[Gambas-user] Newbie

[Rob Kudla]

On Tue October 11 2005 14:40, Scott Castaline wrote:
> It's been many years since I've done any kind of programming, my
> tech background is predominately been hardware. I am wondering if
> anyone can point me in the right direction for tutorial material or
> text books on BASIC, that would be relevant and current to GAMBAS.

Linux Format (a UK-based desktop-oriented Linux magazine, sadly quite 
expensive when bought here in the US) is doing a monthly BASIC column 
now using Gambas.  They jumped right in with their first issue with a 
little database browser application.  Unfortunately, that's the only 
tutorial I know of at present apart from some small and 
badly-outdated ones on the Gambas wiki.  There's at least one 
textbook that sounds like it's near completion, but it may be a 
little while before you can buy one commercially.  

However, if you haven't done any programming in anything that looks 
like Gambas, you may be able to use Visual Basic tutorials to at 
least point you in the right direction.  Gambas is probably closer to 
VB.net than VB6 or earlier, but I personally find it far less 
annoying than either incarnation of VB.  A good grasp of 
object-oriented programming will also be a huge help to you with 
Gambas, since it's much more object-centric than VB is (but less than 
Java.)

But it's only been 9 months since Gambas 1.0 was first released, and 
developer tools tend to either have to be heavily adopted or come 
from a company called Microsoft to get Dummies(tm) books in their 
first year.  I think before too long Gambas will start getting a lot 
more attention, especially if version 2.0 somehow ends up working 
under Windows without Cygwin.

On a side note, on the same trip to the bookstore (Barnes and Noble) 
on which I discovered the Linux Format BASIC column, I was wandering 
by the computer section and noticed that the Linux stuff has been 
moved out of the bottom rows of the developer section to a section by 
itself with all the Dummies books and desktop-oriented books on the 
top shelf at eye level.  Having just read earlier that day that Linux 
was failing to meet analysts' 2001 predictions for desktop market 
share, it was a nice confirmation that people are interested in 
Linux, and not just to run their web servers: bookstores don't put 
obscure hackers' toys on prominent display.

Rob