This week B4A took a big step forward by adding support for classes and, therefore, objects -- the fundamental requirement for object oriented programming (OOP). Suddenly B4A is looking a lot more attractive for serious app development...
Unfortunately I haven't had the opportunity to download and fire up the new v2.0 OOP-enabled release of Basic4Android, yet. I'm assuming it's as good and probably better than my B4A experience to date. To recap my earlier experience:
- B4A has a very decent visual IDE that more accurately mimics the final product than a few other Android visual IDEs I've tried.
- I created a simple dialer app as my standard "Hello World" test app for comparing different Android IDEs. The footprint of the compiled B4A version was just over 100K including a 30K JPG image. Not terribly tiny but not too bad, either.
- Although there is a free trial that lets you evaluate ease of installation and the utility of the IDE, B4A restricts access to support libraries making it difficult to write a useful app under the trial version's limitations.
- B4A's pricing is very reasonable. Scout online for a discount code and get B4A for $40 or opt for a generous two-year subscription with product support and upgrades for $80.
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