Kudos to Geoff and Xojo

I just want to take a moment to throw out a public thank you to @Geoff_Perlman. I had asked some questions of Xojo and Geoff took time out of his day to personally call me. I’m blown away by that.

I know there’s all sorts of complaints about this with the language or that with the IDE, etc. I’ve made my fair share over the years. Some may be deserved and others maybe not. That said, I can tell Geoff cares and he and his team are truly trying to make a great product. Next time any of us want to rip Xojo for something, maybe we should step back and realize that just like us, Xojo is populated by imperfect people, but good people. They really want the product to be good and make programming easier for everyone.

So thank you, Geoff. It was something you could have easily not done.

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You’re welcome, Jon. It was great talking with you and learning about what you’re doing with Xojo. Thank you for your continued support.

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I don’t know many companies, where you can see the CEO taking part actively in the forums.
That’s for sure a good thing!

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Tell me about it. Geoff earned my continued dedication to the Xojo platform. I know others have talked at or looked at switching. No way.

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Over the years, I’ve always been impressed by this. I can’t think of a single time since I started using Xojo that I couldn’t email Geoff directly and either get a quick response or phone call.

He definitely cares about the future and direction of Xojo, and puts a lot of effort in to speaking with users and hearing their concerns.

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I’ve always appreciated Geoff’s willingness to talk to me about my concerns. However, I will say that I’ve not always been satisfied by the results of those conversations.

At the end of the day what’s most important to me is not what was said in a conversation but how well the product works for me in my day-to-day work. At this point I am 100% desktop development and don’t care or need web, mobile, or Raspberry Pi. I feel like desktop is not the primary focus of the company anymore and it shows.

That is simply my opinion since that’s what I work on 100% of the time. Our switch to 2020 R1 has been delayed by a single crashing bug with WebKit that William has since fixed (and there was simple workaround once you knew about it). 2020 R1 was mostly Web 2 with some nice desktop changes but anyone that is a desktop-only developer probably felt left out. The huge delay between releases was very worrying as well.

Again, my opinion, but more targets does not equal stability or more appeal to a bigger non-existing Xojo developer audience. I’d rather Xojo be outstanding in desktop and to a lesser extent web and simply ignore mobile. The amount of resources devoted to mobile is staggering for such a small development team.

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Bob,

I’m not sure how Xojo isn’t strong on the desktop. I’m not sure what more or better things there could be (I am sure people could point out a thousand things). I’ve found Xojo’s desktop support to be very solid and strong. Yes there are bugs that I have had open for years such as one with the serial ports control. But in general it’s pretty good.

Other targets like Web and iOS are drastically less thoroughly vetted. For example, I believe in Web that dynamically created container controls don’t fire their open events (at least in Web1.0). Big problem. It happens in iOS as well. All kinds of events not firing. I think in desktop, events generally fire pretty reliably.

I’m sure I am not the only developer who wants/needs to support multiple targets. The fact that I could take most of my desktop created objects and classes and move them into iOS with relatively minor changes was a huge deal. Most of my time spent doing my iOS app was trying to learn and get up to speed on the underlying user interface and how all the controls work/layout/etc. Gluing all the code in the background was something I didn’t need to worry about as I knew it would work as it works fine on desktop. That is HUGE. I didn’t need to reinvent the wheel. The fact that I can write much of the same code and use it on Mac/Windows/Linux/iOS/Web is just a huge deal. Makes my end product more widely sellable and I’m in a very niche market.

I think the long time goal that Xojo has is to get all targets pretty much on par and pretty much using the same underlying frameworks. At least that is my understanding of API2.0. Sure there are some differences, but in general the goal is to have compatibility across platforms. I think once that is done, then you will see your improvements in desktop as any improvements made will apply to all platforms.

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Yes, I agree 1000 times !

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Well said @Jon_Ogden

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I agree with Bob, especially when it comes to Web. I don’t even understand the point of Xojo for web. I guess if you need something simple… There is just no way I would code any web project in xojo. Xojo can never compete in that space. It really can’t compete in the mobile space. They should just stick with excelling at desktop development.

That aside… it has always seemed to be a good group of people running Xojo.

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Actually I’ve developed a web based interface for my app that works great. Xojo Web is not for website development. But it’s pretty good if you want to use a browser for your UI.

And despite the shortcomings of the current iOS framework, it’s actually quite good and works quite well. Hopefully API2.0 for iOS will fill in many of the shortcomings. Fingers crossed.

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I have customers who have built some truly monolithic and powerful web applications on Xojo Web 1.0 that perform beautifully, and Web 2.0 will be no different. As with any technology, the only real limit is imagination.

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We have seen many users with enormous web applications. The web framework is every bit as capable of building large apps as the desktop framework.

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I respect those high praises for Xojo but regretfully I need to be more critical in my reply. How is it possible that Xojo 2019 r3.0 forbid me to build with a license which expired on 23 May 2020?

How many customers experience this bug and silently leave? How many times did those customers downloaded and added their license, only to find out they were no longer allowed to build? From marketing point of view, this is a situation which may never ever occur.

Don’t get me wrong, I have high respects for Geoff Perlman and you can believe it or not, but he is forever in my heart. I never forget his very personal private message in 2014 after a great loss. I only want the best for the Xojo team and therefore I am critical to help improving Xojo.

In October I will buy a new Lite license for a new machine. I hope the same does not occur on that machine too and I can build my applications without worries.

In the meantime, I can see that the Xojo team is working hard and doing their best to deliver. I appreciate your hard work and dedication. Keep up the good work!

Chris

Chris, I think it is a valid concern. If the product was released prior to your license expiring my opinion is you should be able to build with that version for good. Now, I don’t know if that is Xojo’s position - it’s not my business, If that is Xojo’s position and this happened then that is a serious bug. I don’t know of many people who would experience the problem and just leave. You’ve invested your money and if you aren’t getting what you paid for, most of us would try to work it out with the vendor.

If find Xojo to be critical for my business. I don’t sell tons of copies of my software (hopefully more with the iOS release of my product coming up), but I made the decision long ago that I was going to continue to invest in the platform because where else have I to go? I’ve already put too much time and effort over the last ten years to abandon it for something else. The opportunity cost is way more than the $600 I have to fork out. A couple of sales and I’ve broken even. And honestly, if I break even, I’m happy. I generally do quite a bit better than that too.

Now things like Plugins, are beginning to be another story. I’m somewhat irritated at MBS right now because I didn’t renew my plugins a while back and they won’t accept another renewal now. I would have to purchase a whole new license. That irks me especially when I’ve been a long time customer. But that’s their business decision and if something changes in Xojo where I’m forced to use a new version of the plugins, then I have to make the decision to either work around them or belly up to the bar and open my wallet. Nothing personal - just business.

Personally I appreciate what Xojo is doing. It gives us tools to go cross platform with native binaries with the same code. With how many staff? Even the mighty Microsoft does not have that kind of productivity. I hear what the detractors are saying, but I am glad I found a coherent alternative to what Microsoft puts out. Xojo is having growing pains all companies have them yet if you stay off the bleeding edge the ride is pretty good. For that Thank you Geoff.

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If you have trouble with licenses, please email hello@xojo.com and ask for help.

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At a quick glance it looks like you have multiple accounts, so you might want to verify you were trying to build with the right account. You should be able to build though so please reach out to Customer Service if you have not already done so.

If you’re interested, you can read about the Xojo team here. :grinning:

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After 22 years? Hardly.

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