Data forensics. If law enforcement seizes your phone or computer they’ll image it and use software like ours to find all the interesting bits. OS’s and apps are always changing so our software is always changing. 
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Lets just say if it doesnt include
- changes so they create fewer bugs from the outset
test driven design ? more unit tests ? more code reviews ?
- just count how many bug in recent releases were from NEW desktop web
and mobile controls - changes so they release fewer bugs
more QA people ? more automated testing ?
most everything else is just hand waving
We’re going to do better. We promise !
and this time we really mean it !
or something
TBH I’m tired of “wait and see”
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Totally understandable. The developer retreat will be in a little more than two weeks. That’s very soon 
Unless they make real changes to their process I am not expecting much. Adding another QA person might make some difference. What will really make the difference is adding developers, enforcing code reviews, and thinking through changes before starting to implement them. All of these things will slow development down but I think we’re all in agreement that better plans equals better code and decent code reviews equals better code. Better code will result in less bugs found by users.
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Its so much easier to change plans on paper BEFORE code is written
Talking through a design is SO helpful
As is getting many many more stake holders involved in the process BEFORE its to the point “oh we already wrote that code so we cant throw that out”
Try things. Try crazy things. Throw out a lot of it.
Then do it right once a good plan is settled on
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One word that covers it is “discipline” with respect to development. It is obviously lacking.
-karen
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Xojo needs to be a professional company when it comes to their practices regardless of what user types they target
That means adopting professional best practices for testing, coding, code reviews, etc etc etc
To the level of NASA ? Probably not
But there’s room for improvement
A good testing and management plan should see the average # of bugs in each release go down as their internal processes for development get better, devs get more experienced, etc
I’m not sure we see such a result
But do they really? The same could be said of Apple, yet they still rake in billions every year. If Xojo is making enough money with their current workflow, why would they change?
In all honesty, maybe Xojo is better off without enthusiasts, not just because enthusiasts are harder to please (wanting different things to the company’s priorities), but maybe there really is only a small number, that the loss of 'em has hardly affected their income?
Sad for us enthusiasts.
Short-term possibly true, long-term definitely not. You just have to think of all the open-source projects that went belly up, or the new users appearing on TOF, asking a question, getting no or even worse wrong answers, and disappearing again … to see where enthusiasts make a massive difference.
For sure it affects the reputation and perceived quality for individual developers looking to get into programming, but maybe that’s not who Xojo’s target audience is.
Maybe their target audience is markets you and I don’t see, which are not influenced by enthusiasts or even need enthusiasts assistance from the forum? Maybe education, maybe corporations that need simplified apps for a mixed desktop environment, in which web apps won’t cut it?
Its hard to see the latter as I’m pretty sure Electron is eating Xojo’s lunch, even though it appears technically inferior.
I don’t know, but I certainly don’t get the feeling that Xojo values enthusiasts, so maybe they don’t need us anymore?
yes well, in 2020 i reviewed other options as xojo, if i had found one i’ll be using it. sure electron looks nice, and i hope we will make a desktop front end app, but right now xojo is faster dev. i’ve nodejs coding a bit on backend, and i bet making a xojo front end app is x10 time fatser on xojo.
there is no alternative as xojo mac/win
Hard to tell. I met Geoff and his team two times at Monkeybread-Software-Xojo-conferences in Germany and they seemed very interested in the concerns of the developers. Also they organize the XDCs and soon the „Developer Retreat“ which (i presume) also are attended exclusively by enthusiasts.
I also believe that the professionals are probably the easiest group of users to satisfy. They don’t want new features all the time, they just want what’s already there to work correctly and be well maintained. If they get that, they can be very generous when it comes to buying licenses.
Besides the Xojo blog who else is writing about Xojo on a regular basis? Beside Norman, Thom, and Anthony I don’t see any out there. When I was blogging about Xojo I fielded a ton of questions from the community. Obviously I do not get those questions now. Who is fielding those questions now? Anyone? I just don’t see any enthusiasts out there and that’s a huge problem for a developer product as they’re the ones that drum up interest and get search hits and drive some business.
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The word of mouth train has gone off the rails
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It was becasuse of you I ended using Xojo 
When looking for a tool, the enthusiasts are the ones closing the deal, The alwaysbusycorner, the BKeeneyBriefs were what convicce me to use the tool, even when it had many shorcomings.
Xojo not caring for their enthusiasts, it is just another DUMB move in the pile of bad decisions.
Exactly! They need to fix bugs above all other things. An extended Bug bash for example. But I dont know in what fantasy world they live, you tell them they need to fix bugs and they get offended 
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Xojo is clear about how they want communication to be organised: members of the community approach the MVPs with their concerns, wishes, complaints and MVPs funnel this information to Xojo. The concept has a few shortcomings and the potential to put MVPs in a hot bath when tasked to provide Xojo with challenging demands and criticism. It has the advantage of being the official way of providing Xojo with community feedback.
This is my take:
The documentation (which is part of the product and paid-for) is in a deplorable state. Improvement is urgently required for the good of customers and Xojo.
The IDE suffers from poor product quality. Define KPIs that are based on measurable parameters that can also be tracked by members of the community. Transparency is king.
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The IDE suffers from a concept which is two decades old. It needs to be renewed. Also the Code completion engine has to be renewed. Comparing of Xojo IDE with Netbeans or IntelliJIdea/Clion and so on shows where it stands at the moment.
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The ones thats there I would say needs to be completely thrown out and rewritten using the same concepts that a compiler would use to know what’s in scope when, what’s a method, class, property, constant etc
That it doesnt do this is why autocomplete makes suggestions that the compiler eventually rejects
There are other issues with it as well - which I suspect lead to renaming controls DesktopXXXX, MobileXXXX, and so on
Take a look at their bug reporting system
The most popular items are from “enthusiasts” - regardless of whether they are feature requests or bugs
I’d say thats one place where enthusiasts are a lot of help - testing debugging etc
Xojo ignores them at their own peril
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The compiler is an intermediate compiler. Therefore the code completion isn’t available like for example in netbeans or Clio, intellij or visual studio. It’s a shitty concept. Writing an own real compiler which uses the full power of llvm would give exactly this functionality back to the ide. Hand woven completions without compiler check behind are never hitting the context like needed: crap