Hi all,
I find this a fascinating discussion, while some conclusions, in my opinion, are built on quick sand. But I admit, my knowledge is too limited to judge over that.
My question is: how is it possible that in the discussed situation Xojo is in, they are still in business?
Despite all shortcomings –which other tools also have– there is still a market for Xojo. Xojo is a very easy to use environment which people with limited development knowledge can use to bring their ideas to life.
That’s true and if you use it for what it can do out of the box it works. But not more
Well, we (decade long professional users, some of us built their business with and around xojo, I am for 25 years in business, 13 of them with xojo) are left behind with lame excuses, breaking changes and missing love in so many parts of xojo, most junior users may not have come in touch with yet. As we are aware of other development platforms and languages, even the older ones like PowerBASIC, we see the direction xojo is heading.
Like a heavy warship, full loaded with legacy cargo, traditions and supporters it will continue to move for awhile until it finally implodes or silently sinks. Not today, not tomorrow but someday within a timeframe of let’s say 5-7 years.
We do not know the numbers of Xojo Inc. but based on the numbers of developers (e.g. no compiler dev anymore) their sales and revenues are shrinking. Regarding to the title of this topic, advanced xojo staff seems to stay away from their own forums.
Patriots waiting for the Android release 
Jeannot that was mean and coming soon. 
And let a technical documentation writer instead of doing it…
I’m not even sure about that. Once upon a time there was a paying Jeannot who looked at iOS, but it wasn’t interesting because his customer at the time really wanted Android. He wanted iOS for himself, but knew his staff were using Android too. My answer back then to my customer: “If I’ve learned one thing, I’m careful about making announcements, but I can tell you that the manufacturer is already working on the solution”. No one thought then that we were going to be talking about almost a decade. My answer to myself: why the heck iOS? We are still missing so much in Desktop …
And I didn’t mean “patriotic” in a political sense, but I am of the opinion that Xojo always had critical and demanding customers, but those were the same people who knew exactly that their dollars also make the developments possible. These are dream customers for every company. And they’re slowly dying away, remaining loyal almost forever, but when this substructure crumbles, then we’re playing with dominoes …
It is like it is always in environments like that: it ends sometimes up with the customers. We will not have any chance to change that and we will not have any chance to discuss that with the company: they decide how and what. And while they decided that they got caught in this situation. There is no coming out if you ask me. A bad situation even for the company and also for the customers.
Ios, Android, Desktop and Web are targets they could get managed. But what they could not get managed is the technology stack around and that makes it really complex. Now we are in the situation that we have a Xojo with targets but without a really running System on all places. Where ever you look you find: hard coded Bugs inside. Using it is dangerous for projects you may need to use for long time.
And so I am again at the same point. When writing a project in my case it is not for a year to two but for long time use. Long time means: a decade. And for that time my project has to be secure that I can update it and write further and so on. If I am not looking on it I will have in three years a project I can’t maintain anymore and I have to rewrite. Exactly what was happened to me with my Xojo Web 1.0 Project when they deprecated. And that would be the situation also for Desktop in five years. A nightmare.
To get out of this kind of nightmare there is for me only one chance: get out of this infrastructure. Take another one. Make another choice. But that is sad. The Idea behind Xojo is still good. But the product is still a problem.
Thank you all for your genuine replies, which I do appreciate. These where indeed the answers I was asking for.
I need to write a bookkeeping application for our own business (startup). As mentioned here, it needs to live longer than a few years. The application itself is nothing too complex, just the regular transactions and results.
I am looking direction Python because it is multi-platform and relatively easy to learn.
Any other ideas about solutions which are not too expensive and complicated?
Thank you for your input, which is appreciated.
“Not too complex” and “book-keeping” are usually not best friends ;-).
Are you acting from a specific country where no “standard” solution exist? If that solution is not perfect, you might be able to add your own particular stuff via interfaces and avoid re-inventing the wheel. Bookkeeping usually falls sooner or later under some form of regulations, and in those areas it is probably hard to beat the pros of Java (which isn’t complex to learn either): documentation, support, sustainability.
From my own experience I would not use the green company for dealing with finance data due to their math “suprises”, that’s for sure .
Edited some typos.
Thank you, Jeannot, for your reply. We are registered in Botswana (Africa).
We do not use a standard application because we want to bring everything together in one application. This means offers, invoices, time-management and bookkeeping all in one. We looked at Quickbooks, Exact and some others. But none of them really do what we want them to do.
As time goes by and other activities are added, we want to grow our application with our business.
Let’s solely pick “time-management”. We are using https://toggl.com/ for years. Still cheaper by far than if we had tried to develop all the functionality in-house. They have a great API, so does our helpdesk software etc.
IMHO it is better to invest into exchanging and enriching those datastreams for final booking in an accounting system than trying to re-develop everything(!) from scratch.
I may be late at the game, but here’s my perception of Xojo’s situation:
Coming from the low-code end of sw development, I was looking for a dev platform were I am less constrained by what the vendor makes available in the IDE and the underlying (scripting) language.
At first glance, Xojo looked like a good solution. Coding for a couple of month in Xojo, I learned that it provides some features the low-code platform did not but also became aware that some features the low-code platform provides are not available out of the box in Xojo and won’t be any time soon. If I wanted to implement them in Xojo, it would be a plethora of declares, eating up too much of my time.
Considering also the risk of investing in a code base that depends on a very small vendor that does very obviously not follow good development practise and who rather relies on marketing storytelling, I decided not to invest in Xojo and scrap it right away.
The concept of Xojo is great, but the current product development policy of the vendor is not inspiring confidence in the Xojo product and I doubt that with dwindling resources a reversal of course is even possible. The ‘Xojo is adequately staffed’ statement has a place in the hall of shame.
This describes how many people who have used it for a long time feel
And why they are seeking alternatives
I suspect many are in a similar situation as I am:
But, it also became clear to me that all of the things we’re talking about here are not good signs for Xojo. So, I’ve been exploring other options, while continuing to use Xojo for day-to-day needs. I was hoping to have moved over to a new solution by now, but I’m not fully committed to anything. That said, when it comes time to renew my Xojo license shortly, I will not. I’ll continue to use whatever the last version is until I can’t, or I transition to something else, or Xojo delivers something worth paying for. I’m completely disinterested in iOS or Android, and the first things I have any real interest in on the current roadmap are 6 and 7 on the list. If I’m still around with Xojo when those show up, I’ll relook at it.
I expect others like me will be the next group (after the “pros”) to leave, and it’s hard to tell, but I’d guess that group represents the largest segment of the business (I’d be interest to if anyone has any deeper insights into that). That would make the next few years especially telling as those licenses expire.
why shouldn’t they be in business? The product has problems. They have a small team, not too much cost overlay and they do their business. So of coarse they can be in business. But there is a point that is not anymore so. Until that point: they have all time of the world. And possibly: they get to the point that the problems are ending. Or making much more business with new customers. Or having more Customers in low profile applications. All of that is possible and normal. That is nothing where I would have to say: oh that will not work. Why shouldn’t it.
It is not a question If or if not in business. It is a question for the users what they loose or not loose using a tool which ever it is. Loosing money can be hurting and often you may get that point even years later. And often it is too late to get outa then. Because the product has a hard development curve, the product is running barely but running and so on.
All of that would result in: stay in business with it and try to hold it running until the problems are solved. That is for me the same. But I have not such an amount of stuffs with Bugs and problems using Java. I have nearly none of them. Exactly that is my point. When using Java I don’t have to deal with all of this difficulties and Bugs. I can program and use the language and its language constructs, the ecosystem and I can rely on Code I can maintain even in ten years.
I wouldn’t invent the wheel again… check tryton.org or dolibarr.org
There are a number of people where Xojo works for them and they feel it is better to learn “2.0 All The Things” instead of a new language. I mean technically, it should be easier and safer. Some commenters on TOF even said, they’re going to continue supporting Xojo even if they disagree with the current direction, because they don’t want Xojo to go out of business.
However I wouldn’t call that growth and I don’t believe Xojo can grow until they address the concerns of those of us who’re pushing the product. The reason being is that we’re often the ones who do unpaid promotion and build resources to help others. If Xojo continues to neglect the limitations within the product and bugs, new comers will run into the same issues and a portion of those will also end up leaving, rinse and repeat.
If you want to know what Xojo may look like in the future, I suggest you take a look at Filemaker. At one point Filemaker was very well known and used in the Mac industry, they still exist 30 years later, just.
Thank you all for your replies. For bookkeeping, Tryton seems a good candidate.
Filemaker was an excellent database application, and I used it too. However, I could no longer justify the price they where asking, together with the limitations. That is the reason I choose for RealStudio at the time.
I drank the RealBasic / Xojo Kool-aid. I was excited about this cross platform development software. For history, I was one of the developers who was burned by Microsoft with DLL Hell, the great COM debacle, and what I suspect was a turnover in senior management. Xojo has followed their game plan. They don’t give a dookie about developers (who made them), and they respond to complaint and critique like Kim Jong-un. In some cases in a spectacular and frosty way. Their last two bites at my apple were asking me to pay full price on a sale that I missed by two days, and then discovering that none of my previous code written in Xojo would even compile in their “new” version. They are doomed, for reasons that you all have mentioned, but no one will notice, for reasons that you also mention. For today, role up your sleeves, put hands on your keyboard and lay down some bitchin’ code. F Xojo.