Is there a new type of user?

[kickaha]

Am I imagining it or has a new type of user of B4A appeared - the lazy programmer?

When I first came on the forum (not that long ago) people would ask questions and for advice/help on their code. They had tried to solve their issues but needed a nudge in the right direction. I can appreciate that - they have tried to find a solution first and then sought help when they had come to a dead end.

I now seem to see more threads that basically say "I want to do XXXXXXXX (please) tell me how (note that please is optional to some people).

Now it may just be my view of things, but if someone cannot be bothered to use the search, do the tutorials, and play with some code why should someone just hand them the solution on a plate?

I wish these people would realise that you have to work at programing. You need to get in there and put some code together, it may not work but it will teach you something. Then if your code is not behaving you ask for help, comfortable in the knowledge that you have had a go and tried your best.

My name is Kickaha, this is my rant

 

[Pengwin]

I've seen this kind of attitude on other forums too, although it does remind me of just before the turn over too the year 2000. If I remember rightly, the government was going to take unemployed and 'train' them in about 3 months to fix millennium bugs in virtually any software.
When I first read this, I was absolutely gob-smacked, and outraged. Most of us have been working hard learning our craft for years and at that time, I was programming AS/400's with RPG/400...not really a language that you can just pick up and work with in that frame of time.
Unfortunately, there appears to be two camps when people regard programming, there are those who view it as some 'mystical' craft, where programmers work their magic. But, then there are the others that still see programming as 'playing with computers' (my mother still tells people that is what I do for a living :BangHead, and don't take us seriously, thinking that anyone can do it.

However, I suppose what you said, "I want to do XXXXXXXX (please) tell me how", is a testament to the development of B4A, in making android development more accessible to people and helping to get more to, at least, try programming for themselves.

(that's my, my little rant is over).

 

[agraham]

As a long-timer here it has struck me recently that Basic4android does seem to attract a different sort of user than Basic4ppc does/did. It seems to me that Basic4ppc users were more interested in the technical aspects of mobile devices and their programming whereas the Basic4android users seem more into games and social/web applications.

 

[stevel05]

I have only been using B4Android for a few months but have noticed the increased traffic in that time, which has to be good for the product and users.

I think you're right about the target, AGraham, but not only for B4a, it seems that there are a lot of new apps on the android Market related to social networking and games in general.

Kikaha and Pengwin, part of my working time is spent teaching guitar, and exactly the same syndrome arises there. Some students are happy to take what you give them in a lesson and build on it themselves and come back asking questions, sometimes about things I hadn't imagined. Others won't do anything until you tell them exactly what to do. That's human nature and it's diversity. I know which type of student I enjoy teaching more!

I for one have been taking a little time out lately, I want to (partially) port an app I've written on B4a onto the PC where it's easier to do large data input (from the user perspective) with thing's like cut and paste from internet resources etc. and have been looking at languages to do it with. I have not had much prior involvement in gui development, so any language I choose will have a steep learning curve in that aspect. Having looked at various BASIC's I've decided to invest my time in learning Java. Which will have the bonus of giving me a better understanding of the underlying structure of B4a.

Still keeping an eye on the forums though.

Steve

 

[agraham]

If you are looking to use Java on the desktop then I would suggest that you carefully consider the GUI that you choose to learn/use. Although I have not taken it further because I can use C# and Windows Forms (and Basic4ppc) on the desktop I briefly looked into this. There seems to be a choice between Swing and SWT.

Java apps on the desktop tend to suck visually, I think because they often use Swing. Swing seems to be a totally platform independent UI toolkit written entirely in Java using only a few OS graphics primitives so it's portable across platforms but has its own rather primitive look and feel.

In contrast SWT uses the native OS controls where possible so is less portable (although it has been ported to everything that matters as far as I can tell) and so retains the native look and feel of the platform. For instance Eclipse uses Jface which uses SWT and it looks and feels pretty close to a "proper" Windows app as almost entirely Windows native controls are being used.

 

[stevel05]

Thanks for the tip, I'll investigate SWT further.