How hard is it to develop an app?

Diddums · 29 Dec 2019 at 12:42

For someone like me, whose experience in this field stops at QBasic and Turbo Pascal 7, with some web experience. I need an app that can pull data from a database, allow data to be put in to the database, upload images to the database and generate easily searchable records.

Is this achievable? Loads of internet results of "learn to make apps in 5 minutes" and all that but we all know how marketing works.

jsmoke · 29 Dec 2019 at 13:10

I have the perfect toolkit for you. Basic for Android or B4A. It's about as simple as you can get, BASIC language similar to VB6, and drag and drop interface. Ever expanding library of plugins/user controls or easy to write your own. Works with iOS also it's actually called b4x now I think.

https://www.b4x.com/b4a.html

jsmoke · 29 Dec 2019 at 15:30

Use mysql lite as database, plenty of code on B4A forums, you need to subscribe if you want to post however.

Diddums · 31 Dec 2019 at 10:43

jsmoke said:
I have the perfect toolkit for you. Basic for Android or B4A. It's about as simple as you can get, BASIC language similar to VB6, and drag and drop interface. Ever expanding library of plugins/user controls or easy to write your own. Works with iOS also it's actually called b4x now I think.

https://www.b4x.com/b4a.html

jsmoke said:
Use mysql lite as database, plenty of code on B4A forums, you need to subscribe if you want to post however.

Cheers jsmoke! I'm still trying to make sense of it all, seems that an app for Android is very different to an app on iOS and the biggest thing I'll need is accessibility for anyone.

jsmoke · 31 Dec 2019 at 11:28

Diddums said:
Cheers jsmoke! I'm still trying to make sense of it all, seems that an app for Android is very different to an app on iOS and the biggest thing I'll need is accessibility for anyone.

They have a version for iOS also, I think you can port the UI stuff.

Pho · 31 Dec 2019 at 18:39

If you want to write a cross-platform app with no experience your best bet is probably Xamarin which is free and something like SQLite for the database.

Basic is a dead language, you're much better learning C# (for Xamarin) or Java (native Android) and Swift (native iOS). The best option is two native apps but then you have two languages / tools to learn.

You also have to bear in mind there are thousands of tutorials and tutorial videos using native languages or frameworks like Xamarin; if you get stuck you'll find it far easier to get help.

Here's a database tutorial using Xamarin for example.

Temujin · 31 Dec 2019 at 19:15

I was going to suggest Xamarin after doing a little bit of research on it myself, seems like a fairly simple way to target the main mobile platforms. But yeah, you'll need to get acquainted with C# to do so, it's not the most difficult language though and as stated there's a lot of resources to help you along the way!

jsmoke · 31 Dec 2019 at 19:19

Pho said:
If you want to write a cross-platform app with no experience your best bet is probably Xamarin which is free and something like SQLite for the database.

Basic is a dead language, you're much better learning C# (for Xamarin) or Java (native Android) and Swift (native iOS). The best option is two native apps but then you have two languages / tools to learn.

You also have to bear in mind there are thousands of tutorials and tutorial videos using native languages or frameworks like Xamarin; if you get stuck you'll find it far easier to get help.

Here's a database tutorial using Xamarin for example.

There's nothing wrong with basic it's just used as a layer and is converted into java before compiled. It does everything you need it too.

Armageus · 31 Dec 2019 at 19:31

jsmoke said:
I have the perfect toolkit for you. Basic for Android or B4A. It's about as simple as you can get, BASIC language similar to VB6, and drag and drop interface. Ever expanding library of plugins/user controls or easy to write your own. Works with iOS also it's actually called b4x now I think.

https://www.b4x.com/b4a.html

As a current VB6 developer at work I'm very interested in this - will certainly take a look

jsmoke · 31 Dec 2019 at 19:36

Armageus said:
As a current VB6 developer at work I'm very interested in this - will certainly take a look

It's impressive software considering it's one guy that's done the whole thing.

Pho · 31 Dec 2019 at 21:08

jsmoke said:
There's nothing wrong with basic it's just used as a layer and is converted into java before compiled. It does everything you need it too.

It's a very verbose and ugly language, if it gets the job done though fair enough. I'd personally bite the bullet and learn C#/Java though and make use of the tonnes of open-source libraries that make your life easier.

An electronics engineer colleague of mine uses Swordfish to write firmware for PIC microprocessors using BASIC in a similar way and he's happy enough. Unfortunately it doesn't support some of the more powerful chips we might need to start using so he might have to go back to using C instead and rewrite all his code but that's not a fault of the language.

mid_gen · 2 Jan 2020 at 08:25

If you understand OO, then C# is a doddle to pick up with a modern IDE. I've never 'learnt' C# but I have thrown together some applications with it when I've needed some tools etc....should be very little friction for an experienced programmer.

Diddums · 2 Jan 2020 at 12:10

Thanks for the replies all. As you'll probably have gathered from around the forums I'm busy concocting an idea and getting ready to launch a business, so any and all advice is very much appreciated.

jsmoke · 2 Jan 2020 at 12:21

Give us a shout of if you need any help, can't promise to have all or any answers but I can try.

RobHu · 2 Jan 2020 at 12:52

Flutter might be of interest to you. It's a framework by Google using Dart and, similar to Xamarin, allows you to develop for ios and android with a single codebase. I'm a C# dev by trade and having played with both Flutter and Xamarin I prefer Flutter even without prior knowledge of Dart.

Diddums · 2 Jan 2020 at 13:32

Thanks guys, tons of valuable info here

Very much appreciated!

touch · 3 Jan 2020 at 15:21

If you've already got web experience, just make a website for it.
Presumably if you're going to be connecting to a database it'll need a network connection for the app to work anyway so having no connection wont be an issue? Unless you meant a local database on the device itself?
It'd be more limited in terms of access to the device hardware, storage, etc but from your description it doesn't sound like that'll be an issue. You won't need to worry about porting code to different operating systems, etc.

roccles · 5 Jan 2020 at 23:39

@Diddums have a look a Glide Apps. It uses Google sheets as the backend to store the data. It is very simple to get going with and you can build some pretty cool stuff with it.

https://www.glideapps.com

Diddums · 6 Jan 2020 at 16:11

roccles said:
@Diddums have a look a Glide Apps. It uses Google sheets as the backend to store the data. It is very simple to get going with and you can build some pretty cool stuff with it.

https://www.glideapps.com

Dunno why I didn't get a notification for this but thanks, I'll have a look this evening

Dup · 7 Jan 2020 at 09:11

RobHu said:
Flutter might be of interest to you. It's a framework by Google using Dart and, similar to Xamarin, allows you to develop for ios and android with a single codebase. I'm a C# dev by trade and having played with both Flutter and Xamarin I prefer Flutter even without prior knowledge of Dart.

I'm a front-end dev and dabbled with Flutter when it was still fresh and managed to get a relatively simple app working easily enough. The main benefit was the documentation, it was good from the beginning and I can only imagine it's much much better now more and more people are using it. Plus it's Googles own project so it's an evolving framework and compiles to native Android and iOS.