In the last few days, my social media and t’other development forums have blown up with developers frustrated at Apple for breaking SwiftUI with the latest OS update. I know that Xojo is seeing this too.
When talking about what other tools, I don’t Xojo been discussed at all, I only see Electron.
This presents Xojo an opportunity; I suggest Xojo reach out to some of these developers and offer them a FREE copy of Pro. Maybe even offer to pay them for some time to experiment with Xojo, see what they can create. Also to understand what they can’t create, why they can’t create and to fix it so that they can.
If Xojo can get a couple of well recognized Mac Devs on board, people will talking about Xojo and not Electron.
@Sam_Rowlands if you happen to have any links available for conversations about these new SwiftUI breaking changes / issues, I’d be interested in reading them. I’ve given up most social media, and use forums such as this one to keep up with the tech I am working on.
Although this is great for keeping myself from being distracted (and disgusted haha), I do end up missing out on news found on Facebook, Twitter, etc.
The problem here is that, for both of us, I think it’s SwiftUI within Mac-idiom Catalyst, which is kind of a niche within a niche, and it feels like only Steve and me are using it…
I find it interesting that from all the quotes listed on Michael’s page, poopooing SwiftUI, you choose to use the one that makes it seem like SwiftUI’s problems are edge cases.
But poopooing SwiftUI isn’t my intention, my point was that no-one is mentioning Xojo as a capable x-platform or Mac development tool.
Something that I feel Xojo may wish to investigate, try to understand why respected members of the Mac community don’t think about Xojo, and make some positive changes that at least bring Xojo into conversations like these.
The two writing the complaints on the Twitter thread came to the conclusion that the problem is with Catalyst - which puts that thread somewhat in perspective.
I think this is a great (and inexpensive, from Xojo’s perspective) idea, @Sam_Rowlands
Way back (early 1980s), my elementary school received grants to buy a bunch of Apple II computers, and a few years later, the first Macs. Not many - just 5 or 6 computers in the library for kids to learn LOGO on.
Apple flew my 4th grade teacher out to Cupertino during the summer, and taught him how to use and fix them. They created dozens of lifetime mac users for minimal cost, and this was one small elementary school in rural Vermont. As I understand it, this was something they did all over the US.
When I’m looking for freelancers to do coding for us, typically it’s in C, to make a DLL or library I can use from within Xojo. When I tell them I’m using Xojo for the front end, the response is almost universally …crickets. Followed by a lot of explaining on my end.
This seems like a real opportunity for Xojo to grow its base, and sometimes all it takes is a few well placed, enthusiastic, and well-regarded people to talk about it a few times in the right places. I think the technical term for those people is “influencers” these days, but that word makes my skin crawl.
You mean people like Bob Keeney, Hal Gumbert, Alain Bailleul, Tim Dietrich, etc?
Or the “Xojo evangelists” like Ulrich Bogun and Javier Menendez?
You have been on the forum since 2014, so you should know what happened … what makes you (and all those liking your post) think things would be different?
You have to be a LOT more specific with how and what you want to do differently.
I’m not a developer by trade so I don’t spend a lot of time in other forums. I use Xojo, so this is the only real programming forum I look at. I have been here a while, but I don’t know what any of those folks have posted in other places.
I think what I’m talking about, and what the OP is talking about is getting people who don’t use Xojo and have influence outside the world of Xojo to try the product, see what it can do and spread the word outside of this forum, in places where lots of people who don’t know about Xojo will see it. If Xojo is an alternative to what people are suggesting is the only option to do something, then having someone who is respected on that forum mention it is worth something.
I tell people about Xojo whenever it’s relevant, and I’m pretty sure one or two folks have used it for projects based on my recommendations. For my needs, as someone who builds apps for in-house use, it’s basically the perfect tool to get the job done.
This is a simple, effective and well understood method for spreading the word about something that doesn’t get a lot of exposure to the outside world, and is worth trying. Why shoot down the idea?
Tim Dietrich and Hal Gumbert actually were VERY well known and trusted FileMaker developers. When FileMaker massively increased their price they tried Xojo and started to sing the praises of Xojo to their fellow Filemaker developers (and quite a few tried Xojo).
They also created very impressive large open source Xojo projects (like Xanadu, Aloe, etc) that were highly regarded and very helpful to the Xojo community.
So Xojo had exactly what you are proposing: Pro customers that showed what is possible with Xojo and spoke about it.
You should know how that ended.
So again: what changes are you proposing for this time round? Because doing the same and expecting a different outcome is considered a definition of madness.
I’ve talked to Tim many times about things we can do to make Xojo better. He’s always had great ideas. If you’d like to chat over Zoom some time, let me know.
