a VB project, but the user never sees or edits it.  That part's 
>pretty trivial.
>
>Since you don't seem to have implemented project-wide global variables or 
>include files yet, I haven't figured out a way to instantiate all the forms 
>in the project at startup yet (which would take care of the "form being 
>instantiated the first time you refer to it" problem), nor how to refer to 
>those forms outside the startup class if you do, so I may be stuck there for 
>now.  It seems to me the easiest way to take care of that without bothering 
>non-VB-familiar Gambas users would be to make a compiler directive like "USE 
>GLOBALS" or something that extends the scope of public variables to the 
>entire project.  But even without any of that, just having VB programmers or 
>novice Gambas programmers make a form, run it and have it show up 
>automatically will be a breakthrough in making Gambas seem easier than it is, 
>I think.
>  
>
Please no project wide globals. You have more to write, bur less to find 
(why does my iCounter is 20 and not 5 )

>I know it's ugly, but so is VB and I'm trying to recreate the VB experience 
>using Gambas. ;)  I am utterly uninterested in teaching VB programmers how to 
>be better programmers of other languages, I just want them to be able to say, 
>"Hey, there's an equivalent tool for Linux that's just as easy."  I never 
>tried to teach Word users LyX or LaTeX and I'm not going to try to teach VB 
>users about encapsulation and strongly typed variables.  I'm hoping to at 
>least get a tool together that recreates their .frm files as Gambas forms, 
>even if I can't convert the code automatically.  And I know that's not your 
>goal, and so I'll try to avoid stepping on your toes (I can't imagine that 
>I'll touch the interpreter, for one thing.)  I mean no disrespect by any of 
>this; I just want to make life easier for my users.
>
>I suppose this really belonged on gambas-devel, sorry about that.
>
>Rob
>  
>
But Rob, do you realy think it is a good idea to shift, in our case 
gambas to a level that VB programmers refind
there level, for a easy aprochment ?
That is not reality, VB reaches his end and if you ever had a look to 
.net, you will have seen, that what was hidden in VB
reaches the surface in .net.

Charlie