Introduce Yourself

[Christian_Wheel]

Hi everyone! My name’s Christian Wheel, I’m a radio host and DJ based in Los Angeles. I have always had an aptitude for both hardware and software, and first learned to code from the age of 4 on a Commodore 64.

I’m a little bit of an oddball in programming circles because until now I’ve built my career in entertainment rather than tech; I still host a weekly terrestrial music radio show that airs on dozens of stations across the US. A few years ago, one of my radio shows that aired here in Los Angeles was called “Let’s Talk Tech,” where we discussed the latest developments in consumer tech and took “call for help” phone calls, answering people’s tech questions and troubleshooting their computer or smartphone problems over the phone.

Even though the bulk of my career has been in radio, at 18 I was hired as Director of Development for a startup in the first dot-com-boom and more recently had a stint at Apple for a few years (where I actually used Xojo to develop some internal tools for our team).

All the while, I’ve always been developing my own software in the background, focusing mostly on multimedia, audio/video development. If any of this interests you, you can check out my stuff at https://ChristianWheel.com/software.

I stumbled across RealBasic in the 2000’s and quickly fell in love with the language, and pretty much transitioned to using it for the bulk of my development around 2015 or so. I’m also fairly proficient in C and C# (although admittedly rusty since I haven’t used them in a while), VB, Javascript and even did some pretty nifty things in x86 assembly back in the day (btw Xojo inline assembly when??? kidding!).

I also started a YouTube channel for tech enthusiasts, covering the latest in hardware and software reviews, etc. As we speak, I’m currently building a brand new production studio to re-launch my YouTube channel in 2025, and I’m also about to launch a Xojo-built product for DJ’s that I think could be pretty revolutionary in the field. Of course, along with this comes the business side of things that still needs to be handled like incorporation, social media marketing and all the other things that we all probably hate to have to do.

Big shout out to all the friendly folks here at the Xojo forums that have been always been extremely welcoming and helpful. It’s nice to be reading so many formal introductions and get to know you all as best we can in this medium.

Also a big thanks to the third-party developers who have helped to both speed up the development of my own projects and also created things that I probably wouldn’t have had the time to even think of doing on my own.

Happy Xojoing everyone!

[Armando_SORBI]

Hello everybody. I’m Armando SORBI, former Air Force pilot, F-104 driver. I use Xojo just for my personal use/amusement.
I started using Xojo some ten years ago and still enjoy it as I’m grateful to have found this excellent forum and the guys attending it.
Greetings fro Italy

[Ian_Kennedy]

Wow, F-104, doesn’t that have a nickname of the Flying Coffin.

[Andrew_Lambert]

I’m Andrew. I work as an apartment building manager in the San Francisco Bay Area. I’ve been a RealXojoBasicStudio hobbyist for around 20 years now. I’ve released a number of open source projects, mainly around wrapping 3rd party libraries such as libcurl, libssh2, and libpcap for use in Xojo. My hobby and my job don’t often overlap, but I have from time to time used Xojo as a secret weapon to automate certain tasks.

[Armando_SORBI]

Yes, and “Widow maker” as well. To be honest, those nicknames came fro the German Air Force. For reasons I really never investigated they lost many more aircrafts, in percentage, than other nations using the F-104.
One thing for sure: it was not like flying an average weekend flight

[Ian_Kennedy]

I would imagine they’re great in a straight line, but turning with such small wings would be an issue.

[Patrick_Besong]

I’m Pat Besong. Been using XOJO since it was called RealBasic. I was an art major in college, and a multimedia specialist as my job, but thanks to this app and the great support I always got from this forum, I was able to make s/w that was used by a lot of well-known companies and government agencies all over the world. I’ve also used it in my day job to make apps that helped me sort tens of thousands of entries, turning a job that would have taken weeks to do manually into one that i completed in a few days.

[Michelle_Parker]

I’m Michelle Parker, I started with RealBasic around 2002 to develop a medical diagnostic system for mental health patients and clinicians.

My programming progression was BASIC, HyperCard, WebObjects, RealBasic, Xcode, Xojo. I was primarily an Apple developer, completing the WebObjects training at Apple Enterprise and consulting on WebObjects projects and later focusing on iOS app development.

I came back to Xojo last year with the release of Android projects, for cross platform solutions. It was a pleasure to return to the familiar, and it’s great to see how Xojo has grown and matured, especially when so many other tools have died off.

This year so far, I have developed these apps with Xojo:

1. an emergency evacuation management system (website and mobile app), which heavily uses push notifications.
2. a Windows and Mac app for data analytics on subscription sales using complex charts with custom sidebars.
3. a Windows and Mac app for PDF document library management integrating a Google Gemini AI search.
4. a weather API web service using the Australian Bureau of Meteorology data provided via FTP, JSON and XML.
5. an HPAI bird flu diagnostic assistance website which produces a PDF report for clinicians and an Infographic for educational purposes.

I look forward to using Xojo for future projects.

[Giulio_Straccia]

Buongiorno Gianni, benvenuto e complimenti per i tuoi lavori ! Io sono di Lucca, troverai anche qualche italiano qui.

[Christian_Schmitz]

Hello, I am Christian Schmitz and have been using Xojo since it was REALbasic in 1998. I got interested into it because I could develop on my Mac at that time and build applications for Windows to give to my friends.

I wrote quite a few freeware apps and put them on a website. Then people contacted me in 1999 about developing for them, which leads to me founding my company in April 2000. Over the years I became consultant to help various development projects. In-between we had the need for more, so end of 2001 I started making plugins for REALbasic. For that I learned a lot of C++

A lot changed over the years and I did a lot of training, consulting, plugin development and customer projects. On the way I hosted 13 conferences for Xojo and visited 10 official Xojo conferences.

Next spring we celebrate 25th anniversary of my company founding. And as I look on it, I built my career on Xojo and make enough to feed my family

[Gianni_Serino]

Ciao Giulio, grazie infinite per il tuo pensiero e commento. Felice di sapere che anche qui ci sono Italiani, un saluto da Genova.

[Ant_Col]

Buongiorno, un altro rappresentante italiano. Antonino, dalla Sicilia. Ho scoperto Xojo tramite l’azienda per cui lavoro, che produce apparecchi elettromedicali. Utilizzo questo linguaggio per software che, prevalentemente, acquisisce immagini/video da fotocamere e comunica via seriale con alcuni dispositivi.

[GarryPettet]

Hi, I’m Garry Pettet and I started using REALBasic 5.5 back in about 2004 and have kept up my license ever since. I stumbled upon it whilst looking for a VB replacement when I switched from using Windows to Macs.

I’m a radiologist by profession and I don’t really use Xojo in my professional life (other than a few simple console applications to process data for scientific papers).

I mostly write open source libraries and controls for Xojo to try to push the boundaries of what the language can do or to deeply understand how something works. I’ve written rigid 2D physics engines, code editors, an object-oriented programming language, Markdown parsers, DICOM parsers, static site generators and many other things.

I’m currently working on a 4X strategy game with Xojo.

[Lynn_Fredricks1 (Lynn Fredricks)]

Hi all - my name is Lynn Fredricks, and I’ve been involved with Xojo since the earliest of the REALbasic days through my consulting company Proactive International, which set up most international distribution for it in the early years. I started it after managing international sales at Now Software and at Qualcomm’s Eudora Division (and before that, running a translation and localization company in Japan that mostly serviced the console game industry). Proactive International also has a few ‘spin off’ brands as a result of working in the animation / 3D/ SFX industry.

I also co-own Paradigma Software, which makes several Xojo friendly products (see below). Paradigma Software also does some outsourcing work through our Ukraine office but it isn’t the focus of the business.

We sponsor Omegabundle for Xojo every year, a big summer bundle of the best tools for Xojo developers.

Paradigma Software Products

Valentina Studio is Paradigma Software’s powerful database management software. The PRO version also includes the design tool for designing reports used by Valentina Reports for Xojo (for embedding a powerful reports engine in your Xojo app). The base version of Valentina Studio is free and available on macOS, Windows & Linux.

ValentinaDB is Paradigma Software advanced, object relational database and available in Valentina DB Server (a part of Valentina Server) and ValentinaDB ADKs (developer components for adding runtime database support to applications), including ValentinaDB ADK for Xojo.

Valentina Reports is a powerful reporting design and deployment system. With Valentina Reports ADK for Xojo, you can embed Valentina Reports in your Xojo apps.

Valentina Server incorporates Valentina Reports Server, Valentina Forms Server and two database servers: Valentina DB Server and Valentina SQLite Server. Available for Windows, Linux (x86, ARM64), macOS and Raspberry PI.

[Paul_Birkholtz]

I’m Paul a Linux open source developer and Linux user. I found Xojo by pure accident and it ticked a lot of boxes for my home development projects. At work I mainly use Python and a little Java and COBOL (real dreadful stuff). Outside of coding I like taking pictures on a Polaroid instant camera, playing with my son, doing DIY home improvements and playing heavily modded videogames.

If you want to see any of my open source Xojo work you can find it here:

AlwaysOfflineSoftware

[Kevin_Cary-Grimm]

I’ve been a professional software developer for 48 years (now retired). I’ve mostly done desktop applications, embedded systems, image processing, and robotics. I’ve written in many languages over the years, too many to count. I’ve used realbasic/Xojo since the early 2000’s mostly for fun. You can check out my retirement projects at: Https://KCG-Software.com

[Oscar_Vidal1 (Oscar Vidal)]

I am Oscar Vidal, from Philippines, XOJO is not much popular here PH, but I started to love it for it is easy for me understand since I am from VB6.

[Rick_Araujo]

I’m Rick. First name Ricardo. Dual citizen Brazilian/Spanish, with 2 different names, but known around the globe as just Rick (Rick A. for disambiguation). Professional Software Engineer. Son of a genius father that I’ve lost too early. I built my own video game when I was 14yo using an IC AY-3-8500. I studied computer programming using mainframes around 16yo before the personal computer era. And at 20yo already had learned COBOL, FORTRAN, BASIC, Z80 Assembly, C and Pascal; that order, and has been a chemical analyst (as my father) at an Anglo-American Corp, programmed TRS-80 like computers for an Oil and Gas company, programmed an Unix mini computer for another company that served several other large companies, and was hired by a company that was developing a new computer from the scratch for industrial (hardened and with safe measures as multiples CPUs assuming the control if some fail happens) and commercial uses and I’ve wrote a large part of its OS and apps. I was surrounded by genial people. Loved those days and those friends. Since those days lots of languages, OS’s, apps, industries. Now I’m 59, so you can imagine… CLIPPER, ASP, PHP, Java, JS, Ruby, Python, Delphi, Rust, Kotlin… I don’t remember all the list. I do own a small software company and never really can rest.
My last contract outside Brazil was using Python (remotely) for an oil/gas company near Dallas 3 months ago.
I have the hobby of pursuing the best languages/IDEs, looking for that best and stable one, and I like to think that I helped A LOT of people around the globe while doing it.
My desktop OS’s of interest are Windows, macOS and Linux, in that order.
Mobile OS’s: Android, iOS, that order.
Server OS’s: Linux and Windows, that order.
I still wait for the Xojo version of my dreams, since forever.
As long as something does not completely take my interest from Xojo, or my health allows, I’ll still be around.

[Don_Lyttle]

@Rick_Araujo

and I like to think that I helped A LOT of people around the globe while doing it.

You CERTAINLY have helped me (and a whole bunch of others on this forum) through the years, Rick … and I greatly appreciate you for it! I’m retired now, but I look back and see the difference you made in my work efforts that resulted in putting bread on my table … and I don’t ever forget people like that!

[Rick_Araujo]

I really, really appreciated it, Don.