Will likely be CodeIgniter framework and Sencha Ext JS combo - most used to that and will be quickest possible solution. This is for a county school so not too many hours can be charged.
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I’ve been out of the Xojo world for a few years, so I don’t know about half the “bad stuff” you guys are talking about here. I just came back to it because I want a couple utilities that don’t exist.
My day job for the last five is coding web apps (mainly in C#) – I love Blazor, but I dislike web apps. I like desktop apps. So jumped back to Xojo mainly because the IDE spoiled me.
Every other IDE I’ve used is really similar to what I used when I started back in the 80s – long scrolly screens of code. I don’t want to see ANY line of code that’s not necessary for my specific app. We have rocket ships landing themselves on barges in the ocean, and we still (mostly) code like it’s 1990 and that frustrates me. Xojo is about the only cross-platform thing that’s different.
Jumping back into Xojo after about a 5 year absence reminds me of how much I enjoy it. But now I’m wondering about big ol’ potholes up ahead that I just can’t see yet? Because you guys must have some reason for ditching it.
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This was one thing I had difficultly with when first moving to Swift and Xcode, but it’s been a minute and changing how I do things doesn’t feel like a loss any more.
I ditched it because of the CEO. He felt that forcing developers to re-write apps for no tangible benefit was what we wanted over feature requests and bug fixes. I even tried to get them to take me on just to fix their broken Mac framework and to modernize it. In my final days the CEO told me that they don’t need to take me on as everything is the way it should be. I knew at that point, staying with Xojo was just going to piss me off on a daily basis, knowing it could be a lot better, but the CEO’s arrogance is what is killing it.
I wouldn’t say that Apple is much better, in some respects they’re worse because they have a lot more resources and still don’t take the Mac seriously, but Apple are slowly improving, Xojo seems stuck in the 1990s.
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I was a Xojo consultant for 20+ years and, if you remember, I was a pretty vocal promotor of the product. My breaking point was during the initial API2 rollout the CEO told me that my (and other Xojo developers in the pre-release list) concerns about API2 were unfounded because, “we weren’t their target audience”. I wrote a lengthy blog post titled something like, “If I’m not their audience then who is?” I’m sure the internet wayback machine still has a copy of it if you’re interested.
I took on a full-time gig, still working with Xojo but we’re steadily moving away from it to Go and moving away from a traditional desktop app to web services. Go is a considerably better language and environment for things like that. Go’s garbage collection, speed, and excellent concurrency options are vastly superior to Xojo.
After 3 years of working with Go and VSCode I can say you get used to whatever environment you choose. Using the Xojo IDE now I know that it’s a bloated pig in need of serious overhaul. I like knowing the compiler errors as soon as I type them. Autocomplete that actually works. Etc., Etc. Go has a ton of tooling options that tend to be command line but they work well once you figure them out. The Xojo community is tiny in comparison to pretty much everything else.
If Xojo still works for you that’s great. Sounds like you have a personal use case for it. But ask yourself this question: Do you want to write your utilities in Xojo now and then in 5 years rewrite them in another language? If you don’t care then it doesn’t matter. If that is a concern you should consider what languages can do what you want and start learning one.
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I was a big Xojo koolaide drinker. Loved it. I created shareware Desktop apps for years and never had to contact support or even go on the forums. I also use(d) FileMaker a lot but it got expensive and thought that Xojo could help me replace FileMaker.
I used Web 1.0 so the users could access the database anywhere. Started off great. But then I started running into bugs that I was pretty sure were not mine. But trying to get bugs fixed was next to impossible. I tried upvoting and all that but nope. Then I learned that you have to lobby Geoff. Geoff would hear you out but still I couldn’t get stuff fixed. I thought about joining Pro+ for $2k, but after asking questions about it there wasn’t any guarantee or best effort or similar. Just we’ll look at it but may or may not fix it.
Then Geoff announced Web 2.0 that was discsussed over and over and when it finally shipped there was no upgrade path other than recoding and once you recode the Web 2.0 had new bugs.
It took me a long ass time to understand that Geoff doesn’t care about “pros”. But I did and moved on to using PHP / MySQL using PHPStorm as the IDE. I’m so much happier now. I haven’t found a bug in PHP yet…
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there are several others that ponder Xojo’s direction
I’ve been moving some clients off of Xojo since
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some have a need for iOS & android device usage and with Xojo Android has only JUST arrived and doesnt support the things they need. Add in that its two completely separate projects to maintain & keep in sync and the attraction of a single project that produces both goes way up
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some need more speed & concurrency for their projects. In C# this is pretty simple to achieve
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some have expressed their own doubts about Xojo’s stability and overall survival as a company based on what they see as a shrinking user base
Personally I’m in much the same boat as Bob
Over the last few years the changes Xojo has made have crushed the market for consultants and so I’m in need of retooling just to stay gainfully employed
A quick check of Xojo’s consulting requests posts shows there are < 10 at this point in the year
And few are for anything more than a few hours of work
Not something to make a living at
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Well, actually that is the trend, and that is how people learn to code. I like xojo the same as you but we are the exception, not the rule.
Thats yet another huge mistake of the CEO, xojo is not only tiny, it is different, it will be hard to get new users, He should have taken more care of existing clients before renaming things to lure new users…
Anyway, Im still using xojo, but Im using xojo 2018 for web (last pro licence) and 2019 for windows (last desktop one).
Api2 was not only a huge mistake, it was many steps backwards. Looks like this last 5 years have been bug fixing all the halfbaked api2, web2 and the not so well planed new features.
Is this 2024 r2 when Web2 feels like feature complete and with a first release quality. It feels weird that xojo made a huge anouncement as a “new” awesome feature the control arrays in web2 
First time after 5 years that a release could be worth an upgrade (at least for windows and web).
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NOP, looks like they removed some features from the 2024r2 Milestone AFTER the actual release 
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I used to be a FileMaker developer but got bitten by the vendor’s hubris that resulted in a technically outdated product, beyond recovery.
Looking for a replacement I tried Xojo, even bought a license. That was only to discover that Xojo’s management is equally hubristic and doesn’t care about customers (does care to grab customer’s dollars, though). Xojo’s handling of bug reports and the absence of a quality management system is appalling. All is done cowboy style. This and the staggering number of unfixed bugs and their top management’s attitude made me leave faster than I arrived.
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If I may offer my humble take on this as well, I believe I have a different experience than a lot of folks here.
I’ve used Xojo on and off throughout the years going back to about 2011. I initially liked it because it was similar to VB6 and a lot of my legacy code was easy to port over and was suddenly multiplatform.
Over the next few years I made a few desktop apps in Xojo (API 1.0) but then my focus shifted away from Xojo for a while (no fault of Xojo’s, just the twists and turns of life), so I missed all the drama of the API 1 to 2 switchover.
When I came back to the language we were well into the reign of API 2. As I hadn’t used Xojo in a few years I needed to brush up a lot on the language and while it was different than I remembered it, I genuinely appreciated many of the changes that were made for the new API. It is certainly NOT the same Xojo that I started off on so many years ago, but I don’t mind the changes. In fact, at this point I prefer the API 2 approach to API 1, using methods as children of the base framework classes feels more logical to me than needing to remember arbitrary framework method names.
At the same time, I totally understand the frustration coming from those who built a career around the original iteration of the language and wholeheartedly acknowledge that just because I’m enjoying API 2 doesn’t make anyone else’s opinion any less valid. Some of the key members of the Xojo community, MVPs and power users really should have been given some more weight in the discussion. It’s yet another unfortunate reminder that no company is your friend and you can’t have all your eggs in one basket for how you earn your living (please don’t misconstrue that as me placing any sort of fault at the feet of the consultants who saw their business dry up - it’s just a general observation after working across several different industries including this one).
It’s worth mentioning that Xojo’s disregard of the power users’ opinions seems to have had the same effect as when Microsoft gave too much regard to the opinions of the Visual Basic power users, in the latter case we ended up with VB.Net which was just as reviled by Classic VB programmers as Xojo API 2.0 seems to be to 1.0 users. Funny how the opposite action can end up with a similar result.
In any case, I’m probably part of the minority on this site that has come to prefer API 2 to API 1. As for the conversation about bugs and slow fixes, I concede that’s undoubtedly problematic. I think perhaps I returned to Xojo at a good time, after most of the big bugs were fixed and the new framework was approximately at parity with the old one. I also have yet to really dive into Xojo Web so those changes haven’t affected me. I will also concede that just from my cursory attempts at playing with it, Web 1.0 feels a lot more intuitive than the new one and there don’t seem to be a lot of good resources to learn Web 2.0 with deep understanding. If there was a good book that dove into Web 2.0 I would definitely buy it.
Anyway, just wanted to share a perspective that I haven’t seen a lot of around here. I know many will disagree with me, and many were much more disproportionately affected by the changes than I was, often in far worse ways. I truly feel for the folks in this camp. Personally, I will continue to use Xojo because it’s the right tool for many of my projects. That may not always be true, and I’m always re-evaluating.
Cheers
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There is no doubt that Xojo faces a shrinking community. A recent conversation with a current employee confirmed it, discussions with MVPs confirms it and my own sales (which I’d excluded because it’s me) also confirm it.
I’d also like to provide Xojo’s own actions as confirmation, for years we asked for proper concurrency, each time we were either ignored or belittled (you’ll blown your own toes off). Now that we’ve left and moved on to languages where we can do what we want and our toes are intact, Xojo is rushing to implement our requests in the hopes that we might return.
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I don’t think they can be that out of touch with reality. It likely is still about marketing and attracting new users.
- Karen
For all I know about Xojo’s internals (which is basically what Geoff says goes), it could very well be. Just from over hear it sure looks like they’re finally addressing some of the limitations that we’ve spent decades complaining about, and ended up having to use alternative tools to accomplish.
Every once in a while I pop into the forum and answer a post or two, it mainly seems like much of the same, but there’s a lot of unanswered posts. I don’t think they a Mac specialist anymore to help customer out. Certainly not one with extensive App Sandbox experience.
Mind you, if you’re looking to put an app into the Mac App Store, you’re probably not one of Xojo’s target audience anyway.
Just look at MAS app disk access - #21 by Carlo_Rubini - General - Xojo Programming Forum People asking for help, I did. In the past I wrote everything these people needed to do what they wanted, but we all know how that turned out. I’ve left the web page there for people to see what getting in too deep with Xojo can result in.
App Kit 2021 - Building Better Mac Applications
I think you got it wrong. It was not that M$ was trying to accommodate for all developers request in VB6 which lead to VB.NET.
M$ wanted (or should I say that it had and itch) to build something substantially new in the development world for programmers and they managed to get hold of Anders Hejlsberg who was at that time working with then Borland and was dreaming to building a compiler that will be easy to add features to.
So the union between M$ and Anders gave birth to what is M$ .NET. 
Or perhaps they just realised a lot of users left so they have no choice other than finally listening (at least a bit). Not necessarily to call back the ones who left, but for stopping further dissatisfaction.
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I have given up trying to figure/guess what their intentions are.
- The majority of the professional developers which also happened to be the most helpful in the TOF have departed and are most likely not going to return.
- Based on the current quality of TOF posts; sites such as this one; lack of ecosystem it feels unlikely that professional developers are going to consider Xojo a viable tool.
- The price of Xojo for what you get compared to the paid tools I’m aware of and all of the free ones out there.
Just those three things alone leave me scratching my head who Xojo thinks their target audience is. I’m not sure they really know or even care. More and more it seems like Geoff is just trying to milk what he can and play around with coding until he is ready to retire and then abruptly lock up the shop and turn off the lights.
Personally I am thrilled for @thorstenstueker and his consistent advocating of Java. Just like @samRowlands talking about his happiness moving to Swift, I am migrating to Java and having a lot of fun with doing so.
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It costs brain and time but it results in a solid base. At least for me, I am using Java for all of my projects if Web, mobile, Desktop or even command line. As it runs without any problem on all platforms I have fun working with it. And I can build my projects even on Raspberry PI hardware.
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This is a great example:
Rushing stupid new things that are not needed and dont even work while postponing fixes and updates to the painfully obsolete framework.
TLS 1.3 was in the 2024r2 milestone but not in the actual release.
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Slow database connectors are known and also not working ones. It is what it is: not a professional iDE and not a professional language. Things never happened with JAVA.
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