Did you notice that over the last 17 years we got 103 issues of the Xojo developer magazine?
As you know the magazine is more up to date than any book and we highly recommend a subscription for all Xojo developers. Keep up to date on news, development best practice and learn tips and tricks.
Today you get all 103 back issues with 7360 pages in total including 400 pages mentioning MBS classes, modules or controls. Check the Welcome to Xojo bundle for new users.
Almost all of that will be API 1, which is likely to be confusing to new users as neither the current docs nor Autocomplete for new projects, will be showing API 1 code.
@Marc Zeedar may tell you how much API 2 is coming in newer issues.
I have to agree with Karen as the last 17 years of the magazine are not going to be (mostly) relevant to new users
Newer issues for sure will help the users newer to Xojo and using API 2.0
Nothing can satisfy all conditions. But I would think that any experienced programmer new to Xojo should be able to learn a lot from the articles in XDev regardless of the syntax evolution over the years. If a broken down COBOL programmer like myself can learn this stuff, I would think someone coming from more modern platforms shouldn’t have too difficult a time.
Anyone worth their salt can post a question here to find out that the syntax is changed and then adjust.
[quote=473668:@Steve Albin]Nothing can satisfy all conditions. But I would think that any experienced programmer new to Xojo should be able to learn a lot from the articles in XDev regardless of the syntax evolution over the years. If a broken down COBOL programmer like myself can learn this stuff, I would think someone coming from more modern platforms shouldn’t have too difficult a time.
Anyone worth their salt can post a question here to find out that the syntax is changed and then adjust.[/quote]
You are thinking that everyone is a seasoned programmer that comes to Xojo?
New to programming and new to Xojo is a different case. The basic tutorials on the Xojo website should satisfy there. As I said, nothing satisfies all cases.
In my post I referred to “experienced programmers”. XDev, to me, is more to learn technique, not syntax.
I understood your post and that is why I asked the question.
Yes new to Xojo and new to programming are 2 different things but what I was hoping you would understand is that a 15 year old article might not be worth the time to try and dissect and bring to what is current.
I have to disagree as XDev has articles for Newbies (to programming and Xojo) it could be a turn off factor for them trying to realize the newest release of Xojo is API 2.0 and not API 1.0 as the 15 uear old article explains
Anyone buying a product today and getting turned off from reading about it in a 15 year old article will probably not be successful anyway. I see your point - yes, a fifteen year old article will not be useful for a beginner. The point of the original post was that XDev is a useful reference - not the Swiss Army knife of documentation.
Point taken but actually the original post stated that the magizine was the most up to date reference
Pointing out to anyone that older articles will cause frustration in new Xojo releases is a common courtesy
it’s up to date as it released a new issue just a few days ago.
All Xojo books out there are years old. The magazine gets a new issue every two month.
[quote=473678:@Christian Schmitz]it’s up to date as it released a new issue just a few days ago.
All Xojo books out there are years old. The magazine gets a new issue every two month.[/quote]
Understand and I’m a subscriber
But past issues before API 2.0 are not up to date
New articles will probably show API 2.0 stuff.
And don’t forget that something like 90% of Xojo has not changed.
To a new user a 10% change to the language is enough to cause confusion
in terms of controls and other built in classes, just about every one has changed naming at least in some way - usually multiple ways.
I know if I was just starting with Xojo now, I would find the articles using API 1 confusing as heck…
And I had coded in multiple languages before… but I had not done any coding for 2-3 years at the time, and none of the prior languages were OOP.
BTW very time I see AddRow is still think list control of some sort, not array! That makes scanning API 2 code harder for me.
-Karen
To ANY user a 10% change to the language is enough to cause confusion
Rereading this made me realize an issue I have with API 2 that I had not consciously recognized.
Having the same methods names for different type of things means one has to look closer at code to under stand stand it. It actually makes it harder (at least for me to quickly understand someone else’s code (oe eventually my own code if not is old enough)
In my mind for API 1 it was always
Record → Database
Row → list control or menu… UI related
Just a method with an index (add Remove etc) → array or other abstract list
So regardless of how the base item was named, It made it really easy (for me) to scan code and get as sense of what was going on quickly.
Now that things that are ( I’m my view) significantly different in kind use the same method names, (for me) it makes it harder to pick up the meaning of a piece of code at a glance.
Remember: there are some exhumators here, in this forum, that try to revive years dead old entries
In fact, either you go ahead (API2) or you stay with what you have (API 1).
Mixing both is a bad guess in the future (how many times does it works ?)
Please contain discussion to the efforts and helpfulness of xDev and MBS’ articles rather than making this yet another anti-API 2.0 thread.