[Gambas-devel] Just a wild thought

[Rob]

On Friday 03 April 2009 14:16, ottod wrote:
> Many people reject the
> idea of desktop apps, saying web apps is the way to go, but that at
> least is contradictory, as the browser itself is a desktop app.

The browser is more than a desktop app; I can write a web app in any one of 
dozens of server languages, including Gambas (though on the browser side I 
can use any language I like as long as it's Javascript) and have it work 
on a desktop, an ARM-based $150 netbook, an iPhone and a Wii, and if I'm 
careful, my 5-year-old freebie cell phone as well.  There is no other 
development language or framework for which that's true.  Except for 
hardware-intensive programs like DVD burners and higher-end games, and 
despite repeated attempts by Microsoft such as VBscript, ActiveX and 
Silverlight to make web apps require one particular operating system, I 
think that a majority of development will be web development in the next 5 
years -- if it's not true already.

> keyboard): can the Gambas compiler and interpreter be ported to Java
> instead of C and plug to Java components instead of OS/library
> components? "CAN" being asked in the sense of a practical time frame and

Richard Stallman made the same suggestion a few years ago.  I disagreed 
with him then and I still do.  I can't speak for Benoit, but I think it 
would be a redundant effort considering how many BASIC dialects for the 
Java virtual machine there already are:

http://www.is-research.de/info/vmlanguages/basic/

Personally, Gambas' object model and component design philosophy (expose 
all you can but don't make it feel like a C API, basically) is more 
appealing to me than its syntax, which is kind of verbose for me as a Perl 
programmer but just right for a newbie.  Just as when Microsoft terminated 
Visual Basic and created VB.NET as a vaguely similar but fundamentally 
different language, the resulting language wouldn't be Gambas anymore, but 
just another BASIC-like syntax overlay for Java.

Rob