Last night I decided that it’s time to kill BKeeney.com and BKeeneyBriefs.com. Maybe Briefs will be reborn again but for now the cost of the hosting just isn’t worth it. No timeframe yet and maybe I’ll change my mind if someone has decent arguments for it.
I am not selling any products and I’m not taking any new consulting clients (and transitioning many of the existing ones to others. So why keep everything around?
Why? Hmmm. Cause you’re helping others with it for example. While you are giving informations others can not provide. While bkeeney for me is a real part of the scene. Sad that you close down. Really sad.
Maybe you could encourage someone to go through posts and copy some of the good ones to the Xojo forum or here.
I feel sad seeing this go away.
All things have a lifespan. I’m happy that I was a consultant for 20 years. I think I did a lot of good things in those years. Time to move on. I enjoy my full-time job and the very few clients I have remaining and the security it brings as I move closer to retirement.
I have a cupboard in my house, things go in it and if they are not taken out in a year they are passed on, or thrown out.
everything has its time however sad it is to see it end.
I too am sad to see it go but fully understand the decision.
I will be another that is sad to see this end of an era… But I too totally understand that circumstances has colluded to create this situation.
Bob,
One thing to remember, is that long term no job working for someone else these days is guaranteed.
When i was much younger I got a job with a major corporation… Back in the day once in, most used to stay there their whole careers and get good pensions and company sponsored health care in retirement…
After I was there for 10 years I thought I would be there for life… But times had changed and I got laid off just shy being there 14 years.
Next company was a startup that did not make it, and again I got laid off just short of 14 years there (I was the 7th employee when I started)…
Next job was (still is) another startup… been there over 10 years… but there is a good chance this job will be gone by the end of this year… and at my current age most likely will be “retired” involuntarily…
My point is maybe you might want to keep a toe in the consulting “just in case” and once you are retired (voluntarily or not) you might want to do some light consulting for a few years… both to keep the brain active and also to supplement social security and savings.
-Karen
I’m sad to see those go Bob, but I understand. I’ve been more of a lurker than and active member in the Xojo community (something I hope to change now), and your blog along with Aaron Ballman’s Ramblings back in the day were always my favorite content regarding REALbasic/Xojo.
Thank you!
Maybe Christian can host it? There was some very useful content.
Make sure it is backed up in the internet archive …
Sorry to see them go. I personally enjoy all of your blogs, as they were insightful.
I wish you all the best Bob!
Good news is that it is in the Internet Archive:
Enjoy your new job!
I still hope to meet you agains somewhere someday and if you have something to tell, maybe you can send it Marc Zeedar for an article 
I’ve kept a few of the fun consulting clients. And I’ll probably keep the domains around so that if I want to spin them back up I can.
I think that is a good idea as they have already made their name. There is no reason not to change the content. I did the same with AlwaysbusyCorner, just now the content is for B4X instead of Xojo. I did not regret it.
I always enjoyed them Bob, thank you!
I will be quite sad to see these two websites fade into the archives. They were a significant part of my livelyhood for a few years, and BKeeney sw really helped me grow as a developer.
I want to help anyone facing the trouble of “a website is too costly to run” so I’ve made Lifeboat 54 allow separate website sources for the less-expensive license option. Reach out if you have any questions or need any help setting up your little corner of the internet.
Best wishes to everyone, and happy coding!
I’m sorry to see your site disappear too. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed reading it, and I’ll especially miss the reviews of Xojo releases.
It’s sad to see how many RB/Xojo blogs have disappeared throughout the years, especially the ones with in-depth programming information. That’s a big loss, and not a sign of a thriving programming tool community.
The problem is that Xojo Inc seems to have deliberately dropped their Pro users (Bob wrote a blog post about it - see I’m Not Xojo’s Target Audience. Is Anyone? | BKeeney Briefs) and ditched backwards compatibility (API1 to API2, event renaming) to focus on the „newbies“ that are so eager to pay Xojo.
Consequently decades of code, tutorials, projects became pretty much useless, a LOT of experience and help left with the Pros, big and valued projects were shut down or are on life support (Formatted Text Control, ActiveRecord, Shorts, Aloe, Xanadu, etc), and the forum has entered a „brave new World“ of censorship and 1000 year bans.
It looks like a lot of bad decision making, and it could have been very different if Xojo had taken the Pros on board (after all, they had a strong incentive for Xojo to succeed as their business and livelihood depended on Xojo - heck, they might even have added another engineer).
But instead Xojo seems VERY under-staffed, and the core area that I need - desktop - seems so badly neglected for Windows and Linux that Xojo doesn‘t really feel like a cross-platform environment anymore.
I like Xojo (the programming environment, not the company) but the thought of buying another license feels like a waste of money.
I had to get into Swift for my series on Maps in xDev, and Swift seems really elegant and powerful. But the MapKit alone seems bigger than Xojo, and that is just one small part of Swift! And of course it isn‘t officially supported for Windows. So currently I‘m looking into B4 as a replacement …