Say what you will about Xojo Inc.—and there’s plenty to say—but occasionally, they manage something clever enough to deserve a nod.
Case in point: they recently released a video and a tool aimed at luring 4th Dimension users over to Xojo. Yes, a 4D layout conversion utility. Because apparently, the Venn diagram of people clinging to 4D and those eagerly adopting new development platforms has more overlap than one might think.
It’s a brilliant move, really. 4D users are famously flexible, open to change, and not at all known for staying loyal to aging systems for decades. Clearly, this is the optimal use of Xojo’s limited marketing resources.
And let’s be honest: the 4D ecosystem is a model of modernity and cohesion—though still, somehow, a bit more dysfunctional than Xojo itself. So yes, targeting that crowd makes perfect sense. Low-hanging fruit, as they say. I’ll bet they get seven of the remaining nine 4D users.
Anyway, has anyone noticed a sudden flood of new Xojo users? No? Just curious.
I have no proof but neither doubt that TwinBasic has already more users than xojo. Still there are millions of lines of code waiting the right tool to be ported. But yes, a real GENIOUS keeps the “Im not basic” trend but want to chase another tiny market
Here to mention they just made everyone’s apps 18ish megabytes fatter for “optimization” no one asked for. They didn’t bother to ask the community or open a public ticket to find out if anyone even wanted this. I certainly don’t.
I wonder about what they even did
Optimized them for speed only and screw size ?
Or what settings they actually used ?
Since there are often settings to optimize for both speed & size
The problem is that if you ask any random Xojo developer, “Do you want faster API’s?” of course they’ll say yes. They probably didn’t include the, “but with 18 MB of added size to your app?” part. Since a vast majority of Xojo developers don’t care, or, are just developing something for themselves, they’ll see this as a good thing.
So…just another day where Xojo rearranges the deck chairs to make it seem like they’re doing something that’s useful.
don’t forget, the livecode webinar is next tuesday
i don’t know that my fellow 4d nerds (or my fellow livecode nerds) are going to move in any meaningful numbers.
Heavier apps cost more to download (if you pay for bandwidth).
Heavier apps are slower to Notarize.
Heavier apps are slower to validate.
Heavier apps use more disk space.
Heavier apps are slower to load.
Heavier apps use more memory.
Other tools can produce an app that’s almost one tenth of the file size of a Xojo made Mac app, without this change.
I’ve seen some made with Xojo apps that already come in at over a gigabyte.
