Looking for feedback on how to help grow the English WinDev developer base...

Happy holidays all.

I am the fella that spend a couple months making an English WinDev 26 tutorial a little over a year ago. Though my personal responsibilities to my family require me to take care of an elderly relative, I have about 23 years of IT experience and training that includes everything from where I started as a server / network engineer to later a software developer using a product that was (at the time but not any more) similar to WinDev called Magic Software (versions 8.3 - 9.3). What I can see with WinDev (and WebDev as well as WinDev Mobile), is that is appears to be every bit as good as the old Magic software I used if not better in several ways. Magic was / is based out of Israel where as PC SOFT is based out France. One thing that Magic did that helped grow their base was they had a free version that was limited only connecting to a local DB (Pervasive SQL), # of rows and #s of programs you could build. WinDev does release it's "Express" version but it usually releases the English version of it long behind the current version. As an example, the current Express version is about 2 versions behind.

The course I wrote for UDemy was using version 26 of the Express edition and was moderately well received. [www.udemy.com] but the videos I made we too long, the course was too long and most people complained that they wanted to learn the current version not 26 (28 was about to be released).

My goals are to become as proficient as possible in WinDev myself and also help grow the English speaking base. To that end I took the plunge with some big begging and pleading with the folks and France bought a deeply discounted full version of WinDev 2024 (v29). As usual the WinDev tutorial for version 29 (2024) is already out but the express version for new developers to go through will continue to be a year to 18 months behind. Here is a link to it [doc.windev.com] . I could literally create the examples in the version 2024 while walking through the tutorial with the full license but it would mean that only people that had full license could follow along.

Yes I understand that much of the core features do not change from version to version but the consistent complaint I received was "this is an old version" on the previous course.

To frame it in a more personal way, if you had someone that you really cared about who wanted to learn WinDev but did not have thousands of dollars to spend doing so, where would you send them?

I am open to all comments and suggestions so feel free to speak openly even if you feel my goals are not possible or a waste of time.

Thank you in advance for any and all feedback.

Kindest regards,
Scott G

Hello Scott,

Growing the English speaking Windev developer base is not your job, it is the job of PCSoft and one that they have never seriously embraced.

PCsoft is a very insular France first company. They refuse to issue their tech support LST journal in English, deliberately keeping knowledge away from non French speaking developers.

I suspect that the majority of English speaking developers are mature age experienced IT people who pursue niche market developments on a small scale and Windev is absolutely brilliant for that. The problem is that while a Windev softwareproduct can sustain a single developer or small development company, there is absolutely no incentive for a young programmer to learn Windev and base their long term career on it.

I think you are wasting your time on an impossible task.

Regards
Al

Thank you Al. I appreciate the brutally honest response. This may indeed be a waste of time. Would be sad as the product is so capable in replacing much more expensive apps.

What is baffling is the testimonials on the WinDev.com site stating companies as big as John Deere, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Porsche, Honda (in France) and more using this language. [windev.com]

Are these testimonials not accurate?
Did PC SOFT do the development directly?

These companies are all very large so it's hard to reconcile the concept that the PC SOFT products are only able useful for one developer projects.

Scott

Just because a large company bought a copy does not mean it has been used in any large-scale enterprise system. The truth is WinDev doesn't even appear to rank in the top 50 languages by popularity - as monitored by probably the longest running project to monitor language popularity: [www.tiobe.com]

Thank for that explanation JP.

That explanation makes sense of the "testimonials" I suppose.

Perhaps the correct question to ask this community of developers is:

"Is there any reason why you would recommend someone learn or use the WinDev family of development languages?"

Scott,

I answered that once in another forum a long time ago. In short I think this:

1) If you are starting out in a career in software development then WinDev is not for you. Choose a mainstream language which has wide usage and support and 3rd party eco-system. This increases your marketability.

2) If you are looking to work in a large company then WinDev is not for you. Choose .Net or Python or JavaScript or similar very popular language. This increases your marketability.

3) If you are developing software for users/clients that will inquire what language you use and their IT department are going to want details then WinDev is not for you. They wont know it and your product will be sidelined as too niche. Corporate IT don't want to support systems developed in unknown / non-mainstream platforms. Choose a mainstream development platform that they will know and accept and whose security aspects are understood.

4) If you are planning on building applications that will require growing a team of developers then WinDev is not for you. Choose a mainstream platform where you can easily find new developers and support staff.

5) But ... if you are planning to run your own software business and will build applications where no one cares about the tools used or perhaps your application will be web-based or otherwise cloud based (so they wont know anyway) then WinDev is a great development platform.

My 2c ...



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 12/29/2023 09:03PM by JP.

Thank you for such a thorough response.

If this assessment is accurate, PCSOFT has only a tiny lane for license sales. I suppose I find it odd because PCSOFT has consistently advertised to myself and others with flashy RAD (Rapid Application Development) Ads via email. Amazing they have been profitable for so many years with only solo dev shops but it appears they have found a way.

It seems to me that this language would be a fantastic language for someone looking to replace the functionality of an old expensive or obsolete yet useful application for a business or a government. IE, Here is what our old app does exactly. The company that wrote it went out of business and we do not have the source code. Or alternatively the company who wrote and supports this application for us has become extremely expensive for maintenance and charges even more when we need to change something from time to time but they have no competition.

That was the case for me years ago. I guess it was a unicorn.

At this point, if the admin would like, feel free to lock this thread. What I have learned from the responses is enough for me to see why there is no significant reason for me to create content to expand the base BUT I can still learn to build apps with the license I purchased.

Thank everyone for the feedback. It wasn't what I wanted to hear but it probably saved me a lot of time.

Happy new year.
Scott G

Scott

"It seems to me that this language would be a fantastic language for someone looking to replace the functionality of an old expensive or obsolete yet useful application for a business or a government."

I think it's important to appreciate that other development platforms, for example Python, are immensely powerful with complete IDEs and extensive 3rd party library support. Similarly .Net , JavaScript, and so on. They have huge eco-systems both in tools, support, and people. Massive resources for learning (videos, books, blogs, etc.) and extensive support forums and help available.They are comparable in all respects really to WinDev but with far greater eco-system support. So the development tool becomes somewhat a personal choice and, of course, we favor what we know.

iro re-writing existing apps - why would a corporate or government agency re-write in a niche development platform and get tied into that? As a business person myself this would not make sense to me. If I was forced to re-write (as a corporate) then I would opt for a platform for which I can easily find replacement developers and would not want to get tied into a niche market product.

Having learned, to one degree or another, probably around 10 languages (I've been around since CP/M / DOS days) I would rate WinDev as very fast to develop in but not 10x. This claim might have been so once upon a time but not today anymore. It suits my style because it is very similar to the last couple of development tools I have used so the learning curve was very good. But there is not enough support, not enough free resources for help. So whether to use it or not is very largely dependent on where one's career/work fits in the scheme I described above. As a small business owner it works fine for us and everything we do is cloud based so although we sell to corporate they never see the back-end of it. Each to his own ...

Happy New Year to all.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/29/2023 11:57PM by JP.

At this point, all that is happening here is beating a dead PCSOFT horse. There is no need to pile on PCSOFT further. This thread can be locked or archived for times when someone else may have similar questions. Likely it should not stay publicly available though because it resulted in more or less a recommendation to not use WinDev except for very, very few circumstances.

Thank you again for the honest feedback.

No one is "piling on PCSoft". I'm sure the users here are big fans of WinDev, I know I am - we do almost everything in our company using the WinDev suite of tools. But you asked a question and got honest answers which, imo, reflect the reality of the situation and, if that's a correct observation, then aspiring developers should be aware of that and not "hidden from the public". If, on the other hand, that is not a correct observation then PCSoft and others should argue their counter viewpoints and correct any misconceptions.

JP

Clearly there are good use cases for the WinDev family but it is also pretty evident that PCSOFT has not been very helpful or supportive for their English developer base for a long period of time. It was very similar for Magic Software from 1980 until 2012 or so. The motto was "love the product, hate the company" for almost all "Magicians" (US based Magic Developers). Eventually Magic literally burned most of their independent US developers literally bidding against them for new projects.

What is truly sad about the WinDev line for English speaking devs is exactly what you pointed out earlier. By not having even an office here in the US helping grow their brand, sell licenses, etc... it kind of leaves each developer to get help from one another on issues. WXperts does a great job trying to help and being the distributor, but they also have clients themselves to serve. As you said, PCSOFT is ultimately responsible for growing the dev base in US and simply show little interest in making any significant effort to that end. They must have their reasons but it's hard to understand with such a large market of opportunity.

Have a happy new year.

Hi JP, seems to me the question's now: how to find back to the main stream? WINDEV is able to make Java applications from a WLanguage programm, however a bit limited but that could be improved. There's a way now to include Python modules in WINDEV. Both languages, Java and Python, just like C++ are lacking an integrated GUI, imho their immense weak point. WINDEV is able to add the GUI. The promise of Java to use it on any OS is an empty promise, because in most cases you can't take the GUI with the app to another OS. Maybe, a good future basis would be the use / integration of Flutter into WINDEV. Flutter runs in most environments now, runs on desktop, Mac and Linux and on the Web - without changing the code! Of course, on the Web it's not as sophisticated as WEBDEV is, but it is working. There are some weak points with Flutter, that's true.

Kind regards,
Guenter Predl
office@windev.at

"They must have their reasons but it's hard to understand with such a large market of opportunity. "

imo, there's the rub. Classic management theory explains that unless you're number 1, 2, or 3 you probably aren't much in the game. That boat has sailed for WinDev, the top 20 positions are very well entrenched. The only way to significantly change that and enter into a top 20 spot would be to either (1) develop something which is truly revolutionary and essentially not replicate-able, or (2) create a new game to play in. Both these scenarios are, at this stage, really quite unlikely. That's probably why they stick to their core market and protect their turf as best possible. The product is very good imo, does everything most developers would want for most projects, and they bring new versions consistently which is great for us. But becoming a mainstream, top 20/top 50 development platform ... I think that's literally impossible given the state of software development.

Guenter

See my last reply to Scott. Millions of apps are being built with the current most popular languages. The top 20 are all free except Matlab. Free. No dongle, no license fees, no annual payments, huge eco-systems. Millions of developers have invested time into learning those tools. You are not going to convince them to re-learn something unless you have a must-have revolutionary tool which the competition cannot replicate. Any lack you perceive in the top 20/50 dev-tools (e.g. an IDE) apparently is not sufficient to prevent these millions of developers producing millions of applications. These problems have been solved. I'm a WinDev fan but I'm also at the tail-end of my development career so not worried about this myself but I would not recommend this devtool to anyone. Mind you, I wouldn't recommend software development as a career path anymore either, those days are numbered ...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/30/2023 07:17PM by JP.

Hi to all,
and a happy new year!!

In the past, I also thought that WX's French origin was the problem behind the "lack of popularity" for WX.
And as an English-speaking person (and Greek !!), I often get frustrated by the "here and there" French (jargon to me).
But I now think that this is not the main problem behind the lack of popularity of WX.

1. Most, if not all, 4G/5G languages that started at the same time as WX are now extinct or have a small developer base.
PowerBuilder, Clarion, Access, FoxPro, Clipper, OMNIS, MAGIC, Oracle Forms, and many other development environments have declined.
So today, non-popularity is a non-language thing.

2. The programmers are not the same as they were 20 or 30 years ago, and there are 100 of millions of them now.
They usually work in the marketing industry, developing web pages or small web apps, and all they want is to use free tools, copy-paste code or HTML, and deliver quickly to their clients.

3. Most of these young developers do not even understand how a company works.
They will never work on business apps; they don't even know what an invoice, inventory FIFO, or GL mean!!
If they knew, they would understand that they would need many years to develop a complete ERP with these types of technologies.
That's why the big companies, for their business apps, use "4GL Languages," developed (maybe internally) 30 years ago.

4. Most companies today use many (hundreds?) software solutions.
They probably use a robust classic back office and, on top of it, independent small web apps.
Does the paradigm work? My experience with Microsoft's partner program says NO - if MS can't do it, probably nobody can.

5. Of course, PCSoft, at some point in the future, must adapt.
What I see as their next natural step is to deliver a new cloud development environment based on the WX language.
But of course, our customers (or us) would need to pay (PCSoft) for the use of these systems; gone is royalty free.

6. I think that future developments must be very careful.
PCSoft should stay away from things like "no-code" development.
These are OK for my wife's recipe database but for business apps, they are a joke.

7. PCSofts close connection to the French market is really a plus for the company.
They have a HUGE following in the French-speaking world and that probably helped them with their English version(s).
So the paradigm - even if we don't like it - seems to work for them.

8. And a last thing: the mobile product works nicely with Java (or Swift code).
A lot of programmers don't want to learn Java and use the thousands of SDKs for Android that are available (many of them for free).
At the same time, they are complaining about the lack of third-party SDKs and libraries. Sorry, you can't have everything for free.

Is everything okay with WX? - of course not.
What I would like:

a. Many more PCSoft English videos/webinars - small but specific.
At least for me, viewing a YouTube video, and seeing how others do things, helps me more than written documentation.

b. An English translation of LST - every time I get a new issue, I have to spend a lot of time just to scan, OCR, translate, and understand it.
As a first step, they don't need to translate the project examples - just the magazine.
And don't tell me about how easy it is to distribute "pirated" copies of LST PDFs - you can now find many places where LST is "pirately available".

c. The dongles are a problem; they should find another way to lock the WX IDEs.
I have ordered, paid, and received my 2024 versions, but I don't dare upgrade my dongle because something could go wrong.
And at this time of year, I just can't afford it.

d. The price of the yearly updates is high.
That's why, personally, in recent years, I upgraded every second year.
But this is up to PCSoft, and it's not my business; it's their company, their payroll, and their running costs.

e. There are a lot of developers out there stuck on old WX versions, - WX 21 being the most popular.
This is my experience with my alpha360 project; but of course, only PCSoft has the complete information.
Since many developers are aging (like all of us at some point) and are nearing retirement and cannot afford to upgrade, PCSoft should take a look at this.
Maybe a special offer for old customers?


Regards
Steven Sitas
www.alpha360.biz



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/31/2023 01:40PM by SteveSitas.

Hi Steven,

there are statistics saying that many, many software projects do fail on their way to users. From 70% (2 out of three) to 30% (1 out of three) they say. So, knowbody knows what's the real percentage. Most probably the reason for failure is distributed between a couple of factors. Persons involved, programming language used, time available, funds available, manpower available .. complexity of task etc. There's not even a single reason for each fail. One thing's sure: a fail means a loss of a lot of money, frustration on both parts. The side wanting to get a product and the side with the task of making + finishing it. Both have bad feelings and do know for sure that the other part was the real guilty part.

[www.linkedin.com]
[www.linkedin.com]
[zipdo.co]

If half a million apps are finished then it means that at least a million has been started and another half a million has been terminated before reaching a finished status.

There are mickey mouse apps and there are million lines+ apps. A failed mickey mouse app is no big loss and could be done by another guy within a month as well. While we can make mickey mouse apps using WD+WB+WM, I strongly believe that WX is made for the projects needing millions of Lines Of Code.

LOCs are a measurement unit since the old days of the IBM /360 series. In the average, how many written, tested and documented LOCs can be made by a programmer per day within a certain type of project? Conventional 3rd generation programming languages like BASIC, FORTRAN, PASCAL, COBOL without a GUI (Graphical Usier Interface) let us believe that - in the average - a programmer can make 7 - 10 LOCs per day. Adding a GUI to a 3rd generation language is slowing down speed. The programmer may be faster than that if some of her/his jobs are handed over to other persons of the team. Documenting and testing just as an example. But if you take their time and add it to the time needed for programming, in the end you'll end up with 7 - 10 LOCs per programmer and per day.

Using WX we can show that making a well-designed project could be made faster and therefore cheaper. With less manpower and much higher possibility of success!

Kind regards,
Guenter Predl
office@windev.at

Please archive this thread for possibly future people who are new to WinDev asking similar questions.

After reading and processing all the responses, it seems clear that PCSOFT will have to commit more effort, time and resources for any significant growth of the dev base in English speaking markets. It is certainly a sad commentary but at the same time, it's just the truth.

At this point, I am changing my focus to Python as it is growing and I already have a solid baseline of understanding of it.

Thank all of you for your time and help saving my time.

Kindest regards,
Scott G

Hi Scott,
it depends on what kind of apps you are going to develop.
If you are going for the desktop (Windows, MAC, Linux) or native mobile apps, please consider other possibilities (instead of Python).
For the WEB, simple apps can be done...

I have tried for some time now to develop a "prototype app", in Python to see how and if it can fit in our development environment.
It could be me, but I am not making much progress.

I keep hearing how many great web apps are designed with Python, and its frameworks, but other than the "skeleton" everything else is done with third-party non-Python code. And the business apps I have seen look so 90s to me.

Of course, Python is "free" and very popular among young programmers, but it also comes with a cost.

I am taking a closer look at Flutter these days and it looks promising

For Python criticism, take a look here:
[josvisser.substack.com].


Regards
Steven Sitas

Hi,

within a commercial environment, "free" is NOT free like in "a free beer" at all. Staff and office rent have to be paid and much, much more. For the purpose of a school, "free" may be sufficient, after all, no projects are to be made there, only the principle of programming is to be taught.

Imho, in order to sell a project the GUI is a crucial part of it. One can't say: "Ok, we make the project first and after that we'll take care of the GUI !". So, if one has to decide about the programming language for a project, s/he has to decide about how to make the GUI at the same time. Bottom line: there's only a small selection of languages left to choose from. If you want to make a profit from your work, it should be a 4th Generation language.

Flutter / Dart is a great example of a modern programming language including the GUI. For most of the environments it is available. From Raspberry PI, desktop, Mac and Linux to web. And it is "free", it can use hundreds of libraries. However, connection to any database is bound to SQL. Means, there are two programming languages to be studied, if you're employing young new staff.

Kind regards,
Guenter Predl
office@windev.at