

NS Basic App Studio is not fit for purpose - TimEvans

I have been working with NS Basic App Studio for two years, since launch.&#60;p&#62;My thoughts are this:-&#60;p&#62;If you plan to do any kind of development which you want to look professional then forget App Studio.  NS Basic App Studio has some major failings, number one on the list being documentation.  The documentation supplied with App Studio is truly appalling, covering basic commands and functions only, and even then, not fully.  The moment you want to dig deeper there is no help for you and even the writers of App Studio say "Search the Internet for answers".  This makes App Studio a 'development' system for amateurs.&#60;p&#62;If your intention is to develop anything that remotely resembles a professional application then I am very sorry to say you will have to use something else.&#60;p&#62;I speak as a professional developer of 30 years experience, having developed on all sorts of platforms.  We recently completed a project (not the way we wanted to due to the limitations) using NS Basic App Studio and it took a whole year to make.  The equivalent in almost any other environment would have taken a matter of weeks.  There were times when my team and I wanted to blow our brains out in frustration, mainly with the woeful documentation and zero support offered by NS Basic.&#60;p&#62;NS Basic bill App Studio as a Visual Basic-like environment.  Do you remember the days when IBM clone-makers were saying that their machines were compatible to the IBM PC and it turned out they meant they both use a 5amp fuse in the plug?  Well that is how App Studio is to Visual Basic.  Whilst App Studio uses the BASIC language, it is so far removed from VB when you start wanting to do anything interesting that it makes the comment "Visua Basic-like" a mockery at best and misleading at worst.
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bdfh42
Odd sort of rant. There is an old proverb about workmen blaming their tools.

You don't say what your target platform is/was and why you did not pick the
relevant "mainstream" tool to do your "professional" development task.

NS Basic was a brilliant tool for writing Palm apps back in the day - very
productive. The version targeting early Windows CE devices was a bit "me to"
and failed to match the standard of the free tools supplied by Microsoft. I
lost touch after that but still give all credit to the developer for the
original.

Edit: OK - I have now checked out the web site for NS Basic. Looks like a
process that (sort of) generates an HTML/ CSS/ JavaScript (read standard) web
app that is then wrapped as a "native" app using PhoneGap.

Given that, why get NS Basic involved at all - just write the app in HTML and
add the JavaScript required for functionality. jQuery Mobile would help if the
screens are pretty steady. As far as I can see you ended up adding a huge
layer of complication to no net advantage. I suppose the lesson is (as always)
use the simplest tool set that gets the job done.

