I am new to B4X as well. I am a professional software developer who is soon to retire from the company I have worked at for almost 34 years. In that company I have developed enterprise applications using COBOL, VB6, ASP, ASP.Net, ASP.Net MVC, VB.NET, C#, and, of course, Java. I have never had the need or opportunity to develop cross platform applications at work.
However, I have developed (and marketed) desktop and Android apps on my own time at home using Java. I wanted to develop iOS apps but did not want to have to learn Objective C. Since I am retiring I decided to rewrite all of my applications and forge ahead into the world of iOS app development. I thought it would be great to have one development environment and one set of code for all platforms.
So, I started searching for cross-platform (native deployment) application development tools. I found many options but some were too expensive and others did not support all the platforms that I want to deploy to (Windows, Mac, Linux, Android and iOS). Finally, I found B4X. I agree, with
@cklester, it was very difficult, at least for me, to find but I am very happy I found it AND this developer community.
I downloaded B4J and B4A and am beginning to explore the capabilities by redeveloping my Desktop (Windows, Mac, Linux) and Android apps using this tool. I can only spend a little bit of time on this effort each week because I am still employed full time. However, I am very happy with what I have found so far. When I am ready to build my iOS apps the cost of B4i looks very reasonable for the value I will get out of it.
In addition to all of the positives listed so far by others, one of the biggest pros for me is that the code is based on Java. This is great since, if I have to, I can make calls to custom Java classes. Of course, I am trying to avoid that but it gives this environment pretty much unlimited potential for my application development. Of course, another major feature is that I can finally develop iOS apps without having to learn Objective C.
The only con, from my perspective, is that I cannot use a Mac for development (unless I boot my Mac to Windows of course but that pretty much misses the point of having the Mac). I completely understand why this is and the pros more than outweigh that single con.
I have taken the time to read all of the documentation available, watched the videos, and have extensively used the search feature in the forums to find the latest and greatest way to do whatever I am trying to accomplish. Of course, as Erel has pointed out in one of his introductory videos, the best way to learn is by programming.
Anyway, thanks to all for your contributions. I look forward to a long and productive road ahead.