Out of the box its dead simple & nice
Download. Install. Go
And that IS very nice
I wish a lot more dev tools were that way
I know many open source tools like to leave all the choices to the user but when you’re just getting started with a tool thats a mountain to climb before Hello World ever gets written
Xcode and MS now defunct VS for Mac were pretty good in terms of “download install use”
Rider from Jetbrains has been pretty good for that using C#
But once you get past that the bugs in Xojo will start to show
Maybe not day 1 or 2 but eventually they do
I have to admit that in VS for Mac and C# I have yet to encounter that
I am really disappointed with Xojo overall, if I didn’t need to build UB console apps I wouldn’t have renewed recently.
I did find an alternative way of building command line apps, that could use the same libraries from the main executable, while this worked from my main application, calling this helper from Xojo just froze Xojo.
I feel Xojo should spend more time focusing on the core of the product to make it as dependable, reliable, optimized and bloat free as possible, instead they seem to be trying to compete with their 3rd party vendors, charting, code signing etc.
I really like SwiftUI, but I have to say the bug situation there is also bad (mainly for Mac), lots of things that just don’t work right. For most of the bugs you end falling back into AppKit to solve.
I don’t use SwiftUI as even Apple has indicated there are still things “not there yet”, but I am curious as to what bugs you have found, that caused you to make the statement that you did.
in fact he compares Xojo with everything in the Full-Stack Alley:
Somehow i missed it, when does a “Home-Software” start to be “professional” and has to run flawlessly without bugs? Does MS Windows count in the same category? I mean it’s full of annoying bugs.
You know I am an old fart. To me modern Windows has more in common with the AOL software from the 90ies but this is another story.
TBH this is best practice for every programming langauge and web application server. You do not really want your Django, PHP, Java-WAR - whatever you use - fully exposed on the internet.
TextEditing is broken on Ventura and Sonoma, under common UI layouts, the cursor in the text field automagically jumps to the end of the field, so if you try to edit some text by inserting text, it gets appended at the end instead.
Yet if you wrap an AppKit control, it works as expected, but then I found another bug whereby changing the layout caused the AppKit control to be become disconnected from the SwiftUI view, Apple gave me a workaround for the later, but the first issue they just asked me to confirm if it still happens with Sequoia.
Don’t get me wrong, I really do like SwiftUI, especially the concept.
I feel like when they talk about “citizen devs” they may not know what they are talking about. Gartner has the following taxonomy:
Citizen developers using no code platforms
Citizen developers using low code platforms
Professional developers supporting business needs with low/pro code
Professional developers building core enterprise systems with pro code
I don’t entirely agree with this and prefer the distinction between end-user developers and professional developers that has a long history in the research community, so we actually know a lot about them. There are also nuanced categories like internal tools developers, research software engineers, data scientists, data engineers, devops engineers, and so on.
Another problem here is that Xojo is definitely not no code and arguably not even low code. To your point, a tool that is low- or no-code would make it very hard for a developer to workaround a bug in that tool. My takeaway is that there isn’t really any scenario in which a lot of bugs is something that can just be ignored; you’re just throwing away customers. And it’s not just about the bugs, as we all know and your GPT questions showed – arbitrarily changing APIs is a total killer for end-user developers because, what they really want is simplicity – software development is a means to an end and just something that is standing between them and what they really want to be doing. Having to learn a new API, or stop and deal with bugs all the time, just gets in the way. At least, that was my (terminal) experience.
I know; that was the “they” I was referring to, but it’s also common elsewhere, or was – I feel like I’ve seen less of it recently. You mostly see it around no/low-code, which, again, Xojo really isn’t, IMHO.
Main focus are not pro Developers cause they are not hitting that often the Borders
Bugfixing is needed when too many users hitting the borders
Control instrument is not Product Support and Development but Marketing
Critical voices have to be silenced for protecting the Marketing Model
CoolAid Drinkers are more important than facts
Working with this mixture makes it interesting for pro users. They have to decide (and really have to, there is no you can decide) to use it with all the restrictions or to switch to another language. This collection of problems can’t be fixed within staying in the marketing position they use for selling their product. It is for me no question: it is legal and not forbidden. Speaking about the moral behind: we can speak about. For a product with this capabilities and the intent of use it is no problem. Use by hobbyists and non pro developer. Internal applications, small mobile apps and Webapps for small amount of concurrent users. I can’t see anything against their way. But it is not the way a professional user can go. Because somebody with a product in the market needs to use the right tool to be able to maintain his product at the end for more than a decade. I have a few which are two decades in use by customers. Using Xojo for this would kill me. It is not possible. That’s one of the differences.
And maintaining a product over such long times needs also the reliability of the vendor. We do not have this here. And there is the problem behind. A pro using it will hit the borders, will find the bugs inside the product, will be in the need for bug fixings.
This circuit will be always the same. There is no way to change this. In no wise. If and when you want to develop in a professional wise you need the right tool to get your Job done. And this is not really possible with Xojo. And it is also not wanted by the vendor itself. While Xojo has its capabilities and others it has not they will probably say: okay, use it like it is.
