Xojo 2017 Survey Book Topics

Add-Ons
1

Hello Everyone,

Every year or so I ask the Xojo forum members to participate in a one-question survey on topics for the next book in the series I Wish I Knew…, and below are links to the two previous surveys.
2014 Book Survey
2015 Book Survey

You can view the Table Of Contents for books at: I Wish I Knew… Books

I would like to know what topics you would like to see in this years survey. Many books have been created from topics of the previous surveys. Many new and exciting releases are planned for Xojo which are from the 2016 XDC such as: 1) Writing Plugins with Xojo, 2) Andriod Apps, and 3) many other improvements.

Here is a list of existing topics that I think should be added to this survey:

  1. Game/animation programming
  2. Introduction to Database Business Applications
  3. Threads
  4. OpenOffice/Libre Office
  5. PowerPoint Windows OS
  6. InnoSetup Windows OS
  7. Databases for Web (MySQL)
  8. Listbox Control
  9. RegEx
  10. Socket programming
  11. MemoryBlock
  12. Xojo Script
  13. Irrlicht Game Engine
  14. Creating Beautiful GUI Design
  15. Component Object Model (COM)
  16. Sub Classing
  17. Recipe Book
  18. Sockets

At the end of the week (21 Jan 2017), I will put the suggestions together and then create a one-question-survey for the forum members to vote for their favourite topics. The voting lasts for another week and then I will post the results for everyone to view.

Thanks, and I am looking forward to your thoughts!

2

  1. Optimization topics, broken down into several sections.
    a) How to utilize multi-core processing efficiently.
    b) Optimizing graphics drawing for maximum performance.
    c) The fastest way of sharing data between functions and classes.
    d) The fastest way of loading and writing complex data structures.

  2. Animation programming - beyond using the system animation functions to move controls around.

  3. Creating Beautiful & Modern GUIs.

  4. Is related; business plan for selling software in 2017, what are the best bang for buck mechanisms for getting your application noticed?

3

I am starting to consider created games. For iOS, but any advice is welcome.

4

Maybe a series of introduction books for beginners?
Something you can give a newbie to learn Xojo.

5

Sam, I like the points that you suggested. Could I ask for a little more explanation on what is meant by buck mechanisms?

6

How he can buy ads to get most revenue from advertisement.

Another book topic could be Mac App Store, Windows App Store and Amazon App Store (or whatever else is available).

7

"best bang for buck " means
‘most efficient’
or
‘good value’
or
‘best results for a certain amount of effort’

8

Would this possibly be focus on how to make a game, such as the design, concepts, and gameplay? Is there a specific type of game that you are thinking about (Simulations, Adventure, Real-Time strategy, First Person Shooter, etc.). Or is this more of the general concepts on programming with the assumption that the programmer has figured out the details of the game?

Thanks for the good suggestion!

9

[quote=309909:@Jeff Tullin]"best bang for buck " means
‘most efficient’
or
‘good value’
or
‘best results for a certain amount of effort’[/quote]

Ahh, Ok, got it… thanks :slight_smile:

10

[quote=309895:@Christian Schmitz]Maybe a series of introduction books for beginners?
Something you can give a newbie to learn Xojo.[/quote]

Thanks Christian. Would this be assuming that the person reading the newbie book has not programmed before, or would this be for a newbie who is familiar with another programming language and wants to understand how to add Xojo to their list of known languages?

11

I’d be happy to be a content editor on this one :stuck_out_tongue:

Both please, people get mad at me when I tell them to go read the manual.

12

Yes, it would be more that.

13

[quote=309895:@Christian Schmitz]Maybe a series of introduction books for beginners?
Something you can give a newbie to learn Xojo.[/quote]

Can I add my 2¢ here ?

Unfortunately, I will have hard time to explain. Let me use the book writer’s image.

A book writer (roman, love story, scifi, historic, etc.), have to start with the book table of contents; in fact, the work start far before this step.

The work certainly start with what kind of book you want to write,
write a casting (names, who’s married or not, where the action runs, and so on)
followed by writing the fil rouge (framework): in a detective book, it will be who will (have been) killed, why (money, woman, etc.)… Where to get the data, how to check if the data are true (no urban legend in some books)…

For a software, one of the first things to consider is the target market, the target OS, time to write it, opex (did I already have the needed hardware / software, documentation, knowledge, etc.), is there similar software in the market and if so, why the software I will create will have sales, concurent adventages to help differenciations vs the one(s) on the market, etc.

All of what some say “boring” work o do far before starting to code the software.

14

Well, if I get a trainee, I need to give them some material to learn Xojo.
So a real tutorial which goes over 50+ pages to build an app from scratch and covers various aspects of programing or the IDE would be fantastic.

15

Hi Emile. If I understand correctly, this is much of the work that needs to be performed before starting to program with Xojo? Below are some of my steps that I use.

1) Strategy and Content – Working with the Client a. Competitor Analysis b. Customer Analysis c. Product Structure/Strategy d. Content Development 2) Wireframing and Prototyping – Start Using Xojo a. Wireframing b. Prototyping c. Testing/Iteration d. Development Planning 3) Execution and Analytics – Create full Xojo program a. Coordination with UI Designer(s) b. Coordination with Developer(s) c. Tracking Goals and Integration d. Analysis and Iteration

Steps 1a to 1d do not require a computer, steps 2a to 2d are the starting steps for a layout which uses a small amount of Xojo, and steps 3a to 3d requires much work with Xojo. Would a possible book be with steps 1a-d and 2a-d?

Edit: Or would the book go through a complete program from all steps in 1, 2, and 3?

16

[quote=309930:@Christian Schmitz]Well, if I get a trainee, I need to give them some material to learn Xojo.
So a real tutorial which goes over 50+ pages to build an app from scratch and covers various aspects of programing or the IDE would be fantastic.[/quote]

I understand now. A training manual which provides the basics, and when there are more complicated questions then they can read and understand forum conversations and the Xojo development website.

Thanks Christian.

17

Hi Eugene,

I think your rephrasing is near to perfect.

Your question:
I realize that a book with only the preliminaries may not be very appealing (this may or may not be true; quantity may be the problem here). But, it goes wonderfully in the collection title (I whish…).

A good answer can be… What about this be Part I and Part II will explain how to build the application (taken as an example) ?

Unfortunately, I do not know how to make Part I enjoyable. Part II is the coding part, so it will be a bit more enjoyable (from a newbie point of view). May I suggest some basic application like a small word processor. That seems complex, but a true step by step tutorial will end with a nice application, but most important, Joe Newbie (the reader) will learn many, many things. I can compare that small word processor with WordPad (TextEdit on macOS): extremely simple, but powerful enough and most important: the reader learns a lot of stuff. The resulting application is not important per se: the importance is in the learning curve.

Before being able to write, a newbie (child or adult) have to learn to draw the characters and to understand what each character means. This first part is at most, boring; but since the beginning of the writings (the scribus era), things are done that way and we never find a better way.

A real advertising of the books goal (PArt I and Part II) is also part of the process: if the available page numbers allows that, you can add a simple part to just do that (still as an example): explain why Book part I is as important as Book part II like the two sides of the same coin.

I do not think that a third part explaining where to get information (LR, Forum, SQLite.com, xDevLibrary, much more like GUI Development Guidelines, etc.) is not a viable option (except as a gift in a Book Part I and Book Part II bundle).

Nota: my original advice is an expansion of Christian suggestion. Always gives credits to were its due (to whom is due).

18

[quote=309938:@Eugene Dakin]I understand now. A training manual which provides the basics, and when there are more complicated questions then they can read and understand forum conversations and the Xojo development website.

Thanks Christian.[/quote]
IF you do this make sure the book DELIBERATELY has errors so you have to teach them how to debug errors
You have no idea how often we get questions / bug reports where the conversation includes “Debugger? Theres a debugger? How do I use that ?”

19

A very good point - I can only guess that the Xojo team receives many questions about the debugger. I am sure that in my earlier days that I was also guilty of this blush.

20

More that people are surprised that it even exists and/or have no idea how to use it
Being able to create applications is a nice skill but knowing how to debug code is just as crucial