Xojo is so far behind now, I don’t think they’ll ever catch up, and what makes it worse is that macOS development at Apple has been stagnant for some time.
Background: I wrote a little app to convert the half a dozen different fuel economy measurements, and the next step is to make it so that customers using this app can compare different readings and or vehicles. I had an idea of how to do it, but shelved it for a raining day.
I was poking around the default menu items, I realized “New Window” just works. Because I’ve used SceneStorage the properties are written into the Window Restoration, for each window.
Next I tried Window Tabs and you know what, they just work. If you’d forgotten about the built-in tabbing, its not surprising, I had. IIRC most of us disabled Window Tabbing because it’s only a half-assed solution with a Xojo made Mac app, but with a SwiftUI made Mac app, it’s fully implemented.
So now customers can open a New window or create a tab, or combine tabs into a single window, or blow a bunch of tabs into separate windows (without me doing anything) and each window/tab stores it’s own properties. Comparison abilities checked.
FYI I did dig in and write a solution for handling the macOS Window Tabbing (its part of my AppKit), but even then, it was a lot of effort with all the declares. I also know a couple of Xojo devs who wrote their own Window Tabbing solution. All of this is wasted time and additional expenses, all because the genius CEO won’t hire any platform specialists and at this point, I honestly don’t think he can afford to do so either.
Does it really matter any more… Most of us are beyond hoping (or caring) the Xojo “finds its way”… That train left the station years ago. And many of us have moved on
It is while they do an XPLAT job with a non XPLAT way they go. Simple. There is no real chance. There would be but that would also mean that they would have to pre-render in the IDE the different platforms while sometimes things are looking different, having different sizes and so on. Instead they generated their own “native” and sell it. It works: not really. But like so often I had to listen to the song of the native UI and that’s why Java is not the right tool. You are going the right way: native programming for mac only and not for more platforms. Looking on this I would dicide in the same way: using the native toolchain and not an XPLAT one.
On the other side: programming XPLAT you also would use not a half XPLAT and half native one but a XPLAT tool with all you need. The problem is: you need to decide exactly that in the beginning and not at the end of a development process. And you need to learn the needed tools. And yes, there is no real alternative. I can run GUI programs made with Java Swing or FX on macOS but they are not and will never be native. Ob the other side I can run them on Windows and Linux. The other way around is the same: it runs on macOS but will never run on Linux or Windows. This decision many people do not want to do. Their Idea behind: the native GUI Xojo as a toolchain for producing native Software.
That this Software is not working like native: I would await that from the beginning. When and if I have only to write for macOS I will use Swift for sure and for Windows only I would use C# for sure.But for all platforms? Yes. The decision is in the beginning. And all tries before with XLAT tools will fail.
So it is not only a fault of Xojo, inc. It is also te fault of the programmer which decides to work with an XPLAT tool for native Software on macOS. Is it something to laugh about? for sure. Is it funny for the people invested years of work in a Software product? For sure not. Exactly that’s the problem.
Sam I was not thinking about any kind of critics, It was. Times changed. Then it was not anymore. And this was for existing users something they could not avoid. If it would be today also mac only it would come with better native features or - also possible - it could also be that it would stop to exist. Too many modern tools are on the market. Only this one is so smart to exist over that time. Okay java also, c and others also. But XJo was never in any kind a number one programming language. This and the fact that it stayed completely closed source was taking care that it will still be a niche solution for a few but not the mass of programmers.
When I started with RB it was version 3 or 4 - can’t quite remember and I had just gotten an iMac this was in '98. I wasn’t looking for XPlat at the time and what brought me to RB was it was pretty close to VB at the time. I was using VB5 or VB6 in the day job and I didn’t want to have to use something like CodeWarrior to write an app on the Mac. I vaguely remember that you could compile the RB program on the Mac to create a Windows executable.
IMO - If they had stayed focused on the Mac and maybe Windows it could have been a much better product by now and found its niche. Expanding much beyond the Mac seems like it got away from what was a core competency.
I came in at RB V3 and Windows was supported. I purposely chose RB because it was X-Platform. At work I had a Mac on my desk but in the laboratory all the instruments were run on Windows machines so I needed X-Platform.
If they had stuck to just X-Platform desktop, the product would likely be better now for that and I bet their userbase, while not huge, would be larger than it is now.
I doubt that while that usecase is possible and the most stable and reliable one, XPLAT Desktop. The problems starting more and more with IOS, Android and the web. So Desktop is running and was running. It was never fast and it was nearly reliable but not let me say high level performer. Xojo lost their userbase while people are not further programming with a concept like that. Most people want to write web applications or mobile applications. And I would bet that it was the fundamental reason for Xojo people to bring exactly this platforms into their language and IDE.Was the Idea brilliant? I would like to say no. But at the end they decided what the market wanted or in their eyes the market was driving them to do. They realized at least that they had a future problem if less and less people developing Desktop Software for their needs but Websoftware and mobile software. Hence they had only IOS and wanted also to be available for the Android market it was a logical decision to develop also Android Development. Was it shooting in their knees? No, not really. The problem came with the Ideas around. Like API2, like changing to Web 2.0 with cutting the line for Web1.0 Sourcecodes without any reason. This was crashing the believing of the people and many decisions and promisings before. Many people drunk CoolAid for long time but at the end they realized that there is the need for another platform. Look at Jeannot. He was really active and he was definitely a fan. He invested much time for developing Xojo solutions and workarounds for several problems. At the end: he passed and looked for antoher way for his Software Development. And so many people ran away and it is not at it’s end. THIS is the problem. Not the platforms. Not rhe reliability problems. A few stability and reliability problems and a low performance was not disturbing the people at all. But the promisings and not fulfilling, the bans they have done and the neat Support they spend.
Unbelievable that things are run this way. Every once in a while you need to go get a bunch of that “low-hanging fruit” that is quick to fix and keep the backlog from ballooning in size.
They dont have enough team members in dev or QA to do it consistently
And their process doesnt lend itself to creating fewer bugs each iteration
That would help immensely but it takes time to set up all thats required
And they don/cant/wont take that time so nothing improves
Think of what they could have done with all the time, effort, and money put into 2 versions of Web, the multiple iterations of iOS, API2, and the multi-year effort of Android if they had just stuck with desktop/console apps.
I told my robotics teams to pick 2 things to do really, really well during a season. Anything else is just icing on the cake. Turns out, doing 2 things well is enough to get picked for elimination brackets because the 2 other teams on the alliance have their strengths and weaknesses too and the whole point is to work together as an alliance. We’ve been picked to be in the elimination brackets every time we’ve adhered to that strategy. But then again, high school kids don’t always listen to the mentors and Geoff doesn’t listen to the advice we’ve freely offered to him over the years either.
When users tell you “we dont want…” _sometimes, just sometimes, they really mean it
API 2 and all the renamed controls they were told “this is a HORRIBLE idea”
They didnt listen
And are now having to rebuild their user base because of a bad idea
MAybe Im the only one who debugs the apps??? Or the thumbs up system is a stupid idea. Most users dont bother to file the issues and just change the tool, or learn that it is a waste of time and dont engage any more.
You can tell that this customer is not very happy by how he illustrates that the bug is at least 12 years old, and what does the CEO do, first says he’ll get it fixed and then defends NOT fixing it. Same old, same old.
Talking to an MVP t’other day about how things are in the Xojo community. Newbies come in and are impressed and grateful. Experienced ones leave as Xojo does little to maintain their relationship. I can’t imagine that there’s a lot of people finding Xojo and going that’s what I need.
Literally every major platform vendor offers FREE x-plat (may not be the platforms you want) dev tools.
That is always a problem. Not only with Xojo but also with other proprietary programming systems. That’s why it is so beautiful to work with Languages which are not closed Source Systems. I can only speak for Java but I have a good example. We found a Bug in JavaFX. We fixed this Bug and pushed it to the Developers. The Developers checked it, checked the fix and implemented it into Release. All Users now could use the Language with Maven archive or Gradle ARCHIVE AND WILL GET THE BUG FIXED VERSION. Closed Systems are not giving you this ability. That’s it. Even IntelliJ, Java, C++, Netbeans, Eclipse, RUST, JavaScript, PHP and many, many more are working exactly like this.
