Software Development

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Is this an ASP.NET Core I see before me? Where to next for Microsoft's confusing web framework...

Too many choices?

Microsoft's ASP.NET Core, a web application framework (or more accurately, a family of frameworks), has made strides in performance and innovation, but its rapid development has resulted in a bewildering range of choices facing developers.

Is this an ASP.NET Core I see before me? Where to next for Microsoft's confusing web framework...

Too many choices?

www.theregister.co.uk

 

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B4A – The simple way to develop native Android apps

B4A includes all the features needed to quickly develop any type of Android app.
B4A is used by tens of thousands of developers from all over the world, including companies such as NASA, HP, IBM and others.
Together with B4i you can easily develop applications for both Android and iOS.

B4A is 100% free.

B4A – The simple way to develop native Android apps

B4A includes all the features needed to quickly develop any type of Android app. B4A is used by tens of thousands of developers from all over the world, including companies such as NASA, HP, IBM and others.

www.b4x.com

 

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B4A – The simple way to develop native Android apps

B4A includes all the features needed to quickly develop any type of Android app.
B4A is used by tens of thousands of developers from all over the world, including companies such as NASA, HP, IBM and others.
Together with B4i you can easily develop applications for both Android and iOS.

B4A is 100% free.

B4A – The simple way to develop native Android apps

B4A includes all the features needed to quickly develop any type of Android app. B4A is used by tens of thousands of developers from all over the world, including companies such as NASA, HP, IBM and others.

www.b4x.com

VB.Net? Are you a VB.Net developer?

 

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VB.Net? Are you a VB.Net developer?

No, I was so angered by Microsoft dumping on VB6 with .Net in the early 2000's that I never moved on with their tools. I used to use Visual Studio 6 (C/C++, VB6 and ASP) for a lot of work. Eventually moved to PHP. When we needed to do Android development nearly 10 years ago I found B4A. It's is a hybrid VB & Java language which I enjoy using. Really easy no fuss tool. It's hugely portable to their other tools incl B4i for iOS.

 

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No, I was so angered by Microsoft dumping on VB6 with .Net in the early 2000's that I never moved on with their tools. I used to use Visual Studio 6 (C/C++, VB6 and ASP) for a lot of work. Eventually moved to PHP. When we needed to do Android development nearly 10 years ago I found B4A. It's is a hybrid VB & Java language which I enjoy using. Really easy no fuss tool. It's hugely portable to their other tools incl B4i for iOS.

I used to code in VB up untill VB6 (+- 20 years ago), although I was already quite active with C/C++ at that time. A friend of mine pretty much focused his entire career on VB from VB 1.0 all the way to the latest VB.Net -- whereas I was never quite satisfied with a specific language and hence kept exploring.

I think the closest thing to my ideal language are FP languages which are based on the Standard ML style syntax as opposed to the C style syntax, because they're both syntactically terse and have mathematical reasoning -- but they're not perfect yet.

Simon Peyton Jones described it as language designers trying to find the best balance between the useful and provably safe; the ultimate goal being a language that is able to perform all manner of effects (similar to C / C++) and can be mathematical reasoned to be effectually safe (similar to Haskell).

Useless
Can't produce any effects. e.g. the intrinsic mathematically purity prevents effects; because by nature effects are mathematical impure. The original Haskell compiler had this limitation; you could create computations that were mathematically pure, but could not produce any effect including e.g. the inability to write output to the console. Naturally today's Haskell and Purescript don't suffer from those issues; because a little thing called Monads made it mathematically possible to reason about effectual computations.

Useful
Implying the ability to produce any effects, and not being concerned at all by the mathematical purity of the effects.
Everyone knows a language like C / C++ allows one to do anything effectually; right down to the manipulation of active registers, etc. --- however to do this all safety i.e. mathematical reasoned safety is comprised; hence whilst they're extremely useful, they're also intrinsically unsafe.

As for B4A
I was surprised to find a company that would currently be building a new toolset / IDE centred on VB; because I'd imagine that's a fairly niche market, in much the same way that e.g. Cobol, RPG, ... are.

 

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I used to code in VB up untill VB6 (+- 20 years ago), although I was already quite active with C/C++ at that time. A friend of mine pretty much focused his entire career on VB from VB 1.0 all the way to the latest VB.Net -- whereas I was never quite satisfied with a specific language and hence kept exploring.

I think the closest thing to my ideal language are FP languages which are based on the Standard ML style syntax as opposed to the C style syntax, because they're both syntactically terse and have mathematical reasoning -- but they're not perfect yet.

Simon Peyton Jones described it as language designers trying to find the best balance between the useful and provably safe; the ultimate goal being a language that is able to perform all manner of effects (similar to C / C++) and can be mathematical reasoned to be effectually safe (similar to Haskell).
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As for B4A
I was surprised to find a company that would currently be building a new toolset / IDE centred on VB; because I'd imagine that's a fairly niche market, in much the same way that e.g. Cobol, RPG, ... are.

Anywhere Software has been around for a while, they produced a VB-like language called Basic4PPC in 2005 for Windows Mobile, so it was natural for them to continue with other newer mobile operating systems. I've been using B4A since 2011 when it was v1.5, now at 9.8. And now it's free.

 

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Anywhere Software has been around for a while, they produced a VB-like language called Basic4PPC in 2005 for Windows Mobile, so it was natural for them to continue with other newer mobile operating systems. I've been using B4A since 2011 when it was v1.5, now at 9.8. And now it's free.

I guess they must have some clients who are sponsoring the development?

 

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I guess they must have some clients who are sponsoring the development?

They said they got funding. I think it has more to do with all the free options available. They want to grow they community and this is of course a good way to do it. Their iOS version, B4i, is not free though. So get developers to use B4A for free then charge them for B4i. Makes sense. They claim to have 100,000 developers. I know their forum is quite active and very helpful. Parts of B4A has been open sourced too.

Anyway, it's a niche but I enjoy it.

PS: with B4i you can use a Mac to compile or use their hosted Mac compiler, which is what I do. I don't even have a Mac, just an iPhone and iPad to test.

 

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They said they got funding. I think it has more to do with all the free options available. They want to grow they community and this is of course a good way to do it. Their iOS version, B4i, is not free though. So get developers to use B4A for free then charge them for B4i. Makes sense. They claim to have 100,000 developers. I know their forum is quite active and very helpful. Parts of B4A has been open sourced too.

Anyway, it's a niche but I enjoy it.

PS: with B4i you can use a Mac to compile or use their hosted Mac compiler, which is what I do. I don't even have a Mac, just an iPhone and iPad to test.

That's quite a similar approach to what the Xamarin team did before Microsoft acquired them.
Nothing wrong with niche; Haskell, Scala, ... certainly fall into that category.

A number of my customers chose Xamarin for the mobile / desktop space; and are fairly flexible between C# and F#; but I also have customers on Swift and Kotlin. On the backend side it's a mixed bag... and I even have a few customers using Haskell and Scala fo that.