I agree and I’ve abandoned SO because I’m tired of being told that I’ve posted to the wrong area or that the question was answered a billion years ago and that I should learn to use search.
There’s another problem for professional developers and discussing tools - sometimes, the tools that you use are a major differentiator between you and your competitor. Do you think that a race team is going to share that they know to under-inflate their tires for a specific course to a newbie team?
[quote=161098:@Tim Jones]I agree and I’ve abandoned SO because I’m tired of being told that I’ve posted to the wrong area or that the question was answered a billion years ago and that I should learn to use search.
There’s another problem for professional developers and discussing tools - sometimes, the tools that you use are a major differentiator between you and your competitor. Do you think that a race team is going to share that they know to under-inflate their tires for a specific course to a newbie team?[/quote]
You are so right Tim… If a race team can shave 1/110 of a second off they will and do so with extreme secrecy. 
One of the most successful race teams have been a customer of mine since 2003.
But by the same token… if Race Team “A” is having severe problems… Race Team “B” will often send crew or parts to help them back into the race… as Race Team “B” would rather “win by being faster”, than to “win by default”
[quote=161098:@Tim Jones]I agree and I’ve abandoned SO because I’m tired of being told that I’ve posted to the wrong area or that the question was answered a billion years ago and that I should learn to use search.
[/quote]
Actually I use SO quite a bit for research. Most every questions have been asked there and often have answers. I seldom ask anything there since it is haunted by low life.
I WILL CERTAINLY NOT go there post things just to have Xojo better considered by Tiobe. First because it would be futile (get to be 100th ?), secondly because I rather try to share here the little I know, or request assistance in a forum where courteous human beings who know my development tool will genuinely try to help.
Forums, and even SO, are not meant as thermometer for Tiobe to draw dubious box office charts. They are meant for community support.
You are right. As much as most everybody here loves Xojo, some of us chose it as a professional tool meant to help us maintain an edge in the fierce competition that exists in our profession. For over 25 years, RB has been for me what made the difference between barely surviving, and getting an edge. I appreciate discussing it here, it does not mean I want all my competitors to know why they had to struggle so hard with their VB or C to get the same result I have in much less time.
It’s a shame that’s your experience of Stackoverflow. I’ve certainly seen comments on my answers that could certainly fall into the type of stuff you’ve seen, but they’re very much the exception and in general I’ve found it to be an awesome question and answers platform.
That’s the big difference though, this forum is just that, a forum for discussion of all things Xojo, including helping each other out, and is very much a nice social place to be (I’m a big fan of this forum). Stackoverflow on the other hand is supposed to be a tool for programmers to get answers to their problems, and it defends that objective quite aggressively to try and keep the questions and answers “on subject”.
Stackoverflow is the place where most programmers go for answers, Xojo’s lack of visibility in Stackoverflow hurts its adoption, which is a real shame as Xojo is a fantastic tool that deserves to be more popular than it is, and a little more popularity would help Xojo and its customers.
If this forum was as abstruse as Msdn forums, no doubt the need to ask questions about Xojo in SO would be more pressant, like poor VB. NET users experience.
So what should we do ? Go ask fake questions in SO only to have it more visible ?
Search engines see this forum too. You just need to write “Xojo Programming” 
No, ask your genuine questions about how to do something with Xojo.
Then asking here has much more chances to get a relevant and courteous answer
I know, but we’re talking about how to try and increase Xojo’s social visibility and hopefully from that its adoption, popularity and community base.
If you want to help with that, maybe post your questions to SO and here with a link to SO for people that would like to increase SO karma. If you get a good answer here rather than in SO by someone not wanting to use SO add the answer to SO including a link back to the accepted answer here.
I know, convoluted, but Stackoverflow is a massive entity in the programming world, if we want to increase Xojo’s visibility to programmers then it would be good to use it as it has much better usability for pure questions and answers than even this forum with its “Accepted Answer” feature.
Yes, I understand what you are saying, and I also feel LESS incentive, but when thinking about the benefit directly to us (i.e. more programmers at Xojo, more programmers using it, more people testing, more people writing open and close source plugins/modules/helpers, etc…) makes me want to write about it now and then.
Besides… When writing about things like this, you tend to learn quite a bit yourself and grow as a programmer. I feel its a good exercise, incentive or not. Now… that’s an area I need to work on because thus far I have blogged very little, about any subject, even thought I know it’d be a good thing :-/
The Xojo logo is in the About Box of all my program and links to Xojo website.
I don’t have a forum for my programs. I don’t know if you have one yourself. It depends of the Target people of the programs. If we make special program for specific user, then no need to a forum. If we make program we diffuse to everybody on the AppStore or MacUpdate or etc. , then maybe we need a forum.
I don’t know how much it would cost to Xojo to give a part of a sub-forum to developpers who want. He will moderate it himself, and his users can ask question about his programs here.
And if I was Xojo and if I do that, I would put at the top of this Sub-Forums :
“You want to try yourself to make a program ? Download Xojo here, download those exemples here, and ask your question here.”
When a guy ask a question about one of my program on a forum, I would post “the answer is here” and links to Xojo sub-forum.
[quote=161333:@Thomas ROBISSON]The Xojo logo is in the About Box of all my program and links to Xojo website.
I don’t have a forum for my programs. I don’t know if you have one yourself. It depends of the Target people of the programs. If we make special program for specific user, then no need to a forum. If we make program we diffuse to everybody on the AppStore or MacUpdate or etc. , then maybe we need a forum.
I don’t know how much it would cost to Xojo to give a part of a sub-forum to developpers who want. He will moderate it himself, and his users can ask question about his programs here.
And if I was Xojo and if I do that, I would put at the top of this Sub-Forums :
“You want to try yourself to make a program ? Download Xojo here, download those exemples here, and ask your question here.”
When a guy ask a question about one of my program on a forum, I would post “the answer is here” and links to Xojo sub-forum.[/quote]
Some members already do have ongoing threads where they post updates to their products, like DTPlugins or MBS. No need for a special “sub-forum”, once can link directly to that thread. As for the necessity of a blog from developers, it is all a question of personal choice.
DTPlugins and MBS are for Xojo developers, not for final users.
I won’t create a subject on this forum to answer to guys who have trouble with my programs.
My idea is to have a sub-forum, with simple inscription (no need to use real name etc.). The goal is to generate traffic to Xojo.
But I did not think more than that, it’s just an idea which came to my mind. Have a special forum to support the applications made with Xojo.
I use applications which are made with Xojo and I don’t know it. An exemple, I saw some weeks ago that iFFmpeg was made with Xojo, I didn’t know it before. I’m sure I use other App I don’t know.
It’s a good point as it means that they are well integrated in Mac OS X as we don’t see anything. But it would be great to Xojo that users could know it an easiest way than open package contents.
[quote=161399:@Thomas ROBISSON]DTPlugins and MBS are for Xojo developers, not for final users.
I won’t create a subject on this forum to answer to guys who have trouble with my programs.
My idea is to have a sub-forum, with simple inscription (no need to use real name etc.). The goal is to generate traffic to Xojo.
But I did not think more than that, it’s just an idea which came to my mind. Have a special forum to support the applications made with Xojo.
I use applications which are made with Xojo and I don’t know it. An exemple, I saw some weeks ago that iFFmpeg was made with Xojo, I didn’t know it before. I’m sure I use other App I don’t know.
It’s a good point as it means that they are well integrated in Mac OS X as we don’t see anything. But it would be great to Xojo that users could know it an easiest way than open package contents.[/quote]
Long ago I considered having a forum for my customers to interact. It sounded like a good idea, until I looked at the kind of comments end users were leaving on other sites. Pretty much like what happens today with the MAS rating system, the only people who posted did it for negative comments.
To this day, I provide a mail form for customers and do my best to reply immediately, but I do not want to provide stones to throw at me.