Just like MacOS (but in Autumn);
: first release shows new features and is followeb by a bunch of dot releases that correct the original release 'till next major
Readable, intuitive, near-natural-language syntax, and (at least the promise of) write-once, compile-for-all targets. The latter is prominently featured in Xojo’s marketing (as it should be), but the former not as much. Maybe the new generation is so accustomed to curly braces and cryptic syntax that they can’t appreciate it.
Also there’s been no mention in this thread of the Raspberry Pi target. Is Xojo’s capability in this regard not pretty unique at present?
Fix old bugs vs add new gimmicks? I’m all for it, but I think the top priority for the company now, as stated at XDC, is to un-do the damage done by the New Framework and pull everything back together again. Tough pill to swallow, but it has to be done.
New guy here. And I just Ive just finished another exhaustive round of IDE evaluations and Xojo is easily the best platform I can find. Especially the Xojo Web License! To be able to build a client/server web app as easy as a desktop app is unheard of. (Not without paying runtime fees.) Plus if Im not mistaken, I dont have to actually buy a license until Im ready to deploy? Sounds almost too good to be true.
My point being if this Xojo Web License was more well know, there would be a LOT more new users in the Getting Started section AND thus more income for Xojo to hire additional programmers.
[quote=390667:@paul townsend]New guy here. And I just Ive just finished another exhaustive round of IDE evaluations and Xojo is easily the best platform I can find. Especially the Xojo Web License! To be able to build a client/server web app as easy as a desktop app is unheard of. (Not without paying runtime fees.) Plus if Im not mistaken, I dont have to actually buy a license until Im ready to deploy? Sounds almost too good to be true.
My point being if this Xojo Web License was more well know, there would be a LOT more new users in the Getting Started section AND thus more income for Xojo to hire additional programmers.[/quote]
For sure! By itself the Web Designer is nice and makes it easy to build useful web applications and Xojo has decent database access too. Couple that with some of the third-party controls and classes available for Xojo web and you have a professional web-based platform. Granted, its not as flexible as pure web code but definitely powerful in its own right!
No, you dont have to buy a license to debug and test but youll want to if you want to run outside the IDE. Its worth the $300 price tag. I love that I can create a standalone (no external web server required) or CGI.
Why not making Xojo open source? Open Source software has always magnetize professional developers to help make their beloved tools better. Even .NET is open source this days.
Xojo then can focus on developing new features while the community is helping with bugfixes. There are a lot of huge successfull projects out there practicing this. Also with tight business models behind. Loads of professional tools and companies had build their business model around a “community edition”.
In conclusion it could make Xojo more attractive to new developers and more trustworthy for bigger companies and the quality of the product can increase.
Just a thought
Because Xojo is a small for profit organization with a payroll employing few talented people. Having open sources projects is great, as a side part of your core business, but if you transform your core business in a open source project, you must have a rich sponsor having you as his pet project or your business will struggle to maintain itself alive, and I don’t see Xojo having a Bill Gates or a Larry Page sponsoring it anytime soon. A “community edition” demands your product being able to have a core part with the community “changing it’s direction” and an extended closed part licensed. You must be ready to give up on the full control of the process. I can’t see this occurring here.
They don’t need to make the full content open source. The compiler can stay closed source for instance. There are also some good license types where you can publish your code without losing the control about it.
It’s not about the license. Some “bad actor” could violate the license, compile a new IDE without licensing or a different public key, and done. Once its out there, its out there, the internet remembers everything.
You are right that Xojo might be able to find a way. Obviously they wouldn’t release the private key used for licensing. Plus, the IDE requires private plugins. If Xojo could find a way to make sure those plugins are not copied from the public released IDE, they’d have a path to open source without affecting their sales model. But that’s a challenge I don’t have an answer for.
Xojo must be open for “extensions”, not just the current basic plugin system. Like a better plug-in system, where Xojo users could write their own plugins in Xojo AND having access to “design time” properties and functions, so you could write the design time behavior of your component (those things are not included in the compiled product), so your components could respond “live” as WYSIWYG (e.g redraw with a new selected color, a changed image, add rows, size, etc) All this with a better palette of controls that you could manage as you wish (hide some controls, group some with a name, have named pages of them, and save a palette style and reuse it (“My most used”, “Full sets”, etc)). Xojo must have a way of packing such controls for distribution with a “import controls” option on the menu (not that copy this to that location and do…), some will sell those packs of controls, some will make many open source ones. This way, a community “extending” Xojo will grow immensely and call attention. But we are a bit far from this option by now.
You better write Some Xojo users so for the average Xojo user, this will change nothing. At better (worse ?), some people will create new features and make them on sale (and may private Xojo for that feature and the money that comes along).
In fact, only Geoff have a solution (or more solutions) and can choose the solution to follow or stay with the current one. Talking about how Xojo can evolve will go nowhere.
Read again, slowly and carefully. You repeat myself in part, but wrongly. And If you still think this way after reading it carefully, you should research other tools and communities and take a look how their palette of components works, who writes, how much cost many of them (tip: $0 for many). Them, after your homework, emit a new supported opinion. I, and many of us, always have contributed with few bits of helpful code, for free. And it’s clear, that complex or large pieces will be maintained and sold by professionals like MBS. Talking about the world out there is necessary, your reaction seems a prove of it to me.
Geoff’s opinions changes following the dynamics of the world and feedback. I’m not saying what he MUST do, but giving a feedback about a possible future to embrace. Embracing it, or following other paths, is his business; never said different.
This was the number one announcement for me from this year’s XDC, followed closely by the new prioritization model.
That’s already part of the roadmap. I have no idea when it will get implemented, but it’s in the plan.
That is a key difference currently between writing a plugin and simply providing a library. Plugins allow you to write design-time functionality. I assume this will continue with the proposed changes.