The ability to completely exclude MonkeyBread / MBS / x-Paid 3rd Party solution suggestions from any forum search result would be greatly appreciated. As a newcomer trying to grok the new Xojo ecosystem, the exceedingly high frequency of solutions cul-de-sac’ing via MBS or other 3rd Party $olution is unnecessarily confusing.
I’m seeking something similar to a “Hide Forum Marketing Results” Toggle in the forum account preferences. I did notice the “User Mute” section in Account Preferences, but that reads merely to affect only private messages.
Questions
Is there a way to filter all forum marketing from search results? I’d much rather end in no results than pay-to-play. Maybe some kind of special Xojo Forum Dork or Custom Query Params or Greasemonkey?
Given the success and tenure of RealBasic/Xojo (long time watcher, first time user) - I’m curious to understand what factors exist in the ecosystem ether that permit/support such a pervasive 3rd party supplier presence:
xojo extensibility arcane or lock-and-key for exclusive vendors?
xojo feature velocity/capability akin to epics more so than sprints?
xojo product priorities more xojo-co/private-customer driven than public-customer defined?
is xojo more of an smb/enterprise-it admin toolkit than software SDK for engineering teams; thus lower correlation of feature requests?
all or none or something else entirely?
Note
I’m fully supportive of folks making a living off building software solutions, jumping in threads to offer guidance and generally the concept of paid 3rd-party/partner solutions - though, this . . . as a newcomer, at first blush . . . this is something else.
The above is intended to solicit direct, honest and constructive dialogue. Not to “throw shade” as the kids say.
Abstractly, the comprehension of this dynamic would be very meaningful to anyone assessing the viability of Xojo. Sales calls and marketing materials help, but hearing from existing customers (the community on this forum) can’t be overvalued.
You can try to develop without MBS but with MBS you will develop multiple times faster. And when you find a showstopper bug with Xojo you can use the same functionality from MBS. Bugs with MBS are fixed within days or even within hours.
Example: for whatever reason I’m the only one who had Dates crashing in the Constructor. I wasn’t able to reproduce the bug. See <https://xojo.com/issue/58879>. The thing will stay in Feedback probably until the next Jesus comes. I had a workaround from Christian in hours.
In my experience, the occurrence of recommendation for third-party libraries to achieve results is no higher than in many other languages. Take JavaScript, for example. A quick look at StackOverflow shows that a large swathe of questions asked will include responses that point to a third-party library. These other languages even have package managers dedicated to facilitating this inclusion, like NPM.
The difference may be that, in my previous example, those solutions are often free, but a potential solution should not be overlooked. The existence of a third-party market can be indicative of a thriving community/market, and I’d hate to see that stifled.
That said, as one of those third-party developers, I have no problem with someone responding to one of my posts by saying “Hey, that’s great, but I want to implement it myself” or starting the discussion with “Please, no third-party products”.
While you may be amenable to getting no responses rather than responses that solve your problem using a third-party solution, I’m sure you’re in the minority there, and that sort of exclusionary implementation could lead to a less helpful community overall.
We, the third-party developers, try to make things easy that are otherwise difficult for the average user, but if you don’t want that then you’re free to request that people don’t make those recommendations, though you may not get solutions in a timely or efficient manner.
There really is no fool-proof way to implement a system where third-party suppliers are effectively removed from forums discussion and search results without actually removing them from the forums. You’re welcome to ignore those users whose solutions you don’t want to see, and that will apply to forum posts as well as direct messages, but you’ll just see parts of conversations that won’t make sense because some users’ posts will just be hidden.
Well, the short answer is that Xojo has a tiny market in comparison to C#, Java, Swift/Objective C or many other languages. There isn’t a huge 3rd party market. Plugins aren’t easy to make and maintain but they are one of the easiest ways to do advanced stuff in Xojo. MBS, Einhugur and a few others have dedicated much of their professional life to Xojo and have made plugins that make life substantially easier for Xojo developers. It’s possible to create apps without their plugins and other 3rd party solutions but my response is “do you have an infinite amount of time and money to do so?”
I do feel your pain with what appears to be marketing but many times it is the easiest, most cost-effective way of solving a problem.
When I am looking for a solution I’d like to see all potential solutions, even if they are third-party paid solutions. I can decide if the paid solution is a viable option for me. Imagine having a problem that really needs to be solved or your whole project is kaput - A $100 plugin at that point seems “worth it.”
The folks on the forum are always very helpful and I like the mix of both Xojo native organic solutions as well as third party. I can just ignore or scroll past the stuff I don’t like.