Then tell me: what is the target audience of Xojo??? Nobody knows that exactly. They said by self: professional developers. So what you wanna tell here?
Their website is quite clear about it: “Xojo, Inc. was founded in 1997 with the idea that software development should be accessible to anyone. With traditional tools creating apps can be a very complicated process, but using Xojo anyone can learn to create high quality, native apps for the Desktop (macOS, Windows, Linux), Web, iOS (iPad/iPhone), Android and Raspberry Pi.”
So I think their target audience is not (in the first place) the professional developers. They want to bring developing software to a wider audience, bring the threshold down to start programming. And comparing Xojo to Swift for instance, I can see that plan in motion. Swift has a much steeper learning curve and yes: I can imagine that Swift offers a better ability to develop software with more Mac like look.
When you start selling hammers and somebody comes along offering 40 ways to improve your hammer, suggesting ways to also put in screws, measure wood, we might as well integrate a saw, etc. I can imagine that the creator of that hammer will shoot your plans down and say you’re not his target audience, go buy a multitool or a shack full of hardware.
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You think? The had before the target prodessional Developers. What do you think why they are so pissed of?
https://showcase.xojo.com/ shows quite a lot of Xojo created software, some of it quite impressive AND with real Mac look and feel. So if you can’t make that happen, maybe you had bias before you went in the Xojo thing and just couldn’t make it happen fast enough for you and gave up, muttering about Xojo not being able to give you that real Mac feeling. Others prove it can be done. I also think that my apps have a nice Mac look and feel.
One of my recent apps (still a work in progress) is an iTunes/Apple Music alternative:
Cenobox software – Cenobyte
I think they are pissed on people that ask the Xojo software to do things that they don’t think is necessary. Everybody has different demands when it comes to a product you buy/try/want. When you’re looking to buy a 600HP sports car and you’re looking at the Hyundai dealer, you know you will be disappointed. Same thing when you want lots of cargo space and you’re shopping at Ferrari. I agree that some things in the past were not quite smart to do, like the API en WEB transitions, but if you’re expecting things from Xojo that never were there in the first place, that’s just unfair. I never needed or used Web or Mobile, so I never experienced that presumed horror, but I can say that after 20 years of using Xojo for Mac desktop (and also cursing them a couple of times), I still like it.
Possibel and good for you. No question. But too many bugs inside. And not while I’m searching for a 600hp sports car but a working ide under Linux as it is sold for example.
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Like fix bugs.
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That seems to be the expectation doesnt it ?
of reporters or now “popularity” seems to be a critical metric
Personally it WASNT how I ever triaged bug reports for any release
My personal preferred order for triage was
- Crashers (nil object, out of bounds, etc)
- Reports that were paid to be fixed
- Pro user reports
- then oldest & # of reporters
And that list was always subject to whatever got added / removed by management
TBH I’ve used it since literally day 1
And I worked there for > 10 years
While the CEO will tell you to your face that professional users are a target market - there HAVE been times when he’s told advocates this is NOT the focus (Where’s @ubogun ? He can relate what he was told way back in 2017 by the CEO)
And they have told other users similar things
Xojo is NOT perfect
But they arent complete crap either
You HAVE to know where the bumps warts & issues are - they DO exist
There HAVE been things promised then not delivered - like a way to transition a web project from version 1 to version 2
Those you can actually go listen to the keynote presentations about it
And then that talk disappeared and web 2 arrived with no means to transition
Rewrites were the only way to deal with this
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Java definitely takes a different mind set to work with esp coming from Xojo
Yes, you are right, you found the core problem.
Xojo is in a perpetual mediocre state with no expectations of being better and get offended when people that saw its potential ask for improvement.
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A compiler - Xojo’s isnt written in Xojo FWIW its written in C/C++
Anything to do with real time operations
High speed high volume database operations
An IDE - even Xojos has lots of plugins Xojo Inc has written in C/C++ because doing it IN Xojo isnt fast enough or it cant be done in Xojo
PDF - Xojo is written in Xojo and is OK for every simple requirements but once you get large or complex PDF’s you need a plugin
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I’m sure the CEO and his pronouncements at the various keynotes over the years might disagree
I WISH it was “they just dont have the race car I want”
Thing is they largely DID
And during a BETA they announced a plan to do API 2 and were told - flat out - this is a BAD idea and it will drive people away
And ruin a large video training site, and make every example project useless
And by doing this make any books etc that might have existed useless
They persisted anyway
They introduced the plan to change MANY control event names and the names of controls themselves
And were told - flat out - this is a BAD idea and it will drive people away
They persisted anyway
And today there are no books, not books beyond the one Xojo created (there used to be several), and old examples are often completely useless unless you can find someone to update them
Geoff helped me out a lot with this. I did a transition rewrite to PHP. PHP just works unlike Xojo.
With Xojo I had to look into bugs, find out if they were mine or Xojo’s. If the latter, then find a work around. I don’t have time for that. I need a solid platform and Xojo is NOT solid.
If Xojo works for YOU for what YOU need - great !
Just understand that for others, for a wide variety of reasons, it did but no longer does
That doesn’t invalidate either experience
But it does explain why there are many people on this forum who feel the way they do about Xojo.
And the CEO’s apparent lack of understanding, empathy, or concern simply aggravated that.
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Fully agree. Just, if Xojo’s marketing and the CEO’s bragging would stick to reality…
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The above post is in reply to Ivan but quotes me so it is difficult to know who and what exactly you are addressing. I gave Xojo a chance in a real-life project and found it underwhelming. I rewrote it in a platform I don’t have to sell my client on or justify to them, it is much friskier and works without 3rd party add-ons via C#/WinForms. Yes, Sql Server has a driver included in the Xojo distro. It’s buggy and poorly maintained. I was advised by people with more Xojo experience than me that for that target DB, MBS was the way to go. And even then I had to pay the owner of MBS to figure out why it still wasn’t working, and even he could not get anything but ODBC to work in situ, though likely if I had wanted to pay him for a couple more hours we might have gotten it sorted.
These are simple facts. I voted with my dollars so to speak. Fairly or not – for a product like Xojo to compete, it has to not just do as well as established alternatives, it has to do better. It is not doing AS well. This is a problem. The problem is not that I am “grumpy” or, after 41 years as a developer, ignorant. If you want or need to believe such things, fine … you do you. But you should know that your defensive, ad hominem-laced post is ineffective at persuading those it needs to persuade.
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That was me, and I made a video editor (which I never released).
Examples of some of the apps I built in Xojo are on my site https://ohanaware.com/ Every single one of 'em uses custom controls and a lot of declares to make 'em more Mac like.
Don’t forget that I started back in the 90s with REALBasic, and basically watched as Xojo fell behind over and over again. Do you know how hard it is to make a Mac like interface with a native scrollview?
Here’s an example of a massive library that I made (which would make it more comparable with Swift made apps). It was broken by API 2.0 in a way, I’d have to manage two separate versions of this library one API 1.0 and one in API 2.0. I asked Xojo for help and while they semi-helped with one part, that function wasn’t useful because it also broke some of the commands.
As I’ve said before, if it works great for you, that’s good. But many of us have been burned by Xojo in one way or another. What made me finally learn Swift and SwiftUI was the CEO telling me that Xojo is exactly as it should be. I even suggested they take me on to modernize their Mac framework, but it is not something they care about.
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Xojo has never hired a true sales or marking team (wait-- back in like 2005 they had Matt Q)
Geoff told me once. We are like Apple. They don’t market. They let their products speak for themselves.
Well, then…
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