What happens to B4X as Android drops Java?

[dilettante]

Flutter – Cross Platform App Development from Google

Dart/Flutter on Android may not go anywhere, but you never know. Google does have a history of dropping services and technologies almost overnight with little notice, and they appear to be tiring of the effort consumed in fending off Oracle's continual attacks.

Has anyone stayed on top of the Dart story enough to know if we can expect it to be a viable desktop and server language the way people supplement B4mobile (B4i, B4A) using B4J to create desktop client apps and services?

What are the odds of B4X moving from Java to Dart in step with Google?

 

[susu]

The fact is, you use Basic language to write code then B4X will compile to Java/Object-C to make native apps. So if Google moves from Java to Dart, our amazing Erel will do his best to be sure B4X compile to Dart too. It seems no problem for him.

 

[cimperia]

Dart/Flutter are very interesting but I think that there might already be a replacement: SWIFT.

Swift is being used by Apple of course, but there might be plans for an Android development : Infoworld news

Even if you are dubious of this happening, there's a company (Elements) that offers a free tool-chain to develop (on major platforms) in their porting of SWIFT and generate your targeted platform app (but it's not cross-platform)

I have started playing with it (using their Visual Studio plugin, but they offer a free IDE for Macs) and it's actually pretty good. The UI elements are not shareable but that might be an advantage. You can import/convert your current java, Objective-C and C# into Swift.

If Google were to drop java for Android development, I have no doubt that this company would adapt their tool to target the new language.

Here's more info on their tool: Silver if you are interested.

The Frameworks
Silver embraces each platform's native SDKs and Frameworks. So you're leveraging the native Java and Dalvik APIs on Android, working directly against the .NET and WinRT frameworks on Microsoft's platform, and creating true and native Cocoa apps for Mac, iOS, watchOS and tvOS. All using the Swift language.

At the same time, our (optional) Sugar cross-platform library allows you to share large amounts of back-end code and keep it cross-platform – especially helpful if you are creating "the same" app for different devices.

Sugar is open source, so you can even contribute and extend the library.

 

[Beja]

If they cornered us then we may fall back to 1010 and they will be out of business..

 

[cimperia]

If Google were to switch language, I am pretty sure that they would offer converting tools from java to New Language. From b4A point of view the impact would be important, for sure (rewrite of module converting B4A to java for a start).

 

[moster67]

I don't mind Swift and it is quite quick to pick up if you have a Java background (or even c#, c++)

 

[KMatle]

Millions of developers have to throw away their code then (not only we). So this will not gonna happen.

 

[MaFu]

Even if you are dubious of this happening, there's a company (Elements) that offers a free tool-chain to develop (on major platforms) in their porting of SWIFT and generate your targeted platform app (but it's not cross-platform)

The company name is RemObjects, Elements is the name of their compiler tool chain.
I'm using their Oxygene compiler (Pascal) for years, a very great product. With this compiler i have almost the same codebase for .NET, Java (PC and Android) and Mac/iOS. I made my B4A libraries with it.

 

[dilettante]

I'm far less worried about B4A making the move to Dart (if ever needed) than I am about B4J (again, assuming this happens). However I suppose B4J could just keep going on as it is and only the libraries would diverge over time.

 

[cimperia]

There should be no problem (famous last words) for B4J as it does not use Android, but plain java. No issue there.

 

[Troberg]

Whatever they do, they'll have to do it slowly. If they dropped Java support overnight, they'd kill the entire ecosystem they need to survive. There'll be time to adapt.

 

[ZenWhisk]

Flutter – Cross Platform App Development from Google

Dart/Flutter on Android may not go anywhere, but you never know. Google does have a history of dropping services and technologies almost overnight with little notice, and they appear to be tiring of the effort consumed in fending off Oracle's continual attacks.

Has anyone stayed on top of the Dart story enough to know if we can expect it to be a viable desktop and server language the way people supplement B4mobile (B4i, B4A) using B4J to create desktop client apps and services?

What are the odds of B4X moving from Java to Dart in step with Google?

Actually I feel safer in the B4X environment, we carry on developing as normal. Erel and the team introduce B4S which takes our code and cross compiles it to Swift, or Dart or whatever. If we had developed in java in eclipse etc, then we'd have to rewrite ourselves or something....

 

[dilettante]

That's a good point. By the time any such move is required B4A will probably have made the move already itself.