a few reasons but they all come down to process
same reason that with the most current release there are changes made between the last beta build & what got released that are undocumented - no bug report or anything
We can just put this one in there quick !
Bad process
They got beat up for this before I worked there
They got beat up for this when I worked there
They still get beat up for it
An unwillingness to change how they do what they do is part of the problem
Much of my livelihood comes through Xojo, but scaring away customers or the state/progress of Xojo doesn’t concern me much because I already decided to not continue with newer versions. I let my subscription expire and will stay with pre-DesktopControls versions of Xojo unless and until they get their sh*t together. They have a very proven track record of breaking more things than they fix, so why keep shooting myself in the foot?
When speaking of API 2, you really need to clarify whether you’re talking about the first iteration or the second - which the new desktop controls ushered in. I’ve already spent more time than I can recoop on refactoring code to API-2a. I’m not about to do it all again for API-2b/new desktop controls. Especially since it will take a hell of a lot more work to refactor existing projects to the new controls. And all that work will be rewarded with encountering new (and probably more) bugs than I had to deal with before.
And don’t fall for their excuse of “you don’t have to refactor all your projects - they’ll still work in new versions of Xojo”. What they leave out is you get no help from the IDE (and its documentation) if you do that. Autocomplete, syntax help, direct help lookup on an item - all either cease to work or at best is wonky.
But if you do decide to only refactor some projects (or start new ones) in the latest Xojo version, then you have to keep switching mindsets every time you go to work on a project that uses a different API.
All of this adds up to the frustration that’s been voluminously expressed and has caused many pros (seasoned developers) to leave. So, no, there is no “finding peace” with it - there is only working harder/longer to keep my clients happy to continue my livelihood.
Many valid points in your post. But the quote above might be the big difference. I assume MS had a better overview of critical issues for the masses. In Xojo: Big numbers not working properly, date controls or currency not working properly in different locales are critical issues on a different level, at least I never encountered similar issues with VB. Or take Web2: how long did it take to solve the FileUploader issues? Every other tool would fix that with a patch, as soon as possible.
Nevertheless MS took ultimately the right consequences and stopped VB and started from scratch. Xojo reacted differently: good enough for the masses, pros are not our target audience.
According to Geoff, no one (including himself) is reading INN. So INN will not destroy the product. And INN will not help either in improving it.
Flames and vitriols exist everywhere. Fight between VSC and jetbrains’ IDEs, between nodeJS and go, between angular and react, Java and Non-Java languages, etc. but those all come down to individual taste, but none of those tools has nearly as many severe bugs and more importantly none is hiding those weaknesses on purpose. For legal reasons I am not saying that Xojo does, but everyone should follow the many posts showing how they are auto-archiving bugs, etc. and build up their own opinion.
Exactly!
Or to change to another Programming language with known API strangeness like Java. That is one Point what I really enjoy over the years now. No big changes. And if: enough times and enough compiler warnings that this will be deprecated and still after: long time it is deprecated warning but working until it is out of the API gives you security that your Software will run long term and that you can maintain the needed changes with a few years of time knowing that it comes and how to come around. With Xojo this times are shorter. Next Version comes: API changed. Old one away.
This 100%. I decided to get a full-time job and leave consulting entirely. Down to my last client and I’m delivering that bad news at the end of the week. My currently employer is retraining 8 Xojo developers to be Golang developers and we’ll spend a few years moving our code out of Xojo. That’s a lot of dough to spend but then that’s how the company (and us Xojo developers) feel about the future of the product.
In many circumstances you can… It just takes more time and requires learning an alternative programming language… Ha