IMHO opinion, I don’t think it’s fair to lay the blame for Xojo’s lack of growth squarely at Dana’s feet.
The biggest problem that has and will continue to hinder Xojo’s growth is the lack of focus on growth. Xojo should have put focus on enthusiasts a long time ago, increasing the capabilities of product, improving stability, reducing app sizes and memory usage. This would give Dana far more ammunition for marketing, as well as made Xojo more competitive in the market.
Take for example the recent post on using OpenGL with Xojo, Apple deprecated OpenGL in favor of Metal, which they’re now on version 2 or 3, yet Xojo doesn’t support Metal or whatever the alternatives are on other platforms. If someone is interested in 3D on the Mac, seeing OpenGL is a turn-off as it is a dead end (and broken in some places, but then Metal is also buggy and broken in some places too).
The very reason that traditional Mac development companies are adopting Electron, is not only an illustration on how Xojo dropped the ball (these companies should be using Xojo), but it also illustrates a more widespread problem with the entire 3rd Party Mac development industry, in that Apple is continuing to screw that industry with their favoritism App Store.
it’s not what i meant. Just pointing at the fact that publishing a video titled “Marketing Tips For Developers” by xojo, has the same credibility as a tutorial on “how to listen to your userbase” or “how to make bug free software”
Marketing desitions are probably made by the one who knows best but at the end, it is also the marketing person the one responsible.
Xojo Inc has no intention to grow and this has been laid open (‘Xojo is adequately staffed’). The overall strategic vision and targets are not defined by the director of marketing. If there is no growth strategy, staff cannot implement and execute.
Thanks for pointing this out. So Xojo says they have customers all over the world and these customers have different cultural backgrounds. I am not sure if they really know what that means for doing business with these customers.
AFAIK, It did not make Xojo more like other languages professional developers use, and it created a lot of headaches for professional developers that HAVE been using the product…
It seems to me that the increased verbosity of API 2 and the nonsensical (IMO) changing of event names, was primarily aimed at beginners, largely to the detriment of others.
This lack of focus unfortunately reflects on the product’s quality.
Same problem as with all these different target platforms.
‘We cater to the needs of everyone with everything’ is a huge undertaking for a company of that size.
As developers not falling from heaven they need customers paying. What does make good feeling for a citizen? “Of coarse I am using a professional tool”. That it is not… And now the dreams behind…people dreaming of success and becoming rich with an app. Wow and now professional marketing tips…woow.
I remember a comment by xojo saying something similar to… VAR makes the language more “modern” and appealing to new users. Yes, a really stupid idea.
Dont make the real work that actually needs to be done to chase stupid ideas that will magically attract more users.
Kind of the same level of reasoning that people who fall for the online scams, easy money, dont work, just gimme your bank credentials to put the money in there.
Pointless and confusing renaming.
In other languages, Var defines a placeholder/typeless variable.
Anyone who has actually used one will be confused when
Var x
results in a syntax error. That would make Xojo’s implementation less familiar to use.
The Xojo implementation of var is USELESS at all. I mean: why var instead of DIM when VAR is in the most languages used: typeless. Xojo wanted another thing. They did not wanted to be more modern in the language as is. Cause var uses the same mechanism like DIM. You can use both in the same wise. No difference. And if they want to change it’s behavior we are in the next drama of API change. So they builded nothing else then:
“var” = “dim”
And so they have another, flaming new keyword and more modern language. Sorry that you see me wide smiling but: that is not modernizing. That is a cheap card player trick. Give the old horse a new name and tell the people: hey, this is the young one. But, like always in real live: that’s not working at all.
on the other hand: it is their smallest problem, this one did at least not cause any big drama, but it is a good indicator that a lot of non-sense (IMHO) is done instead of concentrating on the real issues.
Yeah, I recall that too and I can remember thinking, sure, but why do you have to get rid of what was existing, surely you can have both Var and Dim? Apparently not.
But var is another animal in the most languages. While Dim is always strongly typed var is in most cases not.Means I can define for example in Java var x=87; without a type. Also var y=“tom”; That is in Xojo language impossible.
