Gambas
Shares rank 26 of 33 IDEs by recommenders
People recommend Gambas as a free, open source Basic-based development environment for quickly building GUIs and standalone programs, with a Visual Basic-like feel.
People recommend Gambas as a free, open source Basic-based development environment for quickly building GUIs and standalone programs, with a Visual Basic-like feel.
9 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 7
- criticize it
- 2
- approval share
- 78%
Recommended in 7 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 7 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 3.5 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 7 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Free open source Basic development platform
“GAMBAS is a free development environment and a full powerful object-oriented language and development platform based on a Basic interpreter”
Comment from 2 May 2026 in “What did you love about VB6?” “pure opensource goodness I'll port it Gambas”
Comment from 2 Jul 2026 in “Visual Basic on the PC with Windows 3.1” Familiar Visual Basic-style development
“for the slightly younger folks who have more memories of Visual Basic than QBasic”
Comment from 13 Aug 2026 in “Donkey.bas is 45 Years Old – 131 line of Glory” “FreePascal, Gambas, Xojo and C++ Builder”
Comment from 23 Feb 2026 in “Emulated Windows 3.11 in the Browser”
Other IDEs people recommend
The four most recommended other IDEs, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| JetBrains IDEs | 233 | 143 | 62% | 13 | 10 yrs39 owners | — |
| IntelliJ IDEA | 206 | 105 | 66% | 13 | 10 yrs18 owners | — |
| Microsoft Visual Studio | 165 | 165 | 50% | 12 | 10 yrs10 owners | — |
| Delphi | 126 | 44 | 74% | 13 | 23 yrs4 owners | Approved |
| GambasThis page | 7 | 2 | 78% | 7 | — | — |
What people said
8 of the 11 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“it became pretty solid and capable, so I switched to it full-time”
“Linux only, not sure if there's a nice visual UI builder”
“for the slightly younger folks who have more memories of Visual Basic than QBasic”
“I can now quickly design GUIs and generate standalone binaries.”
“pure opensource goodness I'll port it Gambas”
“Its too married to GTK, not cross platform”
“GAMBAS is a free development environment and a full powerful object-oriented language and development platform based on a Basic interpreter”
“FreePascal, Gambas, Xojo and C++ Builder”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.