[Gambas-user] OFF: Perl 6 Design Philosophy

[Rob]

On Tuesday 15 July 2003 21:25, Nelson Ferraz wrote:
> Therefore, _our_ core question is what makes Gambas "BASIC"?
> Here's a possible answer: it is BASIC if it remains true to the original
> purpose, is familiar to BASIC programmers, and is mechanically
> translatable from other BASICs.

I don't completely agree.  The article you cited was about differences from 
one release of a language to the next incremental version of that language.  
Let's call it equivalent of going from Gambas 0.65 (say) to Gambas 1.x.  

Gambas is going to be different than other BASICs.  There's no way around it.  
The only popular BASICs with object extensions are pretty much VB and 
RealBasic for the Mac which has translation issues similar to those of 
Gambas.  For VB's part, its object extensions are.... um.... I'll let Benoit 
address that if he likes.

Now, that's not to say Gambas can't live up to the philosophy you posited.  

- BASIC's original purpose was to enable novice programmers to write useful 
programs while simultaneously learning something about programming.  I would 
say Gambas probably exceeds most BASICs in this department thanks to its 
largely clean syntax and (despite us recovering VB users' influence) 
consistent, well-designed object model.

- I have only a sample size of two here (myself and one client) but we both 
find Gambas very familiar and comfortable in almost all respects.  

- I do think I'll be able to at least get a VB form to Gambas form/class 
translator working, but what will be harder to convert from VB (or any other 
BASIC) will be all the external stuff people rely on to get their BASIC 
programs doing real work.  On top of that, people trying to convert VB code 
to Gambas are typically doing so while also switching operating systems, 
which can complicate things further (though it's been my experience so far 
that those OS differences make Gambas more powerful than VB and thus easier 
to port stuff to.)

Generally speaking, I'll be more in favor of things that make Gambas more like 
BASIC, and also things that make Gambas easier to use, especially for novices 
and people coming from other environments, and against things that make 
Gambas non-intuitive (like that old behavior where if you didn't instantiate 
a form in its own class, you could press F5 and nothing would happen) and/or 
impede the above design goals.  I don't want to see Gambas become perl, for 
example, because if I want to write GUI programs in perl I have PerlQt and 
QtDesigner with which to do that (and I have already done so, and it's quite 
nice, but I wouldn't try to make a BASIC programmer try and figure it out.)

Ultimately, though, unlike Perl, I think we're close enough to the genesis of 
the project that Gambas can be whatever Benoit would like it to be.  Larry 
drove Perl's development through several major releases and is still arguably 
the dominant voice in its current development, for better or for worse.  But 
he shaped perl's original form, and Benoit is now doing the same with Gambas.  
As far as I can see, he hasn't really missed any steps.

Rob