I've had this program for a couple of years. I keep mentioning how difficult it is to understand these tutorials. I have written a blackjack type game which looks pretty good. However, I still can not do a simple space invaders or pac-man game. I still can not figure out how to save stuff to a database and recall the info. I have prgrammed before and am not stupid. The problem is that engineers are writting for engineers. So my question is, "Has anyone contacted a professional writer of MS Visual basic and asked him to write a book on B4A"? If the answer is NO, then you just don't get it. The B in BASIC stands for beginners. You guys are good are writing code, but horrible at teaching how to program. Until you get someone else to write a book, B4A will be what it is. It has nothing to do with WHAT it can do. The most important part is HOW to do it.
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Has anyone writen a book yet about b4a
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No, the OP has asked a valid question.
It appears that his view is at odds with the rest of the community, but it is a valid view.
My last post was serious, if he feels that there is a market for such a book he should commission it himself and reap the rewards for spotting the market before anyone else.
It appears that his view is at odds with the rest of the community, but it is a valid view.
My last post was serious, if he feels that there is a market for such a book he should commission it himself and reap the rewards for spotting the market before anyone else.
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First off I think I know what your problem is. You want someone to write your programs for you. The reason why tutorials aren't written that way, for the most part, is because when you teach someone how to do something, you don't just say put a ghost here, put pacman there. You tell them why you put them there. If I gave you the code every time you needed it, you wouldn't learn. You learn by adapting what you know to your own code.
If I tell you a button is to click and do stuff, it helps you none. But if I explain to you that the button has the function of firing a click event in which you can add code to the click event and when the button is clicked your code is executed. You know know how to use a button.
You say that none of the tutorials help you, then I'm thinking the problem is with you. Because the tutorials on this site are made by several different people with many different writing styles and they cant all be wrong in how they are doing it.
The reason people say to read the forums is because, after a while of answering the same thing over and over again, it is just easier to redirect the people to the already established information. If there where donuts in your workplace and everyone kept coming to you asking where they were, first you would find out where they are because, "hey there's donuts". Then you would answer the questions of where they are to everyone else, but after a while of loosing productivity, you would put up a sign that said donuts with an arrow.
Normally when someone says read the forums, they don't just say "read the forums". When you ask "how do I get pacman to die when he touches a ghost?" They usually say "search the forums for collision detection". The reason for this is simple. In programming you have two kinds of people, one kind wants to learn how to do something, so they can implement that concept into their own work. They want to know the concept not the code. The second kind wants you to write their code for them so they can say hey look what I did. They don't care about learning the concept, they just want others to do it for them. In either case the answer "search the forums for collision detection" is the correct answer.
The person who wants to learn, knows the only way they will learn is by reading mass quantities of information and then trial and error on what they have learned. That's the way you learn. The person who wants you to program for them is just being lazy and you shouldn't give them anything. Make that lazy bastard work for it. In either case when someone asks how to do this, most times you don't know what kind of programmer they are, so the same answer works on both.
Just like a chef makes money by cooking for people that are to lazy to cook for themselves, I am a programmer. I sell my programs I make to people that are to lazy to learn how to do what I am doing and do it themselves. Why should I write code for someone for free, just cause they don't want to do a little reading. Especially when they are going to take credit for my work anyway as their own, and possibly make money off of it themselves.
Now don't get me wrong. You should always help people that have less knowledge than you. And if they truly cant figure something out, then by all means, write a bit of code for them. Because that person that spent three hours trying to figure out what was wrong, will see your code and say "now I see what you did."
But when you see someone post a thread saying "how do I kill pacman when he hits a ghost", and you reply with search collision detection and 5 minutes later he says "well I cant figure it out, cant you just tell me?" You know the answer to what kind of programmer they are.
The reason there are so many books out about vb6 and vb.net and java and everything else is because of the long time between new full releases of the software. And as soon as a new release comes out that book is outdated. Sometimes the old book is still useful, but sometimes they need rewritten. Think about using a vb6 book to program vb.net. Although somewhat useful it would do more harm than good. you would have to learn vb6, then learn whats different in vb.net. Way counterproductive.
And lastly the main reason no one wants to write a book is because books take time to write. Months and sometimes years. Then you have to get it to a publisher who has to have it proofread, analyzed and approved which can take months to years sometimes.
If I was to start a book right now on the subject of basic4android. First I would have to learn every aspect of it so I could explain it. How can i teach what I don't know? I have been using it for almost a year now and still haven't learned everything. So baring learning everything, I would need to collaborate with someone who did know. So now Erel and I sit down and start writing. To get a very concise easy to read book it would take a few months, we'll say 4. Finally we get it done. I take it to my agent, who shops it around. He finds that Simon Suester says they will publish it. (More realistically we would have to self publish cause basic4android is so unknown of a language, but we are looking at best case scenario here.) So Simon says they will publish. They take the script, and they have their editor read it. It has a few things that need redone, so its sent back to us for a rewrite. This all took a month. Now we have it back to them, and they get it to their proof readers, they proofread it that takes a week, then another week to set it up for print. Then they print off 50000 copies. (50000 is a small print for a big publisher) By the time they are done another month has passed but now we have the book in our hands. We can finally start selling it. At this point 6 months has passed and many of the references to how to do things are outdated because a new release has come out of b4a and the old way is no longer implemented.
And yes this is a very realistic timeline. Well actually it is very unrealistic because it never goes this smooth. Trust me. This is a best case scenario. More realistic would be closer to a year! There have been times that the publisher has asked for two or three rewrites. And none of this even is considering the money aspect of it. For them six months you worked on the book, what did you do for money? And since you aren't going to be able to get in the door at a publisher without and agent, even if you do write a good book you will only be making a small percentage of the profits, and that's if the book sells at all. We just printed off a book with a 50000 print run on a software that only has 25000 users. I don't know about you but I wouldn't even be buying the book, let alone two. Now you may get that oddball buyer like a library that orders ten copies, or a school ordering 20 but unless you truly believe you need two copies just in case you want to read it twice, you would only buy one. Even if we got 10 percent (which would be a miracle, more realistic would be closer to 2-3 percent) of the b4a community to buy the book we would only sell 2500 copies. All of which the publisher would have figured out when researching which is why I said you would have to self publish.
Now to self publish a book your looking at about $1000 for a professional editor, another $2000 per 10000 copies (its usually between $.20 and a dollar per book) then about $1000 per month for a professional publicist to help promote the book and most of them ask for a minimum of two month contract.
So if you are still interested, you can pay me to write your book, as I am a professional writer, and I will only charge you $2000 to do the book with a 1% back end on the royalties. You will have to talk to Erel on how much he will charge you to collaborate with me but that is between you two. I'm guessing another thousand or two. I can have you a manuscript in about 6 to 8 months (I know I said 4 earlier, but honestly that wouldn't be enough time for me to get one done correctly. Hell, it has taken almost an hour just to write this after a few spell checks and rewrites!) Then you can do with it what you want, and if you would like I can even get you in touch with my agent so he can help you get it published. But be prepared to self publish. Cause no one is going to pick up the rights to a book that might sell 2500 copies.
So for $9000 bucks you get your wish. Which isn't bad considering you would have a book that would be written exactly how you want, to help you learn exactly the way you want to learn. So when can I be expecting that check???
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No he wouldn't just modify a book, it would be easier to write a new one and use clippings from the old one.
I am a programmer and a writer!
hes going to sell 25000 copies of a book for a program that has 25000 users? seriously scewed thinking process man. Specially at $100 a pop. more realistic would be 2500 copies at 20 to 30 a pop. So 50000 minus his original 9000 plus an aditional 1000 a month in advertising and it takes 12 months to sell 2500 copies so another 12000. Now you are down to 29000. minus another 5000 for incidentals now your down to 24000. Minus plus your 10 percent to your agent, so now its 19000.
I think you are right that there is someone who just doesn't get it, but that person is you. do you really think that you sell a book for a hundred bucks ad get it all with no cost? seriously man get a clue. 2.5 million? hmmmmmm.....
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The problem with Wheretheidivides is not the suggestion of a book. I agree there are people needing books, others prefer PDFs or forums, some want videos (personnaly, I hate videos about programming, especially in a foreign language). And if, as a beginner, he feels there's something lacking in the available documentation, I can admit it (even if some of his claims are wrong). I'm sure that Erel is open to suggestions. The problem is elsewhere. The manner of saying things. The repetition of the same idea like a broken record. The posture of martyrdom, alone in the world to understand a simple idea, but who speaks for the silent majority. For me, that's enough.
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I actually have quite a lot of experience in teaching computer programming. I think that most of the tutorials are pretty easy to follow and learn from (even if the English is not perfect).
Klaus has written two guides with probably over 500 pages covering many aspects of Basic4android and Android programming.
With that said I would also like to see a book written about Basic4android. Basic4android is now quite mature. There are many planned improvements but overall the changes will be less dramatic.
It is impossible to write a good book without deep knowledge of Basic4android. Anyone with proper authoring skills and enough experience who like to write such a book should contact me by mail.
Klaus has written two guides with probably over 500 pages covering many aspects of Basic4android and Android programming.
With that said I would also like to see a book written about Basic4android. Basic4android is now quite mature. There are many planned improvements but overall the changes will be less dramatic.
It is impossible to write a good book without deep knowledge of Basic4android. Anyone with proper authoring skills and enough experience who like to write such a book should contact me by mail.
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How can you still not get it. You dont have to hire anyone to write a book on programming. Erel should go to amazon, look up a similiar book say on VB, email him. If the guy accepts, he will write it and make the money. He'll have the backing of the pubisher. Erel will not make money fromt he book. However, having a book on barnes and noble shelves will allow schools to use b4a. Erel will get b4a into schools. The require hardcore books and not PDF files. Erel will make money but it will cost nothing to have an established autor to write it. he'll probably just modify a VB book anyways speeding up the process.
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I have directed and hundred hundreds of TV shows and documentaries, yet I can not teach someone how to do so. I have tried and failed. I gave up on that a long time ago. My expertise in directing/editing and not teaching. They are completely different things.
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OMG, b4a sell up to $100, not the book. On the site it says 25,000 users use b4a. Also, every year on the shelfs of bookstores are new copies of over 100 programs. They get updated every year.
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No you don't get it. This is not my program. The author would need aceess to the programmer while writing a book. What's going to happen when the author asks me 'how do you use a canvess?". I'll just tell him to go to the forems. If erel contacts them, then erel can explain it so the author can write something. This can only be done by erel.
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