When comparing Any JVM language + Eclipse Rich Client Platform vs Gambas, the Slant community recommends Gambas for most people. In the question“What are the best languages to write a desktop Linux application in?” Gambas is ranked 1st while Any JVM language + Eclipse Rich Client Platform is ranked 16th. The most important reason people chose Gambas is:
You can't find such a level of easy GUI development in any other language on the Linux platform.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Cross platform
Pro Has a rich library of UI components SWT + JFace
Pro You can use any JVM language
Java, Clojure, JRuby, Groovy, Kotlin are some options.
Pro There is a technology to deploy updates with update site
Pro Beautiful UIs
Pro You can embed a lot of Eclipse technologies to your application, such as BIRT for reports for example.
Pro Uses native UI elements
Pro Complete IDE for GUI development
You can't find such a level of easy GUI development in any other language on the Linux platform.
Pro Constantly updated
New features and bug fixes along with performance enhancements.
Pro Easy to get started for someone familiar with VB on Windows
Pro Complete application development suite
Supports GTK and QT along with web. Built in Form building with JIT speed. If you are developing an application targeting Linux only give this a look.
Pro Fast to write apps
Pro Git integration
Integration with GIT in IDE and easy to distribute apps as source package with export as .tar.gz.
Pro Enhanced with a new test suite
Pro Runs on Windows 10 WSL2 environment, reported successful compilation on MacOS
Cons
Con It is worth only for serious B2B applications and rich professional tools, not for consumer applications
It is because JVM is very huge prerequisite to have on consumer's machine.
Also JVM uses more memory, than native technologies.
Also Rich Client Platform applications looks specific, that is OK for Business applications, but weird for consumer products.
I would recommend EclipseRCP as an alternative to modern web SPA (Single Page Application) approach in B2B sector.
Con Not cross platform
Con The documentation is not the best
Con May have trouble interfacing to C code structs
Managed struct objects in Gambas makes it harder to use with C code structs.
Con Difficult to satisfy runtime requirements
Runtime requirements to run applications written in Gambas are not always easy to satisfy (that is, without installing the whole development environment).