I’ll begin by stating that I am not a professional developer. I’ll add that I don’t have any real need (any longer) for cross platform development tools.
In various jobs over the years I’ve found the need to develop applications and tools to improve efficiency and workflows and did that with Turbo Pascal, RB… now Xojo.
Many of the issues I see being discussed by long time pro users of Xojo aren’t issues that I personally have. Xojo does what I need and it does it quite well. I find its performance to be fast enough and it’s very easy for me to develop what I need quickly. I don’t care that some interface elements aren’t as flexible or modern in appearance as native controls, the bugs I hear griped about aren’t things that I’ve encountered. I don’t care about web, iOS, Android… I don’t have a massive code base that would be affected by a new API…
Not to discount any of those concerns at all – just that Xojo fit’s my needs.
All of that having been said, my fear is for Xojo’s survival. If the exodus of long time users and professionals is as the forums seem to suggest, I wonder if it will be able to survive, even if only to serve users like me.
All of this pushes me (somewhat reluctantly) towards other tools. I say reluctantly because I’m not sure that I have the time to devote to learning another development environment to the same level I have with Xojo.
Not a rant. Not even much of a question. More of a frustrated comment.
Well, it’s a private held company and as long as Geoff (and other share holders) are willing to lend it money, it can’t really go bust.
And I know hundreds of Xojo developers, which will continue to buy licenses for as long as Xojo keeps their apps running over years.
For desktop, the world looks better than for Web currently.
But I expect the Web Stuff gets fixed and next spring we can start moving a few projects over from Web 1 to Web 2.
And basically all Mac developer using Xojo will have to buy updates in fall to get Apple Silicon support as you don’t want to see your app listed as running in emulation on new shiny hardware.
As a privately traded company, Xojo’s accounts are not public so anything we say is pure speculation.
That being said, I suspect they are fine in terms of revenue as, like @MonkeybreadSoftware says they have many many paying customers. My only slight concern about their solvency is their limited number of engineers. They must realise that hiring more devs would improve their resilience and allow them to improve the product quicker yet they haven’t done so. This makes me a little suspicious that they can’t afford to do so.
And with current staff and the loss of Joe and Norman, the promotion of Paul to developer, they have a documentation, evangelist, compiler and an IDE position vacant.
And I don’t like the idea that all do everything as that causes problems with responsibility.
And what happens if one of the people would leave the company?
I agree with the man power shortage. I guess they did hire Javier Menendez but I’m not sure what his area of expertise is. I do worry what happens if Travis or Greg get fed up and leave. Afterall, Joe left quickly and poor Norman was booted out rapidly.
I feel sorry for the Xojo engineers, espacially Greg. He surely worked very hard but the amount of work he had to do was too large. Reading the negative critiques and rants must surely frustrate him. Hiring more engineers would take some pressure from the current stuff and keep them healthy.
Couldn’t agree more. All the engineers are hard working to be honest. It just must be frustrating for them that they are having to carry so much responsibility on their shoulders.
You would be what Xojo terms a “citizen developer”
Someone who writes code to help them do whatever their actual job is
Certainly there is a lack of overlap between roles and responsibilities and so one person leaving can have a large impact. This has happened in every start up that I’ve worked at but usually they move fast enough & grow fast enough that you get to the point there’s a small team of 2 or 3 people that work in each major area and so the loss of one person isnt as devastating.
I dont believe Xojo has gotten to that point even after 20 years of being in business.
Yes, I almost precisely fit that moniker and Xojo has been a nearly ideal tool for me over the years.
I certainly sympathize with those that are impacted by persistent unfixed bugs and changes that effect the maintenance of their large projects. I’ve definitely benefitted from the work of the third party developers who have built resources to extend many of Xojo’s shortcomings (especially @samRowlands’ AppWrapper and Christian Schmidt’s @MonkeybreadSoftware plugins.)
I’ve gained much from the very generous community.
I would hate for all of that to go away (… more than it already has, that is.)
If you write apps for yourself or for your workplace then you are fine with Xojo. But if you write to sell you write for an environment that you do not control and for a market that simply expects a lot of things to be there (eg a recent items menu is not necessary for you, but for a commercial app it is).
The problem with going “Pro” is that inevitably you run into serious bugs … at which point many give up and move to other tools.
Can you imagine what Xojo and it’s community would be with all those Pros still around?
The api changes hit those who write code as products for others - whether its xojo code or plugins
And tools that generate code (like argen) for others to use
I can say, from experience, that it can be frustrating and seemingly “unappreciated”
And that more engineering staff would probably help
I dont see how it could hurt
