“Xojo has become waaay to buggy since the introduction of the rapid release model. Basic functionality has to be rock solid, but with Xojo it is becoming less solid (eg networking, file handling). Windows is unusable in many situations. IOS is a joke. Customers are no longer treated as valuable but as cash cows. That constructive criticism is being ignored (especially how Bob Keeney was treated) and the “MVPs” (who’s first actions were to act as shock troopers on the forum) show that the rot goes very deep indeed in the company itself where by all accounts all critical voices have been removed. Xojo is a mess at every level: the language, the IDE, the company, the customer care. Instead of proudly claiming the Basic heritage and driving it to new heights the self-loathing displayed let to really strange decisions. Xojo could have been great, but it isn’t. And that is just sad.”
Sadly… I concur with most everything you just said… But do feel slighted in that I didn’t get said email…
I have curtailed about 90% of my previous Forum activity, as I used to keep it running on my side monitor most of the day… and now I just flip over there once or twice a day, and I think I have posted like twice in the past week or so.
I agree with everything you said. But I’d give a 5 or 6. Xojo still is the best tool to use.
I’ve also noticed that the first job of the MVPs was to do even more police-ing on the forum. I never liked the blockwart type. Leo gives “block warden” as translation or “hall monitor”.
For the net promotor score everything below 9 is bad, by the way. I really wonder what numbers they get. On the other side in my old company they did those stupid questionnaires, and always got good results.
For what it’s worth @DaveS, I didn’t get an invite either.
I’m torn when it comes to recommending Xojo or not. Fundamentally it’s a good product which is why I persevere with it. Where I hit barriers is with the final 5% of a project. The advanced language concepts, etc. This is where Xojo falls down and where Xojo Inc seems reluctant to focus on. As a language nerd that is a pain point for me.
I thinks it’s disingenuous of Xojo Inc to even be selling iOS compilation at this point as it’s just awful. That in particular frustrates me as I really want to take my Xojo skills to work with iOS but the software is just not up to scratch. Perhaps this will change with API 2.0 and Interops but they have both been a long time coming and there’s no sign of them yet.
“Xojo for iOS” is barely at the level of a “toy”. The fact that they “require” the use of AutoLayout, “require” massive declares to do simple things, and “require” stupid workarounds for tasks that iOS already has (see forum posts about BASE64 for a prime example). This very thing is what prompted me to write all that Swift you have been seeing :). And based on their lame iOS implementation. I hold ZERO hope that Android will be any better.
As Garry said, fails on the last 5%… and to me that means “requiring” 3rd party tools (apps/scripts) to prepare a compiled app for deployment
and finally Xojo’s seemingly incessant need to create change for changes sake (API2). Now I have no problem with a company improving the product. but in this case (my opinion) API2 should have been 99.9% “under the hood”… improve what/how the existing syntax did things… ADD new features… but the name changes… that was a killer for me.
So all that being said. I am forgoing xplat, and focusing more on iOS and macOS using Swift. and invite anyone with questions to contact me. Please note… I am NOT an expert, and have my own methods (sometimes unorthodox) for doing things… But perhaps we can learn / teach together
I’d give it a 6 for suitability for getting things done. But I can no longer recommend it to others as it is getting worse and I think Geoff is completely ruining what was a good product (for example the self-loathing of being BASIC that I mentioned: everyone knows BASIC, nobody knows Xojo. Classical own goal). Their basic problem is the quality of the product at every level (the blame for that goes mostly to the Rapid Release Model), and the poor execution of the transition (into what exactly?) that they are attempting, and I”ve become quite doubtful of their long-term prospects.
A user asked for a critical thread to be closed and a Xojo employee promptly obliged. I send a sarcastic “Well done!” pm to each so the poor things felt harrassed by me. Which together with the increasing suppression of critical threads goes to show how “thin skinned” they’ve become at Xojo, and you have to ask yourself why that would be. Hint: engineering staff levels.
I was away from software development for 5+ years, just got back around 5 months ago. Of course my first thought was download the latest version of Xojo and start coding.
I’m trying to do only web related development and with all the things I’ve read now I’m wondering if I should just drop Xojo and sharpen my javascript skills and move to Quasar completely.
I was surprised to find out Norm is no longer with Xojo, he is one of the nicest and helpful persons I’ve found on the web ( Xojo and elswhere).
To stay on topic on this thread, I have been wondering for the last week if I made the right decision to come back to Xojo, so no, at this point in time I would not recommend it if I can’t even convince myself that I made the right choice.
Welcome @HMARROQUINC. We were all surprised when @npalardy was let go from Xojo and I concur he is one of the the most helpful community members there is.
Xojo Web is not worth your time at the moment. Web 2.0 sounds very promising and I’m looking forwards to it but I’m not expecting a decent general release until the autumn.
I think Xojo is still a great tool for macOS apps and command line tools.
We all have a crush on Xojo. But instead of playing to it‘s strength (an object-oriented cross-platform BASIC) they try to hide the heritage and be more like C or Java. So they waste a lot of time on poorly implemented „new features“ (new API, API 2) instead of fixing what is broken (Windows, iOS, Web). Web 2.0 sounds nice, but how long until it falls behind again? In my view Xojo doesn‘t have the engineering power to develop and maintain all these targets and have become sales driven instead of product driven (let‘s not mention quality driven) with all the consequences this brings.
I have two projects which are pretty far along in Xojo, so I‘ll finish them in Xojo. But I‘m already planning to rewrite them in something else (most likely Swift for Mac & iOS & potentially Linux & Windows).
I can see Geoff’s argument that Android is important for Xojo’s growth. What I think Xojo Inc is failing to grasp is that if people come along and evaluate Xojo to use with Android they don’t have to look very far to see how it handled (and continues to handle) iOS. If I was a potential newcomer and I saw the shambles that is Xojo’s iOS implementation, I’d run a mile.
As far as I know they hired Joe Strout for 6 months to create Xojo for iOS, and that was pretty much it. Bye Joe, throw it on the market, don‘t put any more resources in.
When you look at what some Xojo users did (eg https://github.com/kingj5/iOSKit) then you have to wonder why Xojo did not use the obvious enthusiasm and get the developers involved. THAT would have been an MVP project worthy of the name.
I understand all the resentment and see many things in the same way. On this particular point, I do not agree. With Jeremie Leroy, they have brought a proven, successful iOS MVP to their team. I believe and hope that Jeremie will be an essential part of the porting of Xojo iOS to API 2.0.
I unfortunatly do not feel that will ever be the case. Not to diminish the knowledge that Jeremy has… But I do not think he has the background to contribute to the necessary implemention of that knowledge into the Xojo compiler.
Not to mention that it is also my opinion that Geoff’s ego is the major factor in how Xojo is being handled… If HIS company doesn’t do it, he seems to want no part of it. Plus he seems to think that just makeing changes in the syntax are all it take to improve the product. They wasted the better part of a year on 2019r2, and then argued with the customer base for months attempting to justify what was done.
Many years ago Web was important for Xojo’s growth
Then iOS
Then Cloud
Now Android
Doing all these things only marginally well might get a lot of air time and mind space but people very quickly figure out whether its real or just marketing talk
And, as so many seem to have determined, its marketing and the proof behind the marketing isnt there
Which together with the increasing suppression of critical threads goes to show how “thin skinned” they’ve become at Xojo, and you have to ask yourself why that would be. Hint: engineering staff levels.