How do you keep a project small and easy to work with!?

You have to be careful about combining functions based on optional params as it’s far easier to test and debug small functions that “do one thing well” than a function that does multiple (even related) jobs.
Having said that, sometimes having a function with a few optional arguments can be very powerful, especially if it is aggregating and using a few smaller functions that might be better off being hidden from a public interface.

I agree with Bob on this one, declaring variables as you need them in the flow of the code generally reduces errors, and it makes refactoring far easier as you’ll generally be able to pull a nice clean block of code out into a separate function.

Hello again!
Thank you for the input! I make major improvements and I’m impressed of the work… All is relative and you would laugh! I know!!


FWIW = ??

I now notice, when using the option “New workspace” that the Xojo IDE crashes on random events, however quite frequently.
Either when saving or when compiling.

I tried to use the Feedback feature… but as far as I understand, it’s just another kind of (anonymous??) forum filled with all kinds of current and previous errors.

REALBasisc or Xojo never crashed for me before, for very many years.
The additional workspace sure is a neat feature, but maybe there is a special technique when using it or using it with special care…?
(Or… maybe it’s simply me!!)

Please sign onto <https://xojo.com/issue/6325> “reorder items in code tab listbox”. This is back from the Realbasic days (5 years ago) and got marked as Web in the Xojo transition (I guess). Maybe this can be fixed or you can start a new Feature Request.

I like to group methods and properties by related functionality too and this enforced alphabetization is my one thorn with the Xojo IDE. I use prefixes to group for now, it seems like a small thing but it helps me find things faster when they’re blocked out.

It usually means “For what it’s worth”.

Feedback is the place to submit your bug reports and feature requests. Stuff discussed in this forum is great, but it is not actionable and we may not even see it here.

The [WEB] in the title there simply indicates this case was migrated from the web-based bug tracker used at the time.

I’ve never been able to nail this problem down but it is so bad I almost never use “New Workspace” any more.

Maybe “New workspace” shall not be so complex!? I mean, only a viewer… not a complete copy with all features included?
I mean, you write in the main window and then open another window to look for he names and how things are arranged and maybe also look on the code in other part of the project.

I understand, such feature would be a great deal of work to implement and then one can simply wonder, is it worth it!?
I truly doubt it… But also, how will I know!?

I can’t say I actually DO all of these, but when on occasion I do them all, and later come back to the project, I do smile:

  • modularize : make things self-contained
  • document, document, document - explain not just WHAT (which is usually obvious from the code itself) but WHY : why approach A and not approach B?
  • make test projects (that include complete Xojo project files)
  • Unix has a design philosophy “thousands of small atomictools” - think about your app and its sub-components and see if any processes can be made into small command-line tools. The advantage is that these are easy to do multiCPU processing with.