Crystal Noir, welcome to B4X
I'd like to share some words about your questions.
Computer programming is usually a long road of extremely hard work, and even since the 80's revolution (as I was port of the Commodore 64 demoscene when Basic language and Assembly language was the available) the industry have exploaded and as everybody knows there's many technology tools and development environments for programming. At that time Pascal and C++ was also famous, but did not attract a large userbase because of the introduction of the Altair, Apple II and Commodore 64/128). Ever since Amiga and especially the PC was developed hardware have developed at a rapid pace and slowed down because manufacturers have to reply on the nano standard which takes years to stay in sync with the market). This is because like Steve Jobs said, the software industry evolved into a become much more powerful than the hardware industry, so today you have plenty of programming languages to choose from. You are doing yourself a favour to ask yourself how much time and ambition you want to put into your programming hobby, and what you want to achieve by doing so. Seen from a corporate industry perspective there's mainly two dominating platforms, Microsofts C sharp (.NET) and Oracles Java language (Cross-platform runtime) that programmers choose to become skilled which is the fundamental knowledge base, then you have the opportunity to use a Javascript framework (such as Angular JS, Angular 2, Node JS, React, Riot.JS, Create JS, Ketstone JS, VUE, Meteor to name a few, which is used to program websolutions with the webbrowser in mind. This makes webpages look and perform more like a desktop application. In later years webserver programming has become an obvious need for online business. That is therefore neccessary to be familar with the SQL standard which is used to allow programming code to communicate with databases such as SQLite (local database file), and such as servers (MySQL (mysql and mariadb versions), Microsoft SQL server and others. If you want to work with a MySQL database then the server script language PHP is very common and easy to learn and use. This isone of the most common way to build a login system and other stuff on the webserver in the old way, however B4J offers us to run a webserver with RDC2 that make it less neccessary to sign up at a webhotel to run a webserver of your own which is a great thing so there's much to considder depending what you want to do with it. PHP is known to be used together with a Javascript framework because a javascript framework is used to display stuff in the webbrowser, while PHP is handing what happens in the background on the server, usually to interact with the server itself such as the database and files behind the webpage. Microsoft Visual Basic 6 attracted a large userbase when it was released long ago that made it very easy to the common Windows user to put together their own application. VB.NET followed, then C sharp, so that Microsoft could turn their language closer to Java, which has been a standard for a long time in the academic software engineering world and it to this day the obvious academical programming language at Chalmers universities and other corporate funded academies around the world. Because the Visual Basic language became so widespread, it is easy to find code snippets and examples on the internet. This makes the B4X frenchise of development environments for android, ios, arduino, Rapeberry PI, webserver and desktop development with B4J (Java) possible and the benefit to use a worldwide standardized programming language based on Basic and Visual Basic so this opens up for great possibillities as a single developer so as far as I know B4X is something of 'a unique package' of development environments and tools that supports it all, or at least a large range of hardware to keep us all busy for a long time to come. I'd like to wrap up this by saying that you will get a great jumpstart by doing examples from the B4A or B4J PDF guide and give that some time, and start out with adding single contros and learn how they are used. That will keep you motivated to learn more and it's a advantage to learn as much as possible with what you choose and stay with that until you can do pretty much what you need to do. Then you will notice it is not difficult to move on and learn other programming languages because programming languages these days is buildt around OOP-Objective oriented programming were classes is the fundamental part and the heart of the application, so remember C sharp, Java and C++ is the worldwide standards in the corporate and academic world with giants such as Microsoft, Apple and Oracle owns the dominating platform standards and then there's many development tools based on these or others. I personally think that B4X is the obvious development package for the hobby/indie developer were many have experience from the major standards but since it is possible to use Visual Basic syntax which many programmers were used to in the past it's as far as I know the only (and best) solution to use one programming langauge to develope for multiple platforms. With that said the B4X frenchise is causing alot of work for Anywhere software to maintain and update and promote his products which is a great effort, and thanks to this community of experienced programmers it helps to learn more no matter where in the knowledge and experience ladder you stand as we help eachother to progress which is vital for the B4X to keep growing and attract more customers. You will find that Google is your best friend to learn whatever you want to learn, and in time you will find that it takes less time to develope with B4X compared to any of the other standards, which is the reason why so many allready experienced programmers have found that B4X actually is a shortcut to spend less time to get the same result. That's very important in todays world. In time B4X members will be the ones who promote Anywhere software products, depending of their level of success.
Many allready experienced programmers have found that B4X actually is a shortcut to spend less time to get the same result. That's very important in todays world. In time B4X members will be the ones who promote Anywhere software products, depending of their level of success.
