Xojo, even in its present buggy form, is yet a very powerfull application application.
I have to admitt, for myself the transition is also not easy and rather difficult. But at early june I renewed my Enterprise license again for one year and to be honest, despite the difficulties, I did not regret that one moment. At the 4th of June I installed Xojo and worked in it ever since, not even touching RealStudio one single time.
And now that seems to pays off. I became much more fluently in using Xojo and believe me there where many moments I was on the edge of giving up. But I didn’t and I am glad for that now.
I find the r2 version already much better than r1. For example “control arrays” works much better now they increment by 1. Using “folders” in the navigator to arrange my objects, make it much more clear. Still the navigator is a mess I admitt. But I am sure that under pressure of people like Bob Keeney, Christian Schmitz and many others, they will change it for the better. The whole navigator idea is good but they only have to change some things which are not working.
At first I also was frustrated with those big “Inspector” objects, however now I just initialise them in code. I use “Init_…” methods where I set those properties. Works faster for me and I find it easier to find things back.
The “Library” you can completely arrange it like it was with RealStudio except for custom objects, they are not showing in the library here. But that can be a bug too, I do not know. What I find very positive is that controls like “timers” are no longer be placed on the form itself but below in their own space. Makes a form layout much clearer.
There are already profesional applications developed and used by the use of Xojo. Let us not forget that Xojo itself is used for the development of Xojo itself. That proves that it works, not yet as expected nevertheless it works.
I am using Xojo since 2004 and for my purposes, I am happy with it. I write small administrational applications on demand. We also have to be willing to change our minds to a new way of thinking or doing things; And for many people, that is not an easy process which takes time. Just give yourself more time to adapt your way of thinking, just like i had to do with myself. When starting with Xojo I had exactly the same feeling as you, however I recognised my shortcoming and just adapted my way of doing things to the new Xojo. As humans, we are all so predictable.
So my advice to those people who are frustrated and are thinking of giving up is; “don’t give up, try to adapt to a new way of thinking/working and continue build your applications”. You will see, this method pays off in the long run. Hang on!!!