But therein lies the rub – if they published “some kind of date line” and you made a commitment to a client based on that expectation, then it is your fault for making a commitment you can’t promise to deliver. And then you’d blame Xojo. As developers, we all know that sometimes plans have to change and priorities might change. Or things can just take longer to complete and be stable then you predicted earlier.
Realistically, you HAVE to make commitments based on what is available NOW. So for example if you need to promise an Android version this fall, you absolutely should consider another platform. IMHO.
Is Xojo the right tool for every job? Of course not – no tool is. But it is a very good tool for lots of different jobs. As always, you need to pick the right tool for the job, and have more than one tool in the toolbox. As they say: “If all you have is a hammer, every job looks like a nail.”
When your competitor presents a new function, you also present it: it is a question of avoiding as much as possible that your customers leave to the concurence.
A roadmap is a marketing document, not an engineering projection.
Waiting for a feature - whatever it is - is a bad idea, you risk becoming old before your expected function comes very late (if ever). This is valid for everything, throughout a lifetime.
Nice to see the direction of the product because it makes it clear where the future focus will be.
Seeing the lack of Windows love is very disappointing though.
Perhaps you would, but I certainly would not, I’ve been around way to long for that. But I expect something better than we are possibly doing something at some future date to keep me using the product for the long term… When you put a date to something it make it real and concentrates minds.
I started programming in the 70’s, so I’ve been around for to long myself. But putting a date on something can lead to false hopes or worse yet client commitments beyond your control. IMHO, then only thing you can reasonably use as any type of basis for expectations is something already in beta. And even then you need to consider where it is at the beta cycle.
For example, I think we can reasonably expect iOS 13 to be public by November and most likely by the end of September or so. But even Apple will sometimes announce things and then take way longer than expected to ship, or even cancel it, such as AirPower.
I use Xojo long term because of what it can already do for me now, not because of things listed on the roadmap.
Even if we gave you a date and had a 100% track record of delivering on those dates, you couldn’t be certain that any particular feature was suitable for your needs until you had thoroughly tested it. This makes making detailed promises to the ultimate end user of anything fraught with peril.
I think explaining this to that ultimate end user will make them realize that this is a boat we are all in together.
This is just a start and given that we have been some what transparent in the past, you already know much of what is on the roadmap. What you didn’t know is the order of things or that we had plans to address database connectivity.
Each month the roadmap will be reviewed and revised if necessary.
[quote=445907:@Mattias Sandström]Nice to see the direction of the product because it makes it clear where the future focus will be.
Seeing the lack of Windows love is very disappointing though.[/quote]
Remember that the roadmap is not every feature. It’s the big features that we also happen to be willing to discuss publicly. Is there something about Windows you feel is missing?
BTW, I’d just like to publicly thank @Hal Gumbert. It was a discussion that Hal and I had earlier this month that got me thinking we had perhaps over-corrected when we decided to be so private about our future plans and that perhaps there was a sweet spot somewhere in the middle.
Mainly a move to a modern managed runtime environment so the apps don’t look so dated. UWP would probably be the target since Windows 7’s support ends January 2020 and the only supported platform would be Windows 10 going forward. I guess much old stuff in Xojo’s Windows framework could be cleaned up by then.
Do you actually know what you want? You’ve contradicted yourself in this thread.
You want dates, and you want Xojo to keep to them but you know no-one can so you don’t make promises because you’ve been around for a long time.
So do you want some magical fairy date that can be kept even though Apple could drop something major tomorrow and push all dates back by 6-12 months? You want a definitive date so you can win a contract on a wish and prayer then moan that the target was slipped and you “lost” a large contract?
What the actual heck, build it in something that is available now, win the contract and be happy and in a while when you can do all that in Xojo, be even happier… I just don’t understand peoples inability to comprehend the issue.
Xojo don’t want to give dates because a) people moan when they slip b) they can’t keep to them because there’s things out of their control that can make them slip.
A roadmap of this type is perfect, it shows you what they are thinking about and what order things will hopefully appear in which in itself offers a simple timeline in that when x is released y should follow next so if you’re waiting for a feature, just wait for the one prior to drop then you know yours should be up next.
I’m over the moon that Geoff has finally seen the light about this high level roadmap, I’ve been wanting something like it for a long time, I’m actually looking forward to the releases to come.
Win32 Apps are as native as UWP ones in windows 10. Also, have you seen the market share of the UWP vs win32? The adoption rate? Even Microsoft is accepting UWP is almost dead. Win32 games will soon become available in the Windows Store and all the future plans of windows have Win32 apps in it.
If any new tecnology trend is worth of looking at, maybe Progressive Web Apps could be a future target, maybe part of xojo web.
I’ve been in recent discussion with some local makers concerning 64bit versus 32bit for ARM/SoC OSes and apps and I’ve finally caved to the fact that 64bit apps and OSes bring nothing to the table for low-cost ARM/SoC since the best of these only offers 4GB of accessible RAM which the GPU also consumes for its RAM.
I’ve done some tests on a few 64bit OSes for Pine64 boards and Raspberry PI 3 and 4 and, short of some larger memory fetches and puts, the performance difference between the two environments was negligible (< 2% at best). The only SoC that I’ve used where the 64bit difference was recognizable was the RockPRO64, but the OS versions for it are so unstable right now, the crashes defeat the potential usefulness at this point. I suspect that MS have realized that there are some things that just don’t need 64bit with multi-threading and the CPU and memory clock speeds being what they are.
However, I will admit that the 4GB Pi 4 B smokes most other boards in 32bit form currently.
[quote=445907:@Mattias Sandström]Nice to see the direction of the product because it makes it clear where the future focus will be.
Seeing the lack of Windows love is very disappointing though.[/quote]
+100 on this. I use Xojo for 100% Windows development and it would be good to see some love… but still happy to see the road map and the new web framework is intriguing.
I looked at this at one point and glad I just stayed with Xojo. Having seen MS promote a new technology the canning it due to poor market acceptance made me cautious. My decision turned out to be the correct one.
Came here after being abandoned by Microsoft (read x-VB6 developer). During the transition period we were tempted with SilverLight (now dead also) , .Net (not compatible across different release) etc. Now only use VS for C# / VC++ ; and even that for computing intensive application only. Very difficult to trust any technology promise from them anymore. XOJO’s published roadmap is good news. I sincerely think that good things are coming from XOJO in the near future. if not, they will not put it in writing.
There is a certain database RAD product in the Windows world which offers a really long and very comprehensive Roadmap - with dates no less!. Which is great. The only problem is that they never ever come close to hitting those dates. Currently they are still showing the Roadmap as “2018/2019”. They are always many months, if not years, behind their idealistic Roadmap projections. It’s kind of a joke. But, OTOH, they try. It’s still good to see their Roadmap even if their dates are hopelessly outdated! Likewise, it’s great that Xojo has put out a Roadmap even without dates. It does really help.
The only problem is that they never ever come close to hitting those dates
THIS is 100% why the roadmap needs to be the way it is
Dates are, at best, a guess esp the further into the future you go
