I was happy with it and believed in their direction for about the first 10 years using the product bugs and all… but not so much since they became Xojo…
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Speculations are possibly true or may be not true. What we know is that they go this way. Possibly because of a Vision of the CEO? We don’t know. And let me say it so: if it would be production ready and would not have that amount of Bugs it would be a great Software at all especially for citizen Developers which want to build their projects. Maybe simple ones or even complex ones. And that is one point Xojo gets. The Idea behind Xojo is still that a citizen Developer can start developing for all platforms. And as I could get the argumentations against languages like C++, C, Java are the same: please no curly braces and no semicolon. And I can understand that. The programs looking more like natural speech and many people having less problems to read that kind of code.
Also not to forget: in old times nearly everybody had contact with Basic ak Visual Basic or GWBasic and so on. This is not so today but it was for decades fact. And all the old users having that experience. Maybe that’s why they feel so familiar with it.
Another big Part of the attraction is definitely the GUI Designer. Many people enjoy exactly that because they do not have to deal with any kind of a declarative GUI like with C# or JavaFX fxml or a hard coded GUI like CodenameOne or Java Swing and many others have. Many people are not willing to hardcode or manage XML declarative GUI because they do not like it or - also possible - they don’t want to deal with it.
And last but not least is the learning curve relatively flat to get to first results. So even if you spend not that much time you will get to attractive results even with Database connections and so on. Last but not least: the ecosystem of Plugins has everything you may need mostly from one commercial vendor delivered. So PDF, Web and Desktop Components, further Database Connectors and many stuffs more you may find for it. That looks: attractive.
So I guess there are many devs outside unable to deal with the commercial languages or not willing to learn them from which reason ever. They are the customers for the Xojo Technology. Or a Technology like B4x which is similar to Xojo. I guess there is nothing you can’t do with Xojo what you can not do with B4x. Except developing on MacOS what is not possible with B4x.
So Xojo will be attractive for this kind of users all time and they will buy Xojo and support it. And the product looks very exclusive. While Java is Java and all the stuffs coming from hundreds of vendors and even the Development Kits (JDK) are coming from many vendors like Oracle, Azul, IBM, Amazon and many more. So we will see that attraction all time.
And from that point of view I can see and realize that the people want to see all this platforms and even Android to be able to provide Software for all of this platforms. And that it leaks tons of functionality it should have if not making any difference for this Users. I believe that the only chance for Xojo is that they strictly work on this capabilities. Stopping to Support Platforms like Web, IOS and Android would lower the attraction of Xojo definitely. And I realized that exactly this Vision is a big Part of the compeny’s strategy. So at the end we will have to live with this fragmented Development. If we want or not.
And also @bkeeney is right when he says that they can be around another 2 decades with this Situation. Why not. As long as they find people buying the product and renewing the product there is no question: they will exist and stay around. Why should a company stop selling a product as long they have any commercial success with it. As long as they can pay the debts they have a good chance to stay.
If I would have a Vision it would be: Bugs are fixed and platforms are running because I strongly believed that there is a big hurdle for citizen Developers accepting languages and Build Toolchains needed for languages like C++, C or Java. And as long as the users want to build for MacOS and Windows I can’t see C#. So please do the Job, correct the Bugs and make Xojo customers happy with the product.
100% agree. Apart from the great vision, Xojo itself is still a very interesting tool. Open the IDE, get started, compile, done. There is hardly any other language in which you can get a GUI-based “Hello World” so quickly and easily (no sarcasm!).
It’s also definitely good for hobbyists, or someone building a single professional program and juggling around with bugs, there are almost always workarounds in programming.
Many bugs are also of no consequence to users. Whereby that is surprising with so many big hits (wrong calculations, etc.).
But yeah it doesn’t matter at all. Love it, change it (impossible), or leave it.
We pros can write our fingers sore, since we’re not officially their target group anyway, it’s wasted life time.
Many of us have been supporters for decades. It would be unfair and unethical to wish Xojo harm. But even if selfishly all my needs were met, I wouldn’t go back for other reasons: the way you deal with opinions and how you listen (or not), how you manage crises (or not) burns into the DNA of a company and at some point you have to say: enough is enough. But that’s nothing personal, nothing evil, it’s just a fact.
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A wise man once said: Never allow somebody or something make you sad for more than 15 Seconds. If it is more, than this is your fault.
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Hmm, I doubt the 2 decade life-span. Geoff is getting older, and no one in their right mind would buy this company. Also, it’s been around for a long time, and why has no one heard of it? I haven’t run into a professional programmer that has heard of it. Xojo whut? REALbasic whut? I tried to collaborate with another professional programmer years ago with RB and he bailed on me because he said that RB was “too buggy” even back then. I wrote a computer game “Gettysburg” with RB and went through hell on the Windows version having to nurse the screen refresh with custom code. All of that code is worthless now because Geoff marches off into the woods whenever he likes with no thought to how this will affect existing code bases. My prediction - he’ll figure out the collapse is nigh (~5 years), and bail, or he’ll stick it out until he’s senile (also ~5 years) and figure out that no one wants to buy this steamer and it will go away in one form or another. Either open source it (hint hint), or it will die on the vine. I’m not bitter though 
. I tried the Unity thing, TBH I don’t have time (I’m 65 and I figure maybe.2 years of solid use to master), and I’ve settled on Swift / C / C++ / Objective C. Apple is behind it, and the C part isn’t going anywhere, and it stands the test of time. I have code that I wrote 20 years ago in C that I still use. It’s nice to have a place to commiserate! So thanks.
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Like you I have Java Code in that age and 13 years old C++ Code also still running and compilable when changing the exchanged Libs. Yes, it is different to Xojo and other tools to have a harbor where stuffs are running out of the box after long time in new versions.
I would not underestimate the stubborn delusions that the owner of a small company can have about the value of what he’s trying to sell. My previous client was wanting to purchase a small firm owned by three brothers. They are, to this day, running an old instance of Sql Server 2000, with a patchwork of half-finished admin apps holding it together than no one understands and the consultant who developed them has long disappeared. They have no in-house expertise in these things. Their processes are highly labor-intensive and ill-conceived.
My client figured they would come around eventually so got them used to being dependent on our processes and various technical favors we did for them. These favors were saving their bacon but they did not understand this. At all.
Years passed. The brother who was the CEO died. One of the younger ones took over. Every time the subject of buying them out was broached, the original asking price remained in place – a price that was easily / conservatively 20x what any sane buyer would even consider.
After my client was acquired by International MegaCorp, one of the very few sane decisions made by the new owner was that we were no longer doing favors for free for these people. They immediately bailed and went back to what they were doing before we started romancing them: hiring people in India to do the work manually in Excel with macros.
I would imagine that they will still be holding out for this fantasy price until they can no longer keep the doors open or they are all dead.
If the delusions are as strong with Geoff as everyone claims, that is probably the path he will follow also. He will reason that he put in all this effort and by god is going to get compensated for it. Even if the effort was misguided or not loved by customers.
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