I wasn't suggesting anyone should jump ship and start writing Java exclusively. I was just asking whether people thought the B4X products can be used to transition programmers with a Basic background into multi-language programmers with Java as the second language.
This isnt what I perceived from your initial post. To answer your question: YES
As long as you are willing to develop skills in both languages and understand that you will at times need Java, then definitely this is ideal.
When working with B4A, you will need Java for: Reflection, JavaObject, In-line Java and Java libraries.
The skills you will acquire will allow you to wrap most functionality. I think the only thing it wont help you with is dealing with resource files and xml layouts, themes, styles.
If you are talking about B4X (not B4A) then you should remember that with B4X you can build cross platform mobile applications. This is not possible with Java.
He mentioned B4A and Android in his posts so I am assuming he is not talking about cross platform.
An individual pr even a small group can be hit by a bus
I dont like to suggest that even hypothetically.
@Erel The naive fangirl who stinks would like to ask if one of the major advantage advertised about Java was not to be cross platform ?
It is indeed. On its own Java is cross platform, but when you start using platform specific APIs (for e.g. GPS or SMS) then it doesnt remain cross platform code anymore. Same for B4X.
This is exactly what I am talking about.. if I died tomorrow, then who is going to support my customers? I understand you are working with a group of developers in a company and others my continue with your project, but how many people in the company? 100,000? a million.. so many individual developers have their user base in these numbers.. my question is still valid: if a developer stopped today supporting his/her product, while b4x is updated and well supported, then who's going to take over? you will end up with customers losing there investment and looking for clone apps or ask other b4a developers to write similar apps for them.
You are correct here, but you need to look at it from the customers perspective about making a strategic decision about what skills to train their employees. The licensing investment is not the issue but the man hours required to train or re-train the employees.
I also suggested that you or your company will not lose anything in the worst case scenario, because if Android changed code and there is no support by b4a, then still useb4x RAD tools, compile it and then open the generated Java code in Jave IDE and make the necessary updates.. this still can save you time in developing in Java from scratch
This is bad advice due to too many reasons. I would say do not tell people to do this until you have tried to do this yourself (yes I have tried).