Xojo does it, but they are a long time commercial effort (RealBasic).

A friend that runs a one man shop developing websites and native apps swears by it. He actually moved his new developments from Lazarus to Xojo and is always talking about the upcoming Xojo web 2.0.

I gave it a try a few times but it never clicked. I felt constrained by the language (Lisp, Smalltalk and Forth ruined me for life) and the runtime is nothing to write home about. For most people I guess it doesn't matter. My friend doesn't even know what reference counting is and wants something simple to get stuff done.

To me, these are what computing should be all about: blurring the distinction between user/programmer, but providing gradations of complexity, comprehensiveness, and control.

Lazarus aside, it seems FOSS isn't going to give us the kind of RAD tools that one might hope for -- thinks more like Hypercard and related. Such efforts require the kind of resources (long periods of time and good funding, to start) that loose networks of casual contributors are never going to be able to provide. And in today's world, where next-quarter reporting and shareholder primacy dominate enterprise decisions, it's even rare to get something truly immersive and new from commercial entities (Apple is the biggest corp in the world. Do they have something like their ATG group from the 90s? If so, what the hell are they working on?)

> Lisp, Smalltalk and Forth ruined me for life)

Same here, but there's a (partial) reason these aren't really viable in today's computing culture. The first is that they really are for whole computing systems that don't necessarily make a distinction between user and programmer. The culture we have today is the opposite of this: users are consumers, first and foremost. Computing systems are thus mechanisms that run isolated "applications" whose ability to be modified by regular people is severely limited compared to what we know (and have known for 4 decades) is possible.

Xojo is a solid paid solution. I use it all the time.

Could you please talk about what kind of projects you are using it for? Do you use it for serious projects or just toy ones? Web or mobile?

I looked at the site, this sounds interesting. Just interested in hearing it from someone who uses it

Well let's say you need an app to program IP addy info into a IOT device on the LAN. Multi-platform done in 1 hour. You can also write web apps, drag and drop, we're really excited for the web 2.0 coming this year.

I've followed them since they were "RealBasic". I think I might just start using it. I keep bouncing between Lazarus/Pascal and Xojo/Basic. lol

Their instructions for compiling it on Cygwin hints on its dependencies. Looks like a long list, but many of those probably have ports for other plaforms (e.g. Windows). The Wikipedia article says it has been ported to Mac and FreeBSD "based on using local versions of the X11 system". Perhaps these are leads...

Previously when I installed Gambas to Windows with Cygwin, I did not need to build from source.

With Cygwin:

setup-x86_64.exe --packages gambas3,xinit,xwin-xdg-menu

Install from Internet, click Next

Root Directory C:\cygwin64 , click Next

Select Local Package Directory C:\Users\USERNAME\Downloads - where setup files are downloaded before installing, click Next

Select Internet Connection / Direct Connection, click Next

Choose a Download Site - I did select http://ftp-stud.hs-esserlingen.de but some other could also work

Select Packages - All required is selected, click Next

Wait while downloading and installing

Checkmark: [X] Create icon on Desktop [X] Add icon to Start Menu

Click Finished

Start Gambas this way:

Start / All Programs / Cygwin-X / XWin-Server

From hidden taskbar right corner icons select icon that has black C and in middle of it light green X. From there click Programming / Gambas3.

Thanks. Though, I still think it would be cool if there's a more native port that runs out of the box.

Curious to know the experience on the Gambas apps produced in Windows. I guess they would also need Cygwin?

I tried to install Gambas with info above, and seems it did not start on Win10.

I also think that on Windows Cygwin is required.

Following is from bottom of page http://gambaswiki.org/wiki/doc/faq?nh&l=en#t12

"Will you port Gambas to Windows™ ?

I won't, but I will help any people trying to do that.

Gambas already runs under Cygwin. Note that there is a lot of things to port, if you want to do a native port: process management, gb.qt4 component, and so on... This is a huge job. The most promising compiler target would be Mingw-w64, which also allows cross compilation on a unix-like system."

If you use Gambas for making web apps, then you could use webbrowser to access those apps. Gambas IDE has wizard for web app, and some components that can be dragged to form. From some forum discussions I have read that debugging those web apps is easier then debugging php apps.

For more info about Gambas, you can watch Gambas interview at Floss Weekly:

https://twit.tv/shows/floss-weekly/episodes/353

The issue I've had with cross platform VB-like languages is they all ended up just compiling to C, which meant losing all the great IDE-integrated debugging.