I think B4X is what should be called a RAD development tools. I don't know how many of you had a look at Android Studio (or Swift for iOS) to do a simple "Hello world" app.
I can tell you that it is a real pain!
Well, with Swift is just a bit more simpler than Android Studio but far away from the "RADness" of B4i.
IMHO B4A inherited the best (and the bad) practice of Visual Basic. It looks pretty much that, but it is really
another language.
But since it is "close enough" to Visual Basic (and I mean VISUAL BASIC 6) I think that is the reason why many developers choosed B4X and some others did not even give it a try. Once tasted, I think no-one still using Android Studio would continue to still beat the head against a wall with a "cryptic" language.
B4X is enough elegant, even if something could be better, expecially the documentation.
What I mean is for instance:
Public Sub MoveCustomDialog(cd As CustomLayoutDialog, Top As Int) As ResumableSub
Dim no As NativeObject = cd
Dim MainView As View = no.GetField("alertView").GetField("view")
Do While MainView.Top = 0
Sleep(5)
Loop
Dim ContentView As View = no.GetField("alertView").GetField("contentView")
Dim CircleView As View = no.GetField("alertView").GetField("circleView")
ContentView.Top = -MainView.Top + Top
CircleView.Parent.Top = -MainView.Top + Top + CircleView.Parent.Top
Return True
End Sub
Where to know about "alertView", "view", "circleView"?
Erel, you did a wonderful job. So wonderful that honestly it is hard to believe you're alone doing that.
Please take the above as a constructive criticism, because I LOVE B4X (and I've just contributed with the maximum of the suggested amounts).
To everyone else, expecially if using B4A for business, please consider to donate as much as you can to keep this fantastic tool getting better, powerful AND KNOWN. Since Erel could count on our free word-spreading,
Advertisement is not for free. So, contribution means also give an help to promote this fantastic toolset.
Thank you for reading.