BASIC Goodness

I've made good progress on the Gas Calc, so far it is working nicely. There's still some stuff to finish (mileage calculator, unit converter) but it should be done shortly.

Once it's done I'll be making a SourceForge page for it. I'll post the VB Express 2008 source code as well as the program executable along with an installation package.

Since I use Kubuntu as my main desktop OS, I figured I'd also create a Linux/Mac OSX version to go along with the Windows version. I figured I'd have to use KDevelop (which would be a steep learning curve for me as I don't know C++), however doing a quick Google search for "visual basic for linux", the third result is something that I've long dreamed of but never knew existed: a Visual Basic clone for Linux!!

Okay, so the developers don't want people calling it a clone, since it's not exactly the same as VB. Gambas is an acronym that stands for "Gambas Almost Means Basic". It's basically (pun intended) the same thing as Visual Basic, just not quite as full-featured. However every essential feature of Visual Basic 6.0 is included in Gambas, with some features replicated to stunning detail. The major difference of course is that Gambas lets developers create quick-and-easy applications for Linux, in a WYSIWYG development environment. Hats off to the Gambas developers for creating such a cool IDE!

Since I discovered Gambas last night, I've recreated the entire VB Express project in Gambas (imports are not supported as the code isn't 100% compatible, even though it's very similar). Everything works the same as the Windows version, including the About box. Gambas also supports console-based projects, so once I'm done with the GUI versions I'll also create a Linux console version for those who despise GUI's.

All of these projects will be posted on the SourceForge page for anyone to download. I strongly believe in open source software and the Free Software concept, so I feel like I should give back a little bit. I started with mod2avi, a script to convert JVC mod files to AVI files, and figured I might as well open source some of the other projects I'm working on such as Gas Calculator.