How we should promote B4X

[Theera]

When I've tried promote B4X in Thai develpers . I found the problem.
For fellow B4X members, you probably don't doubt the ability of B4X language.But people who are new to B4X and have used Flutters language. He is still wondering about the B4X language. After studying, which company will hire him? There are only companies that hire Flutters. As a B4X member, how should we promote B4X language?

 

[aeric]

This topic has been discussed many times.
You can also ask ChatGPT.
You can promote through social media, other forums, build projects for other companies or school, create video tutorial, upload your projects to GitHub, etc, etc...

 

[AnandGupta]

There are only companies that hire Flutters.

That is very important point, if you plan to apply for job.

Most, if not all, members here do side job with B4X or personal/professional job with B4X.
No company, sadly, list B4X as one of the programming language in their JD.
My company has staff using AS and Flutter. I did mentioned about B4X, but no argument helps here.

 

[Theera]

That is very important point, if you plan to apply for job.

Most, if not all, members here do side job with B4X or personal/professional job with B4X.
No company, sadly, list B4X as one of the programming language in their JD.
My company has staff using AS and Flutter. I did mentioned about B4X, but no argument helps here.

I didn't apply for a job, but just joined a job application group to understand the problems of programmers and employers and how they view B4X.

 

[Mehrzad238]

There are multiple reasons why B4X that are not well-known and practical to the world,

1- There are not enough English tutorials on YouTube, I mean, just use Flutter and see how much comes up. Nothing impacts like a visual tutorial, for example video
2- It must be shown, not told, demonstrated to the world how easy it is if they just start work with B4X, because whatever new features Google introduces, @Erel gives us a solution. So the problem is not if B4X is outdated or something like that; the problem is not demonstrated to the world as much as it should be
3-We must create complex projects to show the world whatever you can create with Flutter or Dart, or whatever you wanna call it, it can be made with B4X

I mean, the more you read these reasons, the more they make sense

I give you an example:

Let's say a young person, like 14 years 14-year-old wants to try to learn to create apps, what will they do first? Try Google, or search YouTube, or try social media search for that, and what do you think the results are?

So if these three reasons can be applied, everything will work just fine as you and the rest of the B4X FAMILY WANT

Now tell me if I am wrong?

 

[Alessandro71]

3-We must create complex projects to show the world whatever you can create with Flutter or Dart, or whatever you wanna call it, it can be made with B4X

how about a contest?

- choose a topic
- one flutter developer vs one B4X developer
- multiplatform (Android & iOS)
and compare result by
- development time
- resulting app size
- performance

 

[AnandGupta]

First whom we are trying to reach ?
Individual developers ? Yes, they are on board and some are also in other Android development tools. No harm here.
Corporate/ Business office ? No. They will not touch a development tool which do not have a famous company behind it. They will not make any app using a development tool which is based on a single/group of individuals.

My company develops windows app, android app, ios app.
The development tools they use are vb.net (I am learning and developing in C#), Android Studio and Xcode something.

I described about B4J for windows and showed some beautiful designs, B4X for android and ios and showed some from members here, even mine. But one question I could not pass. Who is behind B4X ? Period.

I use many open source tools, but none is allowed as official one for apps from our company. It has to be M$, G, Apple or other big ones.

 

[aeric]

There are multiple reasons why B4X that are not well-known

Read this: https://www.b4x.com/android/forum/threads/just-for-discussion-why-b4x-is-not-famous-enough.114641/

I think the question raised by OP or the discussion is more on ways to promote B4X, rather than the reasons behind on why B4X is unpopular.

If you look from the perspective of the root cause to find solutions to it, first I will say, it is about SEO.
Nowadays, the only way people learn about something is through websites.

1- There are not enough English tutorials on YouTube

I agree.
Talking about YouTube or short videos on social media, I will also relate this to SEO and the indexing algorithm.

It is same to how you want to promote your own business, product or service.
You need to understand how SEO works. Otherwise you need to find an expert to do it for you.

Let's assume YouTube is one of the most efficient marketing tool.
If we (as the community) want to heavily push on the marketing by creating videos on YouTube,

1. We need to do it consistently and professionally. At least every week, we need to post 5 videos with great contents.
Great contents for me, are videos that are not boring, high quality, in terms of screen recording, images, sounds, effects, editing and contains clickbait title.
Does anyone can do it? It is easier to say than to do. How much time and money we can put into it?

2. Another way is leverage existing YouTubers who already have high number of subscribers.
KOL or influencers are more effective than a random guy on YouTube.

the problem is not demonstrated to the world as much as it should be

The problem is we are lacking of external sources.
We are too relying on this single forum. Instead, we should step outside the wall of this forum.
I believe JavaScript become popular is not because it is a good language, but the questions and problems faced by millions of developers on Stack Overflow, discord and different forums talking about this problematic language. Sometimes negative things get more attentions.

I have tried many ways such as creating blogs but I facing too many failures.
I have tried revive B4X wikipedia but also facing problems.
I have created YouTube videos and more.

3-We must create complex projects to show the world whatever you can create with Flutter or Dart, or whatever you wanna call it, it can be made with B4X

I don't agree on this. I think if you can create an app that become popular, it doesn't need to be complex because people don't care how you did it.
The app just need to be useful to many people or make the creator become millionaire. Just kidding.

What I can think of
1. Create projects which will gain a lot of interest on open source platform like GitHub.
2. Focus on trending topics such as AI agent or workflow automation using AI tools like n8n.
3. Create projects that could get high interest among local developers e.g new tax policy required by government (GST, e-invoicing)

The problem in B4X community I can see is lack of participation in open source projects.
I don't know. Maybe experts don't like to contribute to projects started by another members. New members are lack of confident to join these projects.
Some members just don't care to contribute. They take things for granted and treat the forum as a product support page.

There are 4 products in B4X suite.
I am not abandoning B4A or B4i but I am now focusing more on B4J only.
If in one area it could shine, at the end it would help B4X as the whole.

One more reason is the limitation to use B4X IDE on platforms other than Windows. If you watch YouTube, many tutorials where the experts are using their Mac or Linux, especially YouTubers from India and some countries near my region. So I hope B4X IDEs are getting better and better support everyday on Linux and Mac.

Another attempt to run B4J on Linux

With some determination, it is possible.

www.b4x.com

 

[LucaMs]

I think the question raised by OP or the discussion is more on ways to promote B4X, rather than the reasons behind on why B4X is unpopular

Those two things are connected; simply raising awareness of B4X isn't enough if people will then prefer other tools.

If you look from the perspective of the root cause to find solutions to it, first I will say, it is about SEO.

Erel tried with an SEO.

 

[aeric]

Erel tried with an SEO.

Yes, I have seen it.
But SEO is an ongoing effort. It is similar to marketing. We cannot set it up once and forget about it, expecting it to autopilot and grow itself.
We should not go with only one channel.
I think Erel's role is focusing on the development and improvement of the product.
The job to promote it is the role of somebody else.

In my opinion, whether B4X becomes popular is not important. As a B4X user, the reason I want to promote it is not to make it very popular.

It is enough if every day we have one more new people get to know this product.

Usually when I found a nice product and think it deserves better recognition I would want to share it to more people.

I don't want to feel alone. I want more people use it like I do and discuss about it together.

Let me take Linux as example. It is a great product but it is not as popular as compare to Windows and Mac. It is niche among developers. After more than 20 years, it still getting a small market share.
So I think we should not too worry about B4X not getting popular. There are dozens of programming tools also not as popular.

No matter what, I am still continue to do whatever I can to promote it. In the way I believe more concrete and best to do.

 

[BlueVision]

I flip my coins, a true and actual story

As mentioned above, it is very difficult to market B4X software in a company. Software from Microsoft, Apple and Google is accepted immediately without question.
Data security is a top priority for most companies, and due to a lack of creative minds in-house, they put themselves in the hands of the giants. What will companies like Microsoft or Google do with company data that ends up on their servers via the increasingly common AI assistants in standard programmes? Of course, this data will not be used. Dream on...

A major hurdle is the internal IT of many companies. One cannot help but feel that here, too, companies are increasingly putting themselves in the hands of the giants. Passwords are stored on their servers via two-factor authentication, etc. Is that data protection? No. Companies are now only concerned with plugging security gaps in the giants' software as quickly as possible on instruction.

I work for a large Japanese company, and here we have another problem.
The Japanese mentality, which is strictly hierarchical, contrary to Western thinking. As a small individual developer, you have a very difficult time introducing new software you have developed yourself that simply bundles and simplifies many processes, creates standardised procedures and thus brings structure to established processes within the company. The advantage? Huge time savings.

What does company's IT say about this? They have security concerns and ‘smile’ the programme away without having a look to it. No chance. So, revolution from below. Fortunately, there are still middle managers who have looked into the matter and found it to be good. The software has been running for several months now with around 200 colleagues. Everyone praises its simplicity, flexibility and relief from annoying processes. Significant increases in profitability are clearly visible in the current figures.

Is anyone finally interested in the upper hierarchy now? No.
That's fine, too. As national company, we now have an advantage compared to other countries, a little more breathing space and safer jobs.

Finally: What did I get for two years of programming developement of a 15.000 line coding in B4J/B4X?
Quite simply: nothing. That's the flip side of the coin. Unfortunately, that's how it works.