Xojo Productivity Issues - "Xojo Pro"

Good point.

It’s important not to conflate the marketing term with a designation of accreditation. RB had a “pro” license too. It wasn’t even the top version. I’ve been programming in xojo/RB for 10 years but I rarely consider myself a pro. Especially at the end of a project when hunting down an obscure intermittent bug.

[quote=11752:@Dave S]Well truth be told… I do not own a “PRO” license… I’m a professional enough developer to be able to use the lowly desktop version to produce VERY professional applications (thank you very much)… I’ve been in this industry for almost 40 years now…

And for what it is worth, I was the 3rd most active contributor on the previous RealStudio forum… and that being said, I will continue to offer my expertise in both Xojo, and programming techniques in general whenever I can. But it will be done in the “public” forum areas, where EVERYONE can benefit.[/quote]
This brings up one of the issues I felt was a detriment to the ‘Pro’ forum - by posting there, you have limited the pool of users who can assist you, or otherwise participate in the discussion, to those who are able to post there. If a user can help you to answer your issue, but they don’t have a Pro license, they can’t do so. And, since the Pro license is mainly a ‘bundle’ of different available packages, I don’t see any issues that would apply specifically to those with a Pro license that wouldn’t also apply to others who don’t.

Me too and, yeah, if someone thinks he’s a “Pro” then he starts missing that the world had turned and the formerly “Non-Pros” are the real “Pros” now. This is a continuing learning from each other. What sense makes a closed “Elite-Only-Knowledge”?

Brad: As I remember, Jeremy didn’t start a thread about dogs behavior.
To be ‘British’ as a German can be: Isn’t it?
(And beside, I’m one of your customers)

That has always been your mind set it seems to me…

The RB community developed to be the great helpful community it is (or was) precisely because that element was largely missing… people earned respect for their contributions not their license or ‘professional’ status.

I may not be a “pro” but I have been using the product for 12 years and have deployed multiple applications for general all the places I’ve worked…

Before I got involved with RB that I wrote most of the software routinely used in producing and stocking products at that employer, and added extensive entirely new functionality to a VAX based LIMS (laboratory Information Management system)…

So yes I an a hobbyist in that my jobs never officially involved coding, and I don’t code every day (but do go through stretches days of 4-6 + hrs/day)… And i don’t know what the future will hold… I don’t see Xojo as just a fun side thing…

I am not interested in testosterone soaked Alpha dog mentality… I think it hurts the community and will hurt Xojo the more it is fostered and that is why the Xojo Pro forum is an issue. I think the lack of that has probably helped some become ‘pros’.

Guys and gals, take my opinions for what they are worth. I will tell you that there are a few people here who can be extremely helpful to you very quickly who aren’t going to spend the time wading though everything. That’s a fact.

Take the current thread on the NUG about thread safety. If I’ve counted right, maybe 3 people really get the issue. A lot of others are contributing noise at best, bad info more likely. Would it be valuable to you for those who understand the issue to want to contribute definitively on it despite all the noise and solve your thread problem if you have one? Find a way to eliminate the noise. The Pro channel looks to me to be the best mechanism proposed so far for doing so.

I think they’re getting grief on this because we can all read what’s there, but only “pros” can contribute. It’s like some would prefer that it just be completely private. So there’s no way for everyone to learn from the discussions there.

Not a popular opinion, I know, but I’m more about getting to the meat of things than being popular.

[quote=11780:@DnD Admin]Brad: As I remember, Jeremy didn’t start a thread about dogs behavior.
To be ‘British’ as a German can be: Isn’t it?
(And beside, I’m one of your customers)
[/quote]

And I can tell you that there is exactly one guy in this community (not me, BTW) who is anywhere near breaking even financially on third party tools and plugins. Developing and sharing the best knowledge is a lot of work, and the payoff is not where it may seem. Anyway, all I’m trying to do here is let you guys in on where I think you’ll find the best discussions and the asking price is likely a bargain with many other benefits. YMMV.

I actually started the thread to contribute some a few feedback items adding to the Pro discussion. I wish I wouldn’t have mentioned anything about not being a pro :slight_smile:

It’s simply about the level of license that you purchase for the product. There are such stratification for almost every development tool I use of platform large and small. It has nothing to do with whether you’re a “Pro” developer, but rather if you own the Pro license level.

If you want access to the KLM VIP lounge in Amsterdam, you don’t get it by purchasing an economy class ticket.

Well, when they announced that there would be a Pro License-only forum I said it would cause hurt feelings. I think this thread just proved my point.

The Pro Forum is not intended to be a place to discuss issues like the post that started this one

Its really intended to be “Pro specific” issues and the original post was definitely not “Pro specific” since it affects everyone with the release version

Bob: I read your blog a few days ago and fully agreed. This will hurt feelings, at least of newcomers. Feeling like someone below the ‘Alpha-Dogs’ and been treaded like a ‘noise to be eliminated’ can’t be the right way, IMHO.

Well, I own a Pro license but don’t consider myself a pro by any standards or stretch of the imagination. I see the Pro forum, but to be honest, I feel silly posting anything in that forum because 1) it is readable by everyone, 2) most of my questions will never be on a pro-level (whatever that means). Given that 1) is true, it makes no difference if I post it on the non-pro forums or the pro forum. So… really, what is the point of the Pro forum other than a silly marketing gimmick.

I own the Pro license because I don’t know what my clients would want next. I am in favor of getting rid of this Pro forum altogether. The only reason I can see the need for its existence is that anything posted in the Pro forum will have a faster response from the Xojo staff for pointers or work-arounds to Pro customers’ questions (even if they have already been asked a week, month, years ago somewhere else in the other forums).

It’s nothing more than a marketing ploy to generate additional revenue.

You may as well just introduce another variant called “Xojo turbo-pro” in which you get free entry to the next conference and a dip in Geoff’s swimming pool once a year.

Do i see people that do add additional value added services, forum contributions,3rd plugins and services spending all there time in the Pro-only forum. Bob Keeney included - No i don’t believe so.

The current majority of those currently and happily having the ability to compile/Build a Xojo application have been transitioned one way or another either by (renewal/for free) etc.

I very much doubt that since the release of Xojo there has been a “dramatic turn in up sales”. The Reality is IMHO that Xojo is a nothing much more than name change, A new IDE and several bug fixes.

Only time will tell how things pan out moving forward.

Should I pay by Visa or American Express?

[quote=11822:@DnD Admin]Bob: I read your blog a few days ago and fully agreed. This will hurt feelings, at least of newcomers. Feeling like someone below the ‘Alpha-Dogs’ and been treaded like a ‘noise to be eliminated’ can’t be the right way, IMHO.
[/quote]

My apologies for hurting your feelings, customer of mine, whoever you are. I guess if I were to sum this up, I’d PAY to be part of a forum where the silly cynicism about others’ intentions is kept to a minimum and contributors share real knowledge. I’m more and more convinced it would be me talking to myself. Whatevers…

To me the major problem with the “PRO Forum” is quite simple.

Somebody posts a legit question in the Pro Forum, and forum user without a “Pro” license reads that question, and just so happens to know the answer… guess what… the OP loses out, because the person who has an answer is unable to communicate it to them

This forum should be about Peer Support, trading of ideas, techniques, work-arounds, and programming in general.

Is there noise? sure… more know due the the new-ness of Xojo… but I think in a month or three this will settle down to be like the previous forum… where (my opinion) the noise ratio was not that bad

I think that the Getting Started forum and General forums are great. There may need to be one named something like Advanced. Will there be noise in all three forums? Yup. There is no getting around that. Noise was suggested as being wrong here in this thread, and it may be but one in this industry needs to quickly learn how to filter the noise or they will never be successful. For example, I’ve had some horrid down right wrong and dangerous advice from pro’s. Are pro’s bad? Nope. Are newbies bad? Nope, are the rest of us bad? Nope. Do we give wrong advice sometimes? Sure. Are we always right? Nope.

This is exactly why I think this is a non-issue: I seriously doubt anyone will be posting questions to the Pro forum. In fact, I can’t think of a topic that would require communication from others who have purchased the “pro” license exclusively, so that forum will likely be seldom, if ever, used.

Brad:
I see, we both have a different point of view but you shouldn’t mix things up:

  1. You didn’t hurt my feelings.
  2. I’m a “Pro”-Customer.

Fair enough “DnD Admin”. My bad misinterpreting.