Other Promoting B4J - What do you think?

Erel

B4X founder
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While there are many programming language available today, including free tools, there aren't many quality RAD (rapid application development) tools.
As I see it, B4J, especially after the latest update which adds an internal designer, is a good candidate to to be a very popular programming language / tool. I think of it as a modern VB6. A tool to get the job done.
It can also be a good choice for teaching programming.

How can we better promote B4J? What do you think?
 

KitCarlson

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One of the great attributes is ease of use. Perhaps focus on beginning programmers in schools. Beginner user guides/ videos with tutorial examples would be good. Promote some sort of programming contest for applications.

Find out from down loads, who the users are, and post a list. It will show mainstream use. If the list shows well known universities, fortune 500s, NASA, research labs, and others it will help.
 
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Troberg

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I'll go off on a slightly different tangent and state what I think makes a popular RAD tool.

* Focus on quick/easy development in the following areas:
** GUI. It needs to be quick and easy.
** Databases. A tight integration, which focuses on common tasks and makes them easy. I'd like a much tighter level of integration, somewhat like what VB had with Access.
** Networking. While a barebones TCP/UDP implementation is needed, some high level communication libs are necessary.
* Good libraries to simplify common tasks. Examples:
** Handling settings, including such things as common central storage of settings
** Handling security/privileges
** Handling cryptography
** Serialization of objects
* Good debugger. Basically, you need a quick "click run until running"-time. You need good tools to see what's going on under the hood. Breakpoints, conditional breakpoints, singlestepping, call stack watch, performance measuring tools.
* Easy deployment. Building a deployment package should be a simple, integrated procedure.
* Good set of GUI components, which are both according to OS standards and tweakable.
* As speed bump-free as possible. Things should work with as little work as possible, with as little "bureacracy" as possible. The language should be lean, predictable and focus on the problem at hand.

B4X does some of this, but not all, and some things could be better (such as the GUI designer being more WYSIWYG and the debugger being more powerful).

In my experience, RAD is mostly used to make rather simple database frontends, which are mostly GUI and database logic, and not much hardcore number crunching low level stuff. Also, it's increasingly getting more multiplatform, as users expect to be able to access the system from their computer as well as their phon/tablet. If one want a bigger piece of the RAD cake, one has to focus on that market and remove as many obstacles as possible for that kind of programming.

The second largest type of apps developed in RAD, in my experience, is probably the same as above, minus the database. In other words, technically simple apps, with a heavy reliance on GUI, possibly with some networking thrown in. So, solve the problem for the database frontends, and you get these developers as well.

Now, the next problem is "How to get the word out that we have this wonderful tool?". Well, one can't match the marketing budget of the giants, so what remains is old fashioned leg work. Meet people (online or IRL) and speak to them. Show them. Get the people who already use B4X to become "ambassadors" for it (I Think most of us already are...). Get popular dev bloggers to to write about it. Get dev magazines (online or paper) to write about it. Get to speak at dev events. Basically, get it mentioned at every opportunity. It's mostly a matter of getting people to know it exists, so that it becomes one of their available choices in their mind.
 
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sorex

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I believe that Erel once had a booth at an IT fair/convention/venue to attract people to it.
 
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Troberg

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I believe that Erel once had a booth at an IT fair/convention/venue to attract people to it.

While certainly not useless, I think that it's a bit too narrow. You need to get people to hear about B4X many times, from different sources. That's why it's good to get bloggers, journalists and others to write about it as well.

I read somewhere that when you have heard something Three times from different sources, the brain tends to accept it as a truth. I think the same applies to marketing, you need to constantly ping the prospective customer from all directions.
 
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narek adonts

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narek adonts

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cimperia

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Other tools (like Xojo, Xamarin) are more expensive.
So if Erel will increase the price but give a lot of new features that the community is requiring I think it will be fare,

Narek

I doubt that B4X tools target the same segment of the developer population as Android Studio (free and excellent), Visual Studio + Xamarin etc...
 
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Troberg

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Many (but... many) users prefer a cracked version, if the price is so high (many others even if the price is cheap).

Users using cracked versions are not necessarily bad. As some author said "I'd rather have people reading copies of my books than people not reading them because they don't know about them.". If it increases the amount of users, it also increases the amount of paying users.

On the other hand, that's more or less the path taken with B4J. A free version to increase sales of the pay versions.
 
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narek adonts

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B4J can be free.
I was speaking about whole B4X.
I think 250$/year for a compkete B4X is not much.
Imagine that all the native iOS and Android will be ported to b4i and B4A, a lot of new features for B4J,...
Will be great. But by imagination to achieve this Erels company will need some money.
 
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RandomCoder

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Slightly off-topic I'm afraid but I was just showing by son B4A as he is enrolled in a college to learn game design etc starting this September and he hadn't heard of Basic4Android from anyone other than me, to which I told him that even NASA use it. But when I tried to prove to him that big names such as NASA and HP have used it to create Android Apps I found myself unable to find the screenshots of Apps created by them and had to resort to searching for archived pages from a year ago. @Erel why have you decided to remove the screenshots and this level of accreditation? I would have thought that people want to know that B4A, B4J and B4I are used by some pretty impressive companies and is not just aimed at the average Joe.

This seems to be the only reference to the big players... "B4A is used by tens of thousands of developers from all over the world, including companies such as NASA, HP, IBM and others" but it is very easy to overlook.
 
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Douglas Farias

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@Erel
what do you think of all the tips and answers in this topic?
I'm curious to your response. will follow any tips?
 
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AbbasMohammed

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may be iam dreaming, but ....if by one click only...or better....automatically without single click ....the application designed in b4a would be execute on ios, it would be a huge step....i think so...
 
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sorex

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one time $250 might be ok in the long run
$250 yearly no way

I guess most people here are still hobbyists then $250/year is too much.

If you have real clients then you can afford that and bring it in as expense and deduct taxes etc.

It will also create a bigger gap between the illegal and legal users. The amount of illegal ones will increase then I'm affraid.
 
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moster67

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Just saw your B4j promoted in an article in Code Project.
Hurrah for getting the word out

Any link? Couldn't find the article at their website despite using their search function....
 
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