Why did everyone get B4A

Hi, I am kinda with NJDude, got tired of having to remember and put into a program all the malarky that Eclipse required. When I found out about B4A it was like the sun came up. Now will only use B4A but wish they had support for deving in BB10.

Anyway, I have built a couple of applications and have one on website that is ready for BETA and the other I am trying to sell.

Thanks Klaus and Erel. Along with all the other that have helped me along the way.

R

I finally cracked and bought an Android tablet :sign0104:
I've been on the forum since it's creation back in 1852, well, it feels like it

Erel and his team, combined with all the forum help from members make for a great product.

Top helpers and posters, you know who you are x

Hi,

I purchased B4A yesterday and very happy with the investment, looking at the apps created so far has got me very excited about the possibilities. I use other products which I wont mention, but I want to focus my attention on Android development at the moment, so B4A is a superb purchase.

jmeuse2 said:

I'm in it to make a million dollars.

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Judging from the recent How much do you make poll here, that may take a while...

Roger Garstang said:

Judging from the recent How much do you make poll here, that may take a while...

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:sign0142:

Simple...
After trying to get something else than the tutorital to work in Elipse, I fired up the Firefox and typed "Basic for android".
Nothing more, nothing less. Havent looked back since!

Hi everyone!

My resume is exactly the same as DermagraFX's
the first computer I had was named Sinclair with built-in BASIC interpreter.
I used our home TV as monitor and a cassette recorder to save the files on
magnetic tape. then followed BASIC everywhere it went.. until VB.Net, where
some programmers exit with .net, I was one of many who continued on I-95
south.. so to be honest I don't have .net and no one in family history had it.
I also have natural immunity against java. But I never gave up the desire to
create apps for these new beasts called smartphones.. and kept googling for
a new version of basic or some easy language that will enable me to realize that goal.

I found a good version of Basic somewhere, but after trying it, I found out
that I had to send my source code to a cloud sever just to compile it for
android, so I dropped that option and kept looking again.. finally I found B4A
and as of to day I am still celebrating that discovery. I found it easy to use,
rich of features, enough library that covered all necessary aspects of
programming, great community who are highly knowledgeable and always
ready to help, down to earth price and free tech support.
so, I halted the caravan, erected a tent and happily settled down.

I learned programming as a kid with BASIC on a Timex Sinclair 1000 as well as two models of TRS-80 computers (Color Computer 2 and 3). After that, I learned C programming in DOS, then a little bit of Visual Basic for Windows, then back to C programming under Linux.

I came across basic4android rather accidentally when researching how to get my boys into programming. I was looking for an interactive basic interpreter to teach them some fundamentals before moving on to other things. All this BASIC research made me nostalgic, so I wondered if there were any interpreters for Android that I could run on my precious Nexus 7.

When I found basic4android (only a few days ago), I was overjoyed, even though I didn't know that I wanted something like it. I had done some Java/Eclipse programming, and like many others, I found it cumbersome. I was really surprised and pleased to see that there was something that simple that could make "real" Android apps without the slowdown of an interpreter, or needing a big runtime package to distribute apps.

<blushes>
I don't even own a cell-phone.
I worked in software for the last thirty years VB6 etc

Bought an android tablet in Dec Cheapest one on eBay
Totally amazed at its ability.

Downloaded X11 Basic to see what it did
Looked at Eclipse and its forums - what a mess
Blogs on Eclipse are brutal too. Found a post by Erel and then found b4a

Again, Totally amazed at its ability to create apps using functions like SignatureCapture in a few lines of code (of course calling the java library)

Delighted to be here.

taximania said:

I finally cracked and bought an Android tablet :sign0104:

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Yeah... You're a litle crazy at times...

I've been on the forum since it's creation back in 1852, well, it feels like it

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Man...I need to update my calenar entry...I marked it 1582!!!!

Erel and his team, combined with all the forum help from members make for a great product.

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Right on!!!

It's cool to see that I'm not the only one coming from the dinosaur era. I've started programming on a ZX81 (with the 16K extension ). I had a lot of different computers and used so many languages (for professional or personal reasons) for the past 30 years that I can't remember all of them (mostly Assembler x86, Delphi, C++, C#, VB and all its variations, Java, PHP).
When I bought B4A, I knew already Java but never programmed with the Android API (and to be honest, I barely knew what Android was before buying my first smartphone in 2012 - I'm really a dinosaur as you can see ).
B4A was less intimidating than my first readings about programming with Java for Android. I found very strange to see no visual designer for Android (XML files for layouts looked like a joke made by an HTML fanboy) so the B4A designer was very attractive (but I must admit now that I use it less and less since it doesn't support custom views).
Despite the fact I could program everything in Java, I continue to use B4A because it's faster to develop with it and I find my code more readable and easier to maintain with it.
I like also the community in the forum. I just regret there's no collaborative work on some subjects.

EDIT: I recently discovered that the Android Developer Tools in Eclipse contains a visual designer ("graphical layout editor").

Informatix said:

I just regret there's no collaborative work on some subjects.

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I kinda agree with you on that one... But there are ways one could start a collaborative work, one is the B4A ChatRoom.. Another would be to have a sub-forum, or thread, dedicated to "teams"...

Informatix said:

It's cool to see that I'm not the only one coming from the dinosaur era. I've started programming on a ZX81 (with the 16K extension ).

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Hey, I started my first programming experiences with a ZX Spectrum. Then Commodore 64 and several Amigas (A500, A2000, A4000) and then had to change to Win95 (coming from the Amiga this was horrible).

Like Informatix I can't count the programming languages I have learned in my life.

My mobile computing interests started back in 1992 with a Psion Series 3a. One of the best things I ever bought. It used a multitasking OS named EPOC and it did better multitasking on this tiny hardware than the Windows versions of that time. Over the time I had a Psion Series 3mx and a Psion Revo. Then EPOC was developed further and turned into Symbian. Psion didn't ever release a Symbian device and so I decided to change to windows mobile and I bought a ASUS A696 pocket PC.
Many things were worse on windows mobile compared to the Psion devices and I had to learn that I have to replace nearly all internal programs with better commercial versions to make the device usable.

I was very interested in astronomy and so I found a website with some windows mobile astronomy software (This was the website of Alfcen). The software was written with Basic4PPC and because I just have thougt to write some simple programs for windows mobile I took a deeper look into it. A short time later I bought Basic4PPC and joined this great community.

After Microsoft announced the death of windows mobile I think many people developing for this platform were shocked. A lot of projects were stopped immediately. So Erel asked in the forum what we think about Android and the feedback was very positive. I first bought a very cheap Android phone to try if this OS is the right one for me. And it was right...

In the two years now with B4A and Android I learned so much and it is really fun to program with B4A. It is much faster than programming in Java and the code is really better to read. I the meantime I know Java quite well but in bigger projects I always get lost in the code. B4A is much simpler but very powerful. I sometimes try to find the boundaries of B4A and very often I am impressed how far you can get with Reflection or additional libraries.

corwin42 said:

My mobile computing interests started back in 1992 with a Psion Series 3a. One of the best things I ever bought.

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Oh yes! I had one! I loved it.

corwin42 said:

In the two years now with B4A and Android I learned so much and it is really fun to program with B4A. It is much faster than programming in Java and the code is really better to read.

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When I read all these positive comments, I can't resist doing a parody (nothing personal ):
"Before, my life was a misery. I was an alcoholic, I beat my wife and my child. I even bought an Iphone. And one day, I saw the light. Erel showed me the way. Since that day, I'm another man. I no longer develop with Objective-C, and I stopped beating my kid even when he wants to try Windows 8. Oh B4A, thank you! Thank you so much! You saved my life."
EDIT: we are so happy with B4A that our positive comments look like fake reviews.

I grew up with basic, commodore, GW-Basic up to vb6. Got PureBasic, mostly because it seems with all c/c++ compilers I couldn't make a simple launcher with icon. Did some research about unnamed exports in dlls and came to the conclusion c/c++ can't do that, so skipped to assembly.

Probably the best thing about all those BASIC dialects is that they are for basic, all purpose, for beginners... With Basic4android - and general programming for android - it took some learning. Guess my javascript experience also helped getting familiar. thanks to google/forum posts, I managed to finish a small remote control app for my music player within the trial period.

I recently bought basic4android, because I wanted to be able to write programs for mobile phones, not even knowing which tools exactly (meanwhile I got inspired by some b4a examples, leading to this project: ctuser.net ). Also because I managed to get some funds on my paypal account (isn't that easy, you know basic4android is quite affordabe, and I didn't want to end up like my bascom friend, still having his project in pieces small enough for the demo.

I learned basic ( vb6) I think my freshman year in high-school ...then played around with Java... and I really didn't like it..so I came back to what I know... or kinda know..as I'm a senior and graduating soon ...off to college for comp science on a pre Med track in 3 months !!

Anyway IV found it to be an easy conversion for the parts I remember ...I wish there was a better app designer..

Sent from my LG-E970 using Tapatalk 2

Java as a shit

Well, I had a BSc in Computer Science and Engineering. During study time, I learned C, C++, Java & PHP. I was able to complete some commercial projects using C++(Desktop, Windows) & PHP (web). And for some reasons, Java was complex to understand (advanced one) and started ignoring from then.

A few months back, for one of my commercial website (Automated Topup Solution), clients asked me to introduce an Andoid app so that they can make topup request, check and make payment using Android Phone.

I was searching something alternative (NDK, Titanium etc) but B4A seemed the most promising to me. And without thinking for second option, I purchased 2 years license.

After purchasing this, within a week, I was able to release the application.


B4A, Erel & Community: Rock!

Informatix said:

I recently discovered that the Android Developer Tools in Eclipse contains a visual designer ("graphical layout editor").

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When would you let us see that?

I am a dinosaur too... Started on the ZX81 for fun but professionally made my money in DBase, CA-Clipper and DBMan for DOS and then moving on to VB for Windows programming. For me I finally got tired of learning new stuff every 5-10 years and hearing all the 'this is the best' talk of all the different languages.

I know that in the end the question is... 'Does it work for the customer?' Well then that's a great program no matter what it is written in.

B4A allowed me not to toss out all the BASIC I had learned up over the years and go back to a RAD style of language - environment that the industry seems to have forgot and there is some of the BEST support here!

sktanmoy said:

When would you let us see that?

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Either I don't understand what you mean, or you didn't understand what I wrote. I was talking of the designer for Java developers, which has plenty of features.