How many developers use B4A?

Hi, I recently delivered a quote for a new Android project and the client asked me what software I use.
I informed them that I have been using B4A since 2012 and told them a how excellent the tool is.
They showed a distrustful face and replied that they had never heard of B4A and asked me how many developers may be using them.
I gave a random number ? and said over 50,000 and they were surprised, they replied that they would check the budget and get back to me.
My question is: is it possible to know, approximately, thousands more or thousands less, what is the estimated amount of B4A developers out there?
Thanks.

No matter how many we are, just tell your clients: B4A is the IDE Erel uses.
It should be enough for them.

It doesn't matter how it's done. What matters is the result

It's not quite like that
To make a software development tool/enviroment attractive, it is important that there is a certain number of active users, who can exchange information and allow to overcome those barriers that initially hinder the work on any project
I don't know exactly how much this number of active users actually is, but certainly there are a large number of valid programming environments that are not widespread also due to the absence of a community that uses these tools
Ultimately, realize that we too, by actively participating in the various forums, make the programming environment better than it could be without our intervention

vecino said:

My question is: is it possible to know, approximately, thousands more or thousands less, what is the estimated amount of B4A developers out there?

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I imagine Erel has almost exact numbers for number of active users.

Maybe the number of the last version downloads, can give an approximate number of active users…

I hope you have informed your prospective customers that B4X is a cross-platform language. If you haven't, don't wait for them to contact you again, you do

(A valid answer to give to customers: "If the mass of people were right, the Sun would still be circling the Earth. Also, since billions of ants love shit, we should stock up on it." ?).

vecino said:

over 50,000

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and there are at least 5,000 of Expert level around the globe.

What B4X forum tells you:

Aeric is right. 107,947 developer who uses B4X. The fact that it is B4J, B4A, B4I does not matter.
It's just that they are different IDEs.
Let's imagine that @Erele concentrates all with a single IDE.
Call your customers back and tell them you were wrong. It's not 50K but way more than 100K developer

Thank you, friends.
As soon as I named Erel, they bowed several times while thanking their god ?
All kidding aside, I've already been talking to them and it looks like they are going to approve the project.

I imagine from a customer's point of view they would be thinking about how large the talent pool is if they need to take over development themselves, or if for some reason your relationship with them comes to an end. In their view, if the tool used to develop the app is somewhat obscure it might be difficult to find developers to work on.

- Colin.

Hi all, the question about the number of people working with the programming language or IDE is quite legitimate, at least from the point of view of companies that have in mind the long-term maintenance of the products created with it. I don't know how people around the globe tick in this question, but for some large companies in Germany I know that there the number of potential maintainers definitely counts for new software projects - especially if the staff fluctuates relatively often. And this number should be much higher for Python and JavaScript than for B4X, and thus also the probability to be able to access a selection of responsive specialists quite promptly. The quality of the software created with it is often only the second important aspect (otherwise B4X would have displaced the popular languages as the more efficient tool long ago). And as limited as it is, for many IT managers the TIOBE index is an important yardstick. P.S. Even at in-house hackathons, I was usually only allowed to compete with popular languages like C#, VB.Net or JavaScript - and not with B4X, Xojo or LiveCode - because the initiators assumed that the solution should be implementable by as many colleagues as possible.

I think a better answer would be a list of Store apps developed with B4A.
The larger, the better, and highlighting if they are available for both platforms.
The 500.000+ download club is good place to start: https://www.b4x.com/android/forum/threads/the-500-000-downloads-club.105418/

zed said:

It doesn't matter how it's done. What matters is the result

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I get why the "distrust" face, and its all about technical debt. If the company thinks B4X is unknown/obscure and too small, it might end up the way of COBOL did. If that employee leaves, quits, retires, etc, is it "industry standard" enough to bring someone in to take over? or does it become technical debt and require a complete rewrite in more standardized environments?

The entire topic is debatable and subjective but that's what goes through the minds of corporate executives. the COBOL reliance situation has become such a huge problem, they are trying to incentivize developers to get back into it and teach it again to take over the now aging/retiring programmer base for that language.

The same thing happens to me a lot where I work. I am the only developer currently, and I have total control of the tech/apps. But when people ask me what i develop in and I tell them? I get all kinds of strange looks.

Then I get the question of: "So your entire ecosystem is reliant upon one man/company? What happens if they pull the keys or otherwise rip the rug out from under you? are you SOL?" And yeah... its a good point.

We were looking at getting acquired one time (actually a couple times) and during the due-diligence process, it got broken off due to how obscure the source tree was, they didnt have anyone qualified to value or vet the B4X source code so they valued the entire technology platform at $0 in the proposal, basing it only on the customer base/sales so we said no.

It is a real issue, but I keep plugging forward.

Programming language is just a tool.
Choose the right one to get things done.

You may choose a knife, a blade, a Swiss army knife, an axe or a chainsaw to cut a piece of meat. Perhaps, you may choose to use laser.

A chef know which one to choose. Clients may only see advertisement or hype of shining new tools where companies try to sell their new technologies.

I just joined a Facebook group of VB6 for the sake of curiosity. It comes to my surprise that there are growing number of beginners joining in everyday. The beginners ask questions such as integration with biometric reader and database connections. Some shares projects working with computer vision, REST API, bots and Arduino. VB6 is indeed still growing.

Do you know what software the James Webb Space Telescope is running on? I read that it is running on outdated software. Last time I also read that some military, flight or space software is still running on WinXP and the machine boot with floppy disks.

My point is the 2 lines of my paragraph on top.

Early 80s. Worked for a company that built a CAD program for doing schematics that could then be ported to PCB designer. Absolutely ahead of our time but the company didn't have the resources to make it work - needed investment money.
ALMOST sold it all to big investors for a LOT of money.
BUT...
The app was written in FORTH. FORTH was considered a dead end and it would have cost too much and taken too long to port it.

I will be honest. I love working with B4X and I can do it because I write for MY company and our customers just want results. They aren't sophisticated enough to concern themselves with sustainability.

But I do wonder what happens to Anywhere Software if @Erel gets hit by a bus. It would be nice to know that AS has a plan for the future.