[Gambas-user] Gambas Future or what kind of Gambas we want.

[ISS Boss]

   Hi, Tom.  I have to take a small issue with your last few sentences.  I an
   definitely NOT knowledgeable in LINUX (Ubuntu) and definitely cannot compile
   all the new changes in Gambas as they come hot off the press, but I did
   manage to install Ubuntu in under an hour and create my first 'hello world'
   program.  I did this barely two months after installing Ubuntu (x64) on my
   second development computer.
   I, too, come from an extensive background in hardware & programming having
   started in 1962 for 20 years in the US Navy (that's over 50 years now) and
   state that creating programs in any language is simply a matter of becoming
   familiar with it.  Gambas has the advantage (for me, anyway) of being very
   VB6-like.  I have now (after six months or so) taken several of my in-house
   utilities and converted them into Gambas utilities.  One of the things I
   would very much like to see is the direct importing of a MS .MDB file int
   something Gambas can use.  If that already exists, then I would welcome
   someone pointing me in that direction.  I have an extensive (some 3800
   records) database containing my DVD/Vinyl/VHS/Cassette music & movie library
   and really don't want to recreate it in Gambas.
   I don't profess to know what happens (much) under the hood of LINUX, but as
   I go along, I am learning.  I keep a pen/pencil notebook near my development
   computer that I use to keep track of things I learn about the OS and how to
   manipulate it.  At the end of the week, I transcribe them into a searchable
   PDF file I created to hold all these goodies.  You might try something like
   that.
   In time, I suspect that you will get the hang of Gambas and move more and
   more of your work over onto that platform.  Yes, it does take time.  My
   'hello world' program took three days to complete.  As I gain confidence
   (and skill) sections of code go much faster.  As for migrating VB6 into
   Gambas I simply take a subroutine/function and drop it into Gambas and work
   on the errors it produces.  Most of them are simple to fix.  One big help is
   opening the .FRM file in a text editor and using the values to re-create the
   form in Gambas is relatively easy.  Sometimes, you can do it in a matter of
   an hour or so depending on how complicated the form actually is.
   As I gain experience in Gambas, I keep finding new ways to do things that
   are actually shorter and easier to do in Gambas than VB6.  Who knew?
   Bill

   Tom wrote, On 01/23/2014 09:46:

I have to agree 100% with Carl!

I too have experience programming GUI's for about 15 years with VB6. I have a 
very small amount of Linux experience.
The reason I am reading this list is that I did not like .Net and wanted to fin
d 
an alternative to VB6.  I found Gambas and it looked good.  I managed to get 
(after a week of trying) a version of Linux running and got Gambas running on 
it. All I wanted to do was create some sample user screens to show someone my 
concepts. That was at least 6 months ago.  The whole Linux experience was more 
than I had time for or wanted to suffer through.  The first graphical drag/drop
 
thing I tried to do wouldn't work with Gambas, however was not too difficult 
with VB6.

I don't know how to compile a new version/release of Gambas when bug fixes come
 
out.  Its far to complicated for me.  If I had a few months of spare time, 
maybe.  So I gave up, found my old copy of VB6 and was running in about an hour
. 
I don't feel I can use VB6 for anything for a customer these days, so I am stil
l 
looking for something like VB6 that I can use without needing to learn a new 
operating system to use it.

 From what I have seen, and some of the playing around with Gambas, it looks 
very nice and the closest I have seen to VB6.
I just get very frustrated when it takes months of work to do an eight hour pro
ject.

I know a lot of people will say "its not that hard" or "I did it in only four 
hours" but you are already knowledgeable in Linux.
Tom