I’ve been looking at expanding my web technology knowledge base and have recently been digging into the multitude of JS libraries that exist. While they are interesting and in some cases have massive communities, I ultimately compare them to the full stack development that Xojo brings us. From what I can tell, the only real full stack JS framework is Meteorjs which is having all sorts of growing pains at the moment.
From this I have a few questions for our community.
With the (unwarranted) stigma of Basic attached to Xojo, should we as developers be looking at the JS stacks as well when selling our services to customers?
Has Xojo spoiled us? It provides a full stack (client/server all in one language) web development environment.
Why isn’t Xojo really pushing the fact it is a full stack web environment? This is a big deal in the web application development industry and could be a selling point beyond multi-platform which web developers don’t really care as much about.
The multitude of JavaScript frameworks is a joke itself. Every day there are 3 new ones. Mostly because JavaScript itself is such a mess of a language, every developer thinks they can do better.
Has Xojo spoiled us? No more or less than desktop I think.
It does appear that many developers are trying to make a name for themselves by writing a new JS framework. I’m alway curious what type of application these framework developers have actually built.
Every technology has their uses and limits, so has also Xojo. Especially with shared hosting, Xojo web has its limits. I never got the WEB edition working with the Bluehost shared hosting. Another disadvantage was (and maybe is), that many companies running a webhosting are not aware of Xojo WEB.
I changed lately from BlueHost to Web-Africa and will try out the WEB edition with that excellent hosting too.
If the WEB edition works with your hosting provider, you are indeed spoiled. When not, your project can turn quickly into a nightmare.
JavaScript is a very good scripting language for the web, especially in conjunction with PHP. If you master JaveScript, PHP, HTML5 and CSS, you have an advantage over RAD tools like Xojo. It depends on your skills and your project.
The BASIC dialect of Xojo, never kept me from finishing my projects succesfully. Xojo is an excellent tool to make your projects coming alive. Despite it is a RAD tool, I rather find that based on the complexity of your project, finishing can also take quit a large amount of time.
I don’t do much with Xojo web, don’t even have a HTML front facing web app; but I can tell you that I really really really appreciate being able to build CGI applications in Xojo that my desktop applications can communicate with. WITHOUT having to learn or fight with a different language. I learned PHP for a while, but Xojo web is so much more intuitive to a long time Xojo developers.
I don’t feel spoiled by Xojo nor embarrassed about the “BASIC” syntax.
People that don’t understand software development might have not heard about Xojo and have a problem with such an “unknown” tool. People that are interested in great solutions are open to tools that get the job done.
I have played with Javascript in the past but it was very frustrating. For a while I was heavy into PowerBASIC and a third party tool Firefly that worked very much like VB6. I had used RealBASIC a few years earlier and when the founder of PowerBASIC died I decided to get into Xojo full time.
Now I generally do just Web development and the fact I can build programs very much like doing desktop development and it makes me very productive. The fact that I can also desktop and command line programs in the same syntax also makes my life easier.
I have found a couple of tools that give me the User Interface that can rival just about any Javascript feature and others give me some other extensions that make back end functions easier. Sometimes people get “hung up” in the staying with the “latest and greatest” thing they just read about. They end up like a dog chasing a squirrels. They never catch one and spend all their time just “running around”.
Somebody once told me at a wine bar to not be a snob and drink what tasted good. I have applied that same principle to software development and I use tools that I understand and get the job done. Xojo fits.
That’s the main reason Xojo never will be accepted as being serious. Changing the syntax to a more ‘common’ would be a good thing for the future of Xojo (read: more popular).
I ones talked about Xojo with a friend who is an academic professor teaching computer science at the VUB (University of Brussels).
He did put some time into Xojo and did asked a lot questions about it. In the end he told me that Xojo is of little value or importance for the current industry regarding programming languages and has no future or added value for students who are interested in computer science in general. He especially didn’t like the syntax but liked the simplicity of the IDE.
No change VUB will ever teach it or even mention it.
Comparing computer languages, and in a professorial sentence say Xojo is of little importance, is IMO a typical mark or academia’s contempt.
It is just as ridiculous as looking at, say, Estonian, and go around saying it is of no importance for world communication. Granted, there are many less Estonian speakers than English, Spanish or Chinese, but that does not make their language irrelevant.
Fact is, VUB will prepare students to reproduce the same kind of frame of mind their teachers have, in a quasi parthenogenetic way : same preconceptions, same snobbism, same limitations. Sure, these coders will do fine in corporate environment. Little creativity, reliable and servile. Most of them will be utterly ignorant out of C, Java, PHP, and their teacher pet language (they all have one). Perfect drones for a world not unlike the caricature in Apple’s 1984 commercial. https://youtu.be/2zfqw8nhUwA
There are a considerable number of languages around. Most of them will never make it to the top ten in Tiobe’s index. I don’t care. I am not going to sell myself to some slave master to spew lines of codes in a standardized way anyway. On the other hand, as a free man, Xojo will enable me to produce quickly and efficiently programs that I will sell on my own.
I do not understand any ground for “mine is best” discussions. It is the Craftsman/woman who use his tools to create excellent artwork, those tools on itself does not do anything. I can have a golden jigsaw, however when I do not know how to use it, it is only a worthless gadget.
I do whatever is necessary to make the job done succesfully. I have a wide range of tools to help me accomplishing my goals. But that are only tools which I do not adore or have any emotional bond with. If I have to learn a new tool tomorrow to get the job done, I will just do that.
Besides of Xojo, I use a lot of other development tools because everyone of them has their strong and weak points. Combining them all together makes them a very powerfull suite.
If everyone should start to cleanup their own doorstep, the world should be a much nicer place. The same is true for any development community.
