Gambas

Gambas is a special kind of computer language called an object-oriented dialect of the BASIC programming language. It also comes with a helpful tool called an integrated development environment that makes it easier to write and test programs.

This language was made to work mainly on Linux and other similar types of operating systems called Unix-like. Its name, Gambas, comes from a funny trick called a recursive acronym, which stands for Gambas Almost Means BASIC.

Interestingly, the word "gambas" is also the Spanish, French, and Portuguese word for prawns. The pictures used for the Gambas project are inspired by this meaning.

History

Gambas was created by a programmer from France named Benoît Minisini in 1999. Benoît loved the BASIC language and wanted to make a free tool that made it easy to build programs with windows and buttons.

The first versions of Gambas, called 1.x, came out in 2005. They looked like older versions of GIMP and worked mainly with Qt for building programs. The next versions, called 2.x, started in 2008 with a new design where everything was in one window and could also work with GTK+ and SDL.

The newest versions, called 3.x, began in 2011. By 2021, Gambas could work with a modern system called Wayland and had become faster than some other popular languages in tests.

Features

Gambas is designed to help people create programs that can show windows and buttons, like the ones you see on a computer. It can work with different tools to make these programs look nice and run smoothly. You can also use it to make programs that run in the command line, which is a special way to give instructions to a computer.

Gambas has many extra parts that you can add to give your programs more abilities. For example, you can make programs that use your computer's graphics card to show fast and exciting pictures. It can also help you save and find information in databases, and even make programs that work on the internet. The tools that come with Gambas make it easier to put everything together when you finish your program.

Adoption

Many programs and examples have been created using Gambas. Websites like Freecode showed 23 applications made with Gambas, and the Gambas wiki had 82. There are also special websites, forums, and mailing lists for Gambas users.

One special program called Gambas3 ShowCase helped people download Gambas applications, but it is no longer used. Instead, a new part called the Gambas Software Farm, included in the main program since version 3.7.1, offers nearly 500 applications and demos. Some well-known programs made with Gambas are Xt7-player-mv, a user-friendly way to use the mpv player found in many Linux software collections, and I-Nex, a tool to show hardware information. The comisat Games Collection are some of the first video games created with Gambas.

Availability

Gambas is available for many Linux distributions, such as Debian, Fedora, Slackware, Arch Linux, Mageia, PCLinuxOS, Linux Mint, and Ubuntu. It can also run on Microsoft Windows using a special environment called Cygwin, though this version is not as fully tested. Efforts have been made to get Gambas working on Mac OS X and FreeBSD. Starting with version 3.2, Gambas can run on Raspberry Pi and offers faster processing from version 3.12. It can even be used through the cloud using a service called rollApp.

Example code

Here is a simple "Hello, World!" program with a graphical user interface:

Public Sub Main()
    Message("Hello, World!")
End

This next program calculates a special math expression many times to test how fast the computer can work:

Private Sub Test(X As Float) As Float

    Dim Mu As Float \= 10.0
    Dim Pu, Su As Float
    Dim I, J, N As Integer
    Dim aPoly As New Float\[100\]

    N \= 500000

    For I \= 0 To N \- 1
        For J \= 0 To 99
           Mu \=  (Mu + 2.0) / 2.0
           aPoly\[J\] \= Mu
        Next
        Su \= 0.0
        For J \= 0 To 99
            Su \= X \* Su + aPoly\[J\]
        Next
        Pu += Su
    Next

    Return Pu

End

The final part of the program runs the test ten times:

Public Sub Main()

    Dim I as Integer

    For I \= 1 To 10
        Print Test(0.2)
    Next

End