I've been a software developer since around 1980 so many years of experience. One of the most frustrating things for me has always been setting up the development environment so I could start developing. I have a setup with Visual Studio on a pc and a Mac to do iOS so I can use Xamarin and it took me almost a day to get the correct versions installed and talking to each other. I've used all sorts of languages and environments over the years from hand coded assembler through to modern IDE's like Visual Studio and B4x. Nowadays I mainly develop things for myself as a 'hobby' developer.
I have to admit that I was very pleasantly surprised with the ease and speed of setting up and getting working B4A (in my case) and the walkthrough of My first B4A program was a pleasure to do and worked perfectly first time - I'm hoping it will be the same when I try with B4i. It's annoying how often you find tutorials based on old versions of IDE's or code that just don't do what they should do because x code has been updated and y dialog no longer exists or has different options. For people who use these products daily and are 'on top' of what is going on it's fine but for someone starting from effectively zero it is a nightmare, extremely frustrating and such a waste of time and effort. I applaud your efforts in maintaining everything in sync.
My only 'complaint' is that moving to the next stage (adding extra libraries etc.) was not quite as straightforward.
For example, it took a lot of searching to discover I needed a new folder called 'AdditionalLibraries' with sub folders for 'B4A', 'B4i' etc. and what to put in them. There is some inconsistency (unless I'm mistaken) as in B4X there are zip files whereas in the others there are unzipped jar and xml files. This is ok but it would be helpful to have this explained in the getting started guide, along with some guidance on where to create the AdditionalLibraries folder - I have personally have it in a folder c:\android\b4a\AdditionalLibraries but I have no idea if this is correct and (as noted below) it probably isn't as the help viewer can't find them.
Today I installed the B4x help program and when it starts it says 'Basic4Android libraries are not on the standard path You will have to install them yourself'. Ok, but what is the standard path? Where should they be? I installed B4A exactly as per the forum installation instructions.
So, very easy to fix - a few extra lines in the 'Getting started' section for us new starters on some of the finer points and in my estimation you'll go from a 9.5/10 to 10/10.
I have to admit that I was very pleasantly surprised with the ease and speed of setting up and getting working B4A (in my case) and the walkthrough of My first B4A program was a pleasure to do and worked perfectly first time - I'm hoping it will be the same when I try with B4i. It's annoying how often you find tutorials based on old versions of IDE's or code that just don't do what they should do because x code has been updated and y dialog no longer exists or has different options. For people who use these products daily and are 'on top' of what is going on it's fine but for someone starting from effectively zero it is a nightmare, extremely frustrating and such a waste of time and effort. I applaud your efforts in maintaining everything in sync.
My only 'complaint' is that moving to the next stage (adding extra libraries etc.) was not quite as straightforward.
For example, it took a lot of searching to discover I needed a new folder called 'AdditionalLibraries' with sub folders for 'B4A', 'B4i' etc. and what to put in them. There is some inconsistency (unless I'm mistaken) as in B4X there are zip files whereas in the others there are unzipped jar and xml files. This is ok but it would be helpful to have this explained in the getting started guide, along with some guidance on where to create the AdditionalLibraries folder - I have personally have it in a folder c:\android\b4a\AdditionalLibraries but I have no idea if this is correct and (as noted below) it probably isn't as the help viewer can't find them.
Today I installed the B4x help program and when it starts it says 'Basic4Android libraries are not on the standard path You will have to install them yourself'. Ok, but what is the standard path? Where should they be? I installed B4A exactly as per the forum installation instructions.
So, very easy to fix - a few extra lines in the 'Getting started' section for us new starters on some of the finer points and in my estimation you'll go from a 9.5/10 to 10/10.
