There was talk about this at the Ask the Engineers session at XDC 2014 and it was revealed that it takes a long time for a new engineer to “get up to speed” on the product. New engineers aren’t even allowed to touch the code base their for at least six months – without a proper understanding of everything under the hood, it’d be much too dangerous for some to make a “simple” fix that turns out to cause a lot more problems than it solves – and that’s for someone like Norman who was a Xojo user for years before being hired by the company. For someone who doesn’t know anything about Xojo, it’d be even longer.
Another factor is that bringing on new employees takes time away from the other engineers to help the new guy (answer questions, explain things, train, etc.).
The bottom line is that throwing money at the problem isn’t necessarily the solution. It was insinuated that Xojo does frequently look at this, and if they feel like a new hire is the solution they’ll do it, but most of the time it’s more trouble than it’s worth.
Unless you are getting further and further in the hole. Then it’s time to cut losses and say we have to take a hit now and struggle for a bit instead of drown and die later.
I am myself dabbling with Livecode, noticeably because Xojo iOS is late to come and it is the nicest solution I have found. Frankly, if Xojo iOS remains vaporware, I will probably enjoy Livecode enough not to care
Surprisingly, though, their forum is extremely quiet as compared to this one. A few competent members and staff usually answer questions immediately and efficiently, but other participants are quite silent. One would expect 2 million users to be a little more visible and interaction more lively. I seriously doubt the number of users is true
Back to topic, I find it amusing that so often a similar issue is brought up with always the same suggestion “bring in more engineers”, like customers waiting in line at the market saying “Open another cash register”. Nevertheless, a lot of us know that internal friction increases as a team grows, and gains in productivity don’t follow the increase in team size.
I have placed very few but very carefully thought out and written feature requests. Maybe I am naive, but I hope sensible requests asked nicely will have more chance to be answered that screaming and yelling. Sometimes a “please” goes a much longer way than agressive criticism.
I’m sure Xojo does as other companies do and “does the math” on matters like these … investment vs. return. However, having said that, I have also seen far too often where companies become paralyzed over that “it takes too long to train the new guy” reason and NEVER hire when they should. That’s when Jeremy’s statement comes in to play: [quote=85182:@Jeremy Cowgar]Unless you are getting further and further in the hole. Then it’s time to cut losses and say we have to take a hit now and struggle for a bit instead of drown and die later.[/quote]
Not being privy to Xojo’s inner workings, I can only sit here and assume (trust? hope? pray?) that they are cognizant of that and are making the right decisions based on the information they have at hand.
I sat next to Geoff at dinner at the XDC and came away convinced that he knows what he’s doing with the company. I’ll admit that I was getting worried about Xojo before XDC, but I feel very comfortable with where they’re headed now. Give it time to play out.
As far as feature requests go, Xojo keeps their cards very close to the vest. It’s a resounding “no” until they suddenly announce the new feature. I think there is a good deal of wisdom in that, even if it is sometimes frustrating for us.
It definitely does help to be as specific and detailed as possible in your bug reports and feature requests. I agree with Brad that a lot of what’s in Feedback is simply rubbish.
Thanks, I am finding myself doing that more and more as I move further away from RS and on Xojo just about full-time now. But old habits die hard. I’m still not giving up, those keyboard shortcuts have been around for 20 years, they need to be fully functional and robust at some point IMO.
[quote=85242:@Don Lyttle]
… consider this an AMEN from the congregation[/quote]
But that’s not true for everyone. We’ve found that some coders prefer the keyboard and some prefer the mouse. One of the issues we have is the sheer number of shortcuts there are in Xojo as well as the fact that we need to avoid conflicts with the system on every platform where the IDE runs.
There have been quite a few studies and the majority of developers prefer shortcuts. That’s why editors such as Sublime, Textmate, Emacs, Vim all thrive in the developer community. We can map them in our head, smart are we Further… the presence of a shortcut does not take away the ability to execute that action via the mouse. So, it’s a win-win.
Conflicts? That’s why a shortcut mapping tool is essential.
Also, too many? This is a little pet-peve of mine, I hide the toolbar for space. I can’t even go forward and back. I have to enable the tool bar, use my mouse to click forward/back. The shortcut of Shift-Return doesn’t work on ElseIf, it also does not capitalize #EndIf correctly (bug reports on all of these filed a long time ago).
“Purgatory” is making a comeback, it gets used in a couple of TV shows now, i.e. Supernatural (which while not being religious, in the show God does exist). The most recent is “Sleepy Hollow”, where Ichabod Crane’s wife is trapped in purgatory, along with his arch nemesis.
Concur.[quote=85191:@Michel Bujardet]I am myself dabbling with Livecode, noticeably because Xojo iOS is late to come and it is the nicest solution I have found. Frankly, if Xojo iOS remains vaporware, I will probably enjoy Livecode enough not to care ;)[/quote]
I would suggest that you stop… Instead invest your time and money in learning Objective-C. IMHE LiveCode is more buggy than Xojo, and is incredibly limited and used to cost a heck of a lot more.
As you’re learning a new language, Objective-C isn’t going to be much harder than LiveCode… Not only will it give you much more control and flexibility, you’ll be able to use what you’ve learned in Xojo (for the desktop and iOS) through declares. This will pay off in the long run.
I’ve done this myself in the past with Xojo and have certainly had much better response from Xojo, and I think I’ve even seen some completed. The trick is the more thorough the request in detail, the easier it is for the engineers to understand exactly what it is you’re after.
It’s exactly the same as when you receive a one line e-mail from a customer “Your application crashes, fix it now”…
While we’re on the topic of Feature Requests, when you file them, please tell us what you are trying to accomplish as opposed to just “here’s what I want implemented.”
[quote=85319:@Sam Rowlands]Michel Bujardet I am myself dabbling with Livecode, noticeably because Xojo iOS is late to come and it is the nicest solution I have found. Frankly, if Xojo iOS remains vaporware, I will probably enjoy Livecode enough not to care
I would suggest that you stop… Instead invest your time and money in learning Objective-C. IMHE LiveCode is more buggy than Xojo, and is incredibly limited and used to cost a heck of a lot more.
As you’re learning a new language, Objective-C isn’t going to be much harder than LiveCode… Not only will it give you much more control and flexibility, you’ll be able to use what you’ve learned in Xojo (for the desktop and iOS) through declares. This will pay off in the long run.[/quote]
I see that Objective C is much more powerful and stuff. Not to mention prestige for a programmer I honestly tried to learn Objective C and got a pile of books on my desk. Last time was two years ago and I spent a couple weeks trying to humbly go through “Programming in Objective C” with a deep sense of disgust but went on out of sense of duty. The rewards where meager and the pain intense. I found most of the books to lack didactic approach. Authors seem to neglect explaining elementary concepts that could help comprehension, to jump right away in esoteric code. Could not wrap my mind around this pile of unpalatable jargon. I am conscious admitting it makes me look like an idiot, but I have long passed the need to humiliate myself with tools I am not good at.
I started back in 1983 self taught with no master in programming, with my sole knowledge in electronics and mostly algebra. Sinclair Basic, Apple Basic and Basica where easy. I learned Z80 and 6202 machine language and kept a good memory of the Z80 instruction set for years. At every step of the way I was able to jump the hoops of logic. I even made “the Art of Programming” from Donal Knuth my holy book.
Maybe an old horse cannot learn new tricks ; Objective C simply does not print for me. I do not see how I could put it to use when it seems to insult me for the simplest things. Computers should be made for humans, not the other way around. Livecode maybe buggy, it respects my humanity.
On the Mac, I used cmd-r for (don’t remember what). Now, sometimes I have troubles because it is the OS shortcut for AirDrop.
I also used alt-tab to add tab in a TextArea (I use Tab to move between controls). I had to change that to cmd-esc (I do not recall why).
So, I love keyboard shortcut, but I understand the troubles.
At last, I used cmd-U to activate a box (to change the url), and found out I do not liked it: I usually (often) used cmL (and I do not know why). So, I changed the keyboard shortcut to cmd-L and now I am happy (I use it as if I use it since dark ages).
The Xojo community seems to be more focused on Xojo Inc’s present and future, their internal work and staff policies then what the Xojo software actually can do.
RunRev Ltd took the decision to make a community edition of their software LiveCode. The difference between their commercial version and community version is that You cannot protect Your intellectual property in the later. But You can fully compile and deploy solutions.
Many third-part vendors provide a dual license for their products, can be used in both version of LiveCode.
So hiring new engineer(s) is the solution for Xojo inc according to some people.
I wonder if those people realise the cost of hiring extra people. And how will those extra people weight on the license cost for the Xojo users? Are you willing to pay a lot more for your license? Are you willing to give up your free version for that extra engineer?
Don’t tell Xojo inc what to do or how to run their business. They are longer in business than most of us, so they perfectly know what to do. And using Xojo for our professional activities, it just works out fine for us despite the fact we have to find many workarounds for features who do not was as expected.
Less moaning and more creativity is the solution for this kind of problems.
[quote=85368:@Chris Verberne]Less moaning and more creativity is the solution for this kind of problems.
Now back to work again![/quote]
Yes, Mom … I’ll do it. And I’ll make my bed too. But I thought you told me that after I finished breakfast I could go on the Xojo Forum and bitch like hell??? You’re no fun anymore, Mom!
Further… the presence of a shortcut does not take away the ability to execute that action via the mouse. So, it’s a win-win.