Say yes to Xojo

https://www.bkeeneybriefs.com/2019/11/im-not-xojos-target-audience-is-anyone/

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You donā€™t have to use the ā€œforum search toolā€ to search in a forum, it is easier to use google, just add the forum url to limit the search:

enumerations site:forum.xojo.com

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Using google to search the forums DOES work much better - when the posts are public
Unfortunately it doesnt help if thereā€™s something in one of the Testers threads or others that are not public

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Worst: using google to search in the forum adds specifics advertising to your navigations. I stopped using google because of that.

API2: I tried, but I had to read the Language Reference so often that I stopped.

Nota: I use REALbasic, Real Studio, Xojo since may 1998. Go figure.

At last, I do not wrote a line of code sinceā€¦ two months (probably, I really do not recall exactly).

Have you not heard of Adblockersā€

Yes, but I am tired to use workarounds / fear for virus/trohan, etc. (my VirtualBoxā€™s Windows want to download Web Companion by Lavasoftā€¦ and I do not know how to get ride of this, go figure ! 40 years in this business andā€¦).

Thanks for the info.

Have you not heard of annonimous browsing?

Couple of things I have to say about Xojo and why I use it.

  1. As a 30+ year-long Windows programmer, I probably still wouldnā€™t have been able to write a MacOS desktop app without it. It makes all things Mac SO FREAKING EASY.
  2. So much stuff that can be difficult to do in other languages, JUST WORKS. So much stuff Iā€™ve just fiddled around with, not reading any docs, and low and behold, it works.

Contrasted with other environments that I still canā€™t get my head around, even after reading and taking online courses, none of it ā€œjust worksā€ the way it automagically does in Xojo.

So many times Iā€™ve thought, I wonder how this feature works? Click, Drag, drop. Oh. It works. Wow!

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Yep. And then you need a feature that doesnā€™t work. And that has a known bug for years. And you go WTF? Why donā€™t they fix it? Why donā€™t they upgrade the framework?

Basically Xojo is living off their ā€œinheritanceā€ (the things that still work), but instead of doing proper maintenance and upkeep (sockets, movie player, HTML viewer, RTF, etc) they go for risky investments in the hope of landing a big win (iOS, Android) ā€¦ while the family business stagnates and crumbles, and worse, their reputation goes down the drain with it (just look at how many long term users have gone in the last two years - a certain attrition is expected, but what happened lately is unprecedented)

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Iā€™ve yet to see any cross-platform solution that doesnā€™t have itā€™s share of non-working features and bugs, so thatā€™s nothing new. Have a look at Avalonia, UNO, ETO, Lazarus, Delphi, theyā€™re a complete mess. It still amazes me that I can actually create a MacOS Desktop app at all. For me, itā€™s simply WAY too hard with any other tool.

I think if you read Bobā€™s blog post from 2019 he also spent a lot of time looking for a replacement and also found the other offerings seriously deficient

Xojo does a lot of things well

A lot of the angst about the state of Xojo seems to be more ā€œI wish they would ā€¦ā€ kind of gripes but no one saying ā€œOh stay a way from that steaming pile of ā€¦ā€

Well given I only currently have the free Raspberry Pi licence while I evaluate this I have to say Iā€™m pretty impressed. In one week I have built my first Linux program - only a little gui helper tool for my work with an ERP system - but it uses a SQLite database etc. I have to say Iā€™m finding it fairly easy to pick up after some slight confusion over the use of ā€œusing Xojo.Coreā€ and the framework changes.

Early days but Iā€™m enjoying the experience so far.

Hi Mark,

yes there are plenty of great things in the product, Pi I find works very well, more especially now that there is no payable licence for it.

If the limitations of the product never show up then YES to Xojo will always be the case.

having a free compiler to work with Pi is extremely good, but would anyone pay even 99ā‚¬ to licence it, nope, which is why its free, I have to say I have used it when it was paid for and still now as free, its a fully usable implementation for most scenarios and I would recommend it to anyone.

overall the product has a lot to offer, more yes than no, but the no bits start to grind hard after awhile.

Now the giant Microsoft is promissing a new tool, single proyect, single source code, to compile for Android, iOS, Windows, MacOS And linux for Nov. 2021.

I they succed with this simplified multiplatform tool, Xojo will be in a lot of trouble. .Net has TONS of functionality out of the box.

Real studio, Xojo, New framework, api 2, iOS, Android. Lots of rebranding, code changes and half baked targets.

What could Realbasic be if the had put the focus on adding more and better controls and functionality :thinking:

I have read a little about that. I guess we will have to wait and see what MS offers.

I like how Xojo project files are handled by the IDE, granted I have very little experience with Visual Studio I do feel it is a bit complicated to work with.

I was away from programing for a couple of years, when I came back my first instinct was to use Xojo, it was amazing (not in a good way) how little things had change in Xojo, the same controls and functionality that people were expecting years ago are still missing.

I still love the tool and I would be having a much harder time if Xojo was not around.

One thing that my foray into Swift taught me is how much MORE there is ā€¦ itā€™s no wonder Xojo is considered a ā€œtoyā€ language by many.

BUT: while that ā€œtoyā€ only covers maybe 10% of what is there, it covers what 80% of people need.

And plug-ins can extend that to what 90% or more of people need.

The problem for me is that Xojo is not putting enough effort into upkeep and maintenance so that those 10% are excellent, while more and more bits are starting to creak and fall apart (eg sockets: old implementation no longer secure, new replacement unusable due to bugs).

Thatā€™s Maui. Iā€™ve spoken about it before. Donā€™t get me wrong, since my background is .NET, Iā€™d love nothing more than this to become reality. However, MSā€™ track record on this front is pretty poor. Theyā€™ve been touting x-plat for years (and I patiently waited for it to happen) and it never really happened in any sort of cohesive, simple way. I eventually gave up and bought Xojo.
Maui is just the evolution of Xamarin, and Xamarin is a big giant kludge. .NET was never meant to work on other operating systems, so itā€™s constantly trying to piece things together that make it work.
Thereā€™s no plans for a UI designer, and they still havenā€™t gotten anything to work that will create a MacOS desktop UI.
I guess weā€™ll see - In a perfect world, VS would work like Xojo in that I create my UI, add some code, select the platforms and hit build. But of course in C# or VB, with their amazing IDE.
Canā€™t picture it happening, unfortunately.

I have to admit that the recent videos touting Maui still didnt look as easy as Xojo

Danged if I can find them again though
It was a presentation on Channel9 I think for Build

EDIT : I knew I posted it before

Oh, itā€™s hella hard. Tried working with UNO for several days, and itā€™s WAY too much work to make something X-Plat.

Clearly what Xojo did must be near-to impossible (drag/drop, add code, click build) as nobody else seems to be able to come close.

This has got to be the do it all thing we were looking for

https://github.com/angrykoala/chuckscript