To renew or not to renew, that's a hard one

I was an avid Xojo user when it was still REALbasic and do on-and-off development with Xojo ever since.

Last year I purchased a license after a longer break to realize a web project. During the course of my work I filed many bug reports, some of them were addressed in the last Bug bash. But I was also very outspoken about the fact that Xojo is allowed to have so many bugs in the Web platform in the first place.

Yesterday I had to do some work on the same web project and tomorrow my license will expire. Luckily, right on time, there is new a store wide sale.

But, will that be enough to convince me to invest in a product that has a staggering 1,198 reproducible bugs listed in its bug tracker? The total number of open issues is 6 times higher.

The list of bugs is growing fast and I have a hard time to ascertain how Xojo’s small engineering team, which is probably very busy adding yet another target (Android), will ever be able to move Xojo into a state where I will not discover a bug every ~15 hours of actual dev time and need external libraries like Graffitisuite or MBS Plugins to even get basic tasks done (like parsing a Database connection URL).

So my question is, is Xojo still worth shelling out +/- 700$ a year while I feel that I am involuntarily being used as a beta tester all the time? Considering that plus the fact that Xojo in 2023 still basically has a non-existent ecosystem of open source libraries or even a package manager. The language itself barely evolves and common programming paradigms, like lambda functions or concurrency, are nowhere on any roadmap to be seen.

Yet, Xojo will soon have more target platforms than active users who actually want to use it.

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The answer is personal needs. In any case if you have to ask the most likely answer is no. Wait until the trial version works as you want.

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Oh for gods sake. You know that every development tool out there has bugs right? I noticed that you didn’t go to Apple’s site and Microsoft’s site and quote numbers of how many outstanding bugs they have.

So your license expires tomorrow, so what. Your license is perpetual, expiring tomorrow means you can still use the current one next week to finish your project.

Edit: remove what I really wanted to say.

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You have a license for 2023r1, so you can use this for development of your web project.

If version 2023r2 comes along and you like the improvements, then you can buy a new license.

The discount of course incentives you to buy today, but then the license starts today.

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Regarding this:

You should learn regex. That’s built in.

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I’m guessing you don’t use GitHub. There are lots of open source Xojo projects up there.

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20% discount? As my brother always tells me, you get a 100% discount if you don’t buy it :wink:

Lucky you :slight_smile:

1198 bugs? Hehe oops, I put 214 of those in, not so many of late though.

Only you can answer this, there’s really little point posting about it as things seems to take years and years to sink in or change. If you can throw the 20% away, wait until you need to renew and use the current version for now then renew at full price or at whatever price they do when android comes out. If you just need web and need a new version for some reason then grab the web only edition?

Remember, if you wait two months to renew at full price then you’ve lost nothing and have saved more money than the 20%

Hmmm, I appreciate that you’re upset but saying things like this isn’t fun for the people that work at Xojo and have mouths to feed.

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I renewed for two years and took advantage of the sale. Waiting for a stable bug-free development tool is a fool’s errand. Think of all the development time you could accomplish while waiting :slight_smile:

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I love this product so much that I’ve named my first born XOJO :green_heart:

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What percentage are API 2?

-Karen

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make a feature matrix of what fit best for your projects/needs.

the downside of xojo are this many bugs, thats true.
and that “new” bugs are not removed in a reasonable time frame.

You know that every development tool out there has bugs right?

more or less, fundamental or minor.

Using the latest stable one. It depends on breaking things on the go and regressions. I never jump in right away until a good inspection and waiting for reports. When Direct2D and 64bit were introduced, for example, I skipped 2 entire years waiting enough stabilization. It was insane.

If the current one is stable, you should renew to continue receiving the novelties like new OS compatibility, new Controls, new features, etc. If it is unstable… I don’t want to break things. The current one is very good, and hope R2 being better.

Do you want to get on the boat with the new Web2 and Android versions?
Buy the license for another year.

Do you want to use it to learn?
The license you have is enough. Only the news that comes out affects you.

Do you have a business, or do you use XOJO professionally?
It would be a sin not to update your tool.

Anyway, this is my point of view.

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It doesn’t have to be difficult. Decide which one of the two feels most suitable to you.

Pessimist: Delay renewing until there is something of tangible benefit to your workflow or the products you create.

Optimist: Continue renewing, Xojo will surely accommodate your needs at some point.

It’s not like we buy a new Mac every year, hoping Apple will change course and work on addressing the ever increasing pile of bugs in the macOS, right?

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Right, that’s why my latest computer purchase was not a Mac.

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Beyond the purpose of asking, it’s also useful for new users who might want to read facts about Xojo.

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I don’t agree with that.

To me many answers do not really give a real picture of Xojo.

I also use Xojo since 2008. In this period I created 100+ Tools and about 10 major programs for all
Systems Xojo gives (ok, except IOS). Did I run into problems? Yes. Could they be solved asking Xojo
or plugin devs or the community? YES, ALL of them! So what?

No program will ever get’s a 100% consumer satisfaction. Some decisions from Xojo I don’t like, but
most I do. And I always get a propper reaction when asking (stupid) questions. I have other memories
with the “big players”.

So the only advise I would give a (new) user is to try and ask specific questions, a solution will come.

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What did you get instead? Are you happy with it?

I did a post last year; What do I need to use Xojo WEB2? - #2 by Michel_Bujardet

And is a shame that even the most basic functionality like dialogs are not working as expected and 9 months later, the “Reproducible” bugs dont even have an Assignee…

So, for me is not worth it. If web 1 is working fine, I dont see the point in spending hundreds and invest a lot of time converting apps just to release a web app with a bugy UX…

As Greg pointed out, the current release model makes discounts (also automatic renews) pointless. You can use the current license and with the current average release rate of the last 5 years, you can “save” up to 40% just by skiping ONE release

And with that 40% “save”, you get eventually 40% less progress from the Xojo team. If you want progress:, you invest…

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