[Gambas-user] Gambas on cover of Linux Format #64 (March)

[Rob]

Second try.... the first time I sent this it vanished into the ether.

As people have previously reported, there's a review of Gambas in the 
current Linux Format.  I was surprised when I finally got my copy (in 
the US, we get it rather late) to see a Gambas 1.0.1 screenshot on 
the cover disc and a mention of it ("Visual Basic meets its match in 
Gambas") on the cover itself.  The magazine is mostly blue this month 
with a large STOP sign (as in, "Stop paying for software!"), and the 
featured app on the cover discs is a full install of NetBSD.  It's 
the March issue, LXF64.

The review itself, on pages 28 and 29, was mixed, but mostly positive 
(8 out of 10).  It included a nice sidebar on how you could make a 
web browser in 6 steps, with screenshots.  However, the text of the 
review was often steeped in the "BASIC is only for kids/noobs" 
mentality, and I think that affected its final score.  Here is the 
Condensed Version, with one sentence per paragraph.  The author of 
the original review was Paul Hudson, and the below are a reflection 
of his opinions and not my own.

==================================================

Reviews: Gambas

He really thinks Pascal is the ideal language for beginners.  You may 
think BASIC is good if you're a beginner, but someday you'll grow up.  
Microsoft made Visual Basic popular, though, and now there's a 
project to make a Linux equivalent.

Gambas compensates for BASIC's non-graphical nature differently than 
VB, with a KDE interface designer.  It has a new project wizard, but 
it doesn't generate any skeleton code.  It has a lot of controls but 
is missing a few he likes, and it isn't totally integrated with KDE.  
Gambas handles its object orientation much better than VB.

Gambas makes tiny intepreted executables and has a ton of components 
to add functionality.  Its interface is disorganized, and the mascot 
is even more useless than Clippy.  The editor is impressive, but 
there's no boldface text in the Tooltips.  There are things he thinks 
are missing from Gambas, but it's not far from being great.  BASIC 
sucks, and there's no way to use a different language with the Gambas 
IDE.  He'd compare it to VB4, and "can't imagine creating serious 
applications with it."

==================================================

There you go.  One weird thing is that under "Value for Money" Gambas 
scored only 7 out of 10.  There are a lot of free programs that have 
the "Value for Money" category and I haven't seen a single one of 
them hit 10/10.  Does that mean the reviewer feels he'd need to be 
paid before using said software? ;)

All kidding aside, though, I agree with some of his criticisms (the 
mascot, the multi-window interface, the need to eventually have 
skeleton code for new projects) and think others are off the mark (it 
looks like he thinks any app that uses Qt is automatically a KDE 
application, and he seems afraid of BASIC to begin with.  Wonder why 
they didn't load up the Runtime Revolution review a couple months ago 
with similar caveats.)

On a final note, the guys over at gpwiki.org, in the forums are pretty 
interested in using Gambas with SDL to make Linux (and eventually, 
crossplatform) games.  Anyone working on SDL games in Gambas should 
make an announcement over there when you have something worth 
showing.... I plan to.

Rob