Lianja making the Xojo claim: fact or fiction?

[thorstenstueker]

First of all electron is far away from my needs. So I would never do. And I would never provide a JavaScript based desktop app. Too slow. It is a question of needs and a question of security for me. So I have no chance to use tools like that and they are far away from stuffs I would ever consider to use.

And yes, you are right. We are already old. And in one or two decades we can be happy if we recognize our own kids. So development of software somewhen stops. And a software relying on the genius of one developer dies with him. That is more than high risk.

[npalardy]

@thorstenstueker

As far as I can see none of them are really successful with let me say a million users. That is the point.

They exist - thats all I was pointing out as you said they all disappeared

Just refuting the claim you made that “they have all disappeared”
They haven’t

I really dont care about them for them etc because they dont do what I need, or what my clients need
But they apparently do something that some people do want otherwise they wouldn’t keep popping up

[thorstenstueker]

@npalardy

They exist - thats all I was pointing out as you said they all disappeared

Just refuting the claim you made that “they have all disappeared”
They haven’t

I really dont care about them for them etc because they dont do what I need, or what my clients need
But they apparently do something that some people do want otherwise they wouldn’t keep popping up

Okay. The most of them was disappearing in less than one decade. So I have to correct me in this wise. So I have to say thank you for this.

[bgrommes]

@thorstenstueker

As far as I can see none of them are really successful with let me say a million users.

I can’t find figures on what the FoxPro user base was but there were 3,000 attending the Fox DevCon at its peak in 1995. That was down to 1,000 by the last Fox DevCon in 2000. The xBase market was still bustling in the mid 90s but declined from there.

Per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DBase:

In the early 1990s, xBase products constituted the leading database platform for implementing business applications. The size and impact of the xBase market did not go unnoticed, and within one year, the three top xBase firms were acquired by larger software companies:

• Borland purchased Ashton-Tate[7][8]
• Microsoft bought Fox Software[9][10]
• Computer Associates acquired Nantucket[11]

[thorstenstueker]

@bgrommes

FoxPro user base was but there were 3,000 attending the Fox DevCon at its peak in 1995. That was down to 1,000 by the last Fox DevCon in 2000. The xBase market was still bustling in the mid 90s but declined from there.

That comment was directed about the 4GL Tools. Foxpro and Xbase products are not members of this group but they are programming toolchains. Sometimes I have to take care that I am addressing it or quoting. I should be more handsome in this things, sorry.

[bgrommes]

@npalardy

Bubble.io and many many others exist

I have to chuckle at this from Bubble’s site:

“Bubble lets you create interactive, multi-user apps for desktop and mobile web browsers, including all the features you need to build a site like Facebook or Airbnb.”

[thorstenstueker]

But it can produce only Cloud Apps for their Cloud as far as I read it correct. No Windows, Mac, Linux or IOS / Android App possible.

[dalu]

@bgrommes

I doubt very much that Lianja considers itself a Xojo competitor

oki
so you can answer your own question

Lianja making the Xojo claim: fact or fiction?

answer : NO
problem solved, next

[npalardy]

Some, like 4D, might not have he market share but have been around a long long time
Longer than Java as it was first released in 1987 (Java not publicly until about 1995)

I think it fits into the “4 GL” bucket
Maybe
sort of

I haven’t touched it in > 20 years BUT at the time it was the general purpose go to tool used for business applications in some decently large companies (TC Energy and Liberty Mutual as far as recall - so take that with a grain of salt)

[npalardy]

Oh yes - many of these no code tools arent multi platform, multi target tools
Several I looked at are hosted only - no chance for self hosting
And many other restrictions

Which is one reason the client that asked me to look into them isnt using them

[s7g2vp2]

4D was definitely marketed as a 4GL tool back in the day.

Omnis was also marketed as 4GL and that goes back even further (1982).

[dickey]

@s7g2vp2, both 4D and Omnis remain active to this day. I remember a time when I was really productive in Omnis Studio. Only just noticed your name was “Not Geoff Perlman” (laughing).

[Jeannot]

Just to complete the whole joke, because we’re also happily ranting about C and C++ here.

I have never understood these “wars”. A professional developer takes the tool that does the job well and when you have cross-development on your radar then you have to always make compromises. And that’s exactly what it was originally about, “is Lianja a shiny pearl that can help us, or do they make untenable promises like Xojo, or are they problematic as an isolated solution about future development”.

This question is valid and interesting. However, we haven’t made any progress here and are engaged in “wars” about who should use what and why one option might be better than another. It’s pretty pointless, and we all know that. Yet we continue. In the end, there are no winners; at most, we all collectively lose time.

I apologize if I seem annoyed, but religious wars get on my nerves, and declaring one single programming language the holy grail unfortunately has the same effect.

We’ve all used Xojo at some point, many of us for a relatively long time. We have mastered the language and the ecosystem that addresses its problems. A once helpful tool has become one in which bugs have taken over, but unfortunately, no IT ecosystem is prepared for that.

As for my opinion on Lianja: I find the information on the website quite confusing and they look outdated. That may be unfair, but it’s my first impression. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to get a clear understanding (at least without registering). What I would be interested in is a discussion (manufacturer-agnostic) about what the tool can and cannot do, and what the costs per block are.

However, that’s not what I’m getting from this thread. It’s unfortunate, but that’s the nature of the times. I just hope that Lianja hasn’t been unfairly dismissed, as it seems that apart from @bgrommes, nobody has even looked at the details.

Edit: another meme, which fits quite well

[thorstenstueker]

problem solved? We are speaking bout the claims they make. And they make the same claims like Xojo but with the security: it is not even native compiled for IOS and Android but a WebApp. Sp now the problem is more or less solved. You again didn’t understood what’s the real problem.

[SteveW]

@thorstenstueker

I dunno what you wanna say here? Java is for me the most clear and best readable language

Hey, I didn’t make the cartoon but it seems Java’s verbosity and ugliness wasn’t lost on the person who did.

@thorstenstueker

And I would never provide a JavaScript based desktop app. Too slow.

Most modern implementations of JavaScript are not slow

I’ve used HTML/CSS/JS + Tabulator in numerous front ends for business software now and I’d be very reluctant to go back to any form of desktop widgets.

[s7g2vp2]

I spent around 18 years doing Omnis development from Omnis on MS-DOS through to Omnis Studio 4 on macOS & MS-Windows. We found it so productive that the runtime fees were usually not an issue for our customers. To this day I still haven’t come across another environment which is better for creating MIS / database systems. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a fit for what I do now so I haven’t touched it in years but I still look from time to time to see what they are up to.

Although I have never used Xojo Web, I do think think that Xojo Web would have been a much better product if they had taken a similar approach to the Omnis Web Client which is now Javascript based rather than a browser plugin.

[bgrommes]

Yeah I am finding the constant harping on the “obviously best / right” platform to be tedious and disappointing.

You are right that Lianja needs a good content writer / editor for their site because it IS confusing. I don’t think it is deliberate, just an artifact that developers think they can communicate in English, or do marketing or branding.

I never had enough time to really bury myself in a test project and see what it can do, and it’s been a couple of years now so they’ve moved on from where the product was at the time (v7). I was beginning to get the impression that you had to approach development with the product in a Certain Way if you wanted to target anything beyond desktop AND have the ability to still support desktop from the same code base. When people were running into difficulties they were told they weren’t doing it right (not using “the Lianja Way”) so there’s definitely a “happy path” you have to be okay with. That’s a red flag for me, but I didn’t delve deeply enough to say if it would have been an actual problem or not; for all I know these were constraints that were well thought-out and that I could live with. I did get the impression that Lianja would probably do a good job of desktop CRUD apps and DB-oriented console apps but I did not get a sense of web or mobile deployments at all, as I didn’t get that far before I had to drop it for work demands.

They follow the FoxPro pattern: there’s a built-in DB and a record-oriented, non-set-oriented DML in addition to SQL. If you use another DB, query results are basically materialized views within the native DB. That is a little bit “different” from today’s typical environment but something I would have taken to quite naturally as the “FoxPro way”, if you will, would have come back to me quickly. If you are hung up on using ORMs you would probably not like it but I really don’t like that extra abstraction between me and the DB.

[bgrommes]

@s7g2vp2

I spent around 18 years doing Omnis development from Omnis on MS-DOS through to Omnis Studio 4 on macOS & MS-Windows. We found it so productive that the runtime fees were usually not an issue for our customers. To this day I still haven’t come across another environment which is better for creating MIS / database systems.

I kicked the tires on that one a little bit but had even less time to spend with it that I did with Lianja. I am heartened to read of your experience. I’ll keep it in mind down the road.

[Jeannot]

@s7g2vp2

that the runtime fees were usually not an issue for our customers

Do you have the possibility to share any price indications? That’s what turned me off (it’s a sole personal thing, I literally hate those “contact us for a quote” price philosophies) and a reason I’ve never had them on my radar.

[Jeannot]

@bgrommes

You are right that Lianja needs a good content writer / editor for their site because it IS confusing. I don’t think it is deliberate, just an artifact that developers think they can communicate in English, or do marketing or branding.

Yes, it can very well be a plus (people concentrating on their product and not doing marketing BS), but for a first impression it’s not the right tactic in 2023 . If businesses are hiding their products, including trials, behind a registration wall, I would at least expect some screenshots, some tutorials, etc. “Foxpro style” would not appeal me right now, but there is usually a market for everything (I’m aware of a few devs eagerly searching for a FoxPro replacement), so that doesn’t need to be bad per se, though it isn’t my cup of tea.