Tag Archives: Personal

The Advantages of a Job versus Consulting

Posted on by

For the past 20 years readers have heard me talk about consulting and the joys and challenges therein.  Those blog posts aren’t wrong but for the past nine months I’ve had a full time job and my perspective has changed.  Here are some things I’ve learned.

I’ve told friends that I have a ‘real job’ now.  In reality, it’s way easier than consulting.  While I was consulting I was always worried about where the next consulting project was going to come from.  I didn’t realize how much pressure and anxiety that introduced.  As my youngest child (now a junior in college) will tell you we talked about work (i.e. consulting) ALL the time because it was an all-consuming thing.  We either talked about the current jobs, the jobs we were bidding on, or whatever hassles we were dealing with in regards to employees, insurance, cash-flow, etc.

With a full time job I don’t have to worry about the next gig.  Now I just worry about the next project my bosses give me.  Well, it’s not worry, really, since we have an awesome team of developers but it’s more intrigue and wondering how deep of a rabbit hole I’m going to go down since we deal with some pretty arcane stuff.  Not worrying about the future is a huge relief (as much as anyone can feel safe during a global pandemic).

Along with the full time job I have all the benefits that is tough with your own business.  A steady income is an incredibly good thing since as a consultant you’re either rolling in dough (figuratively) or have none.  Having a 401k is a big relief as I go into the later part of my career.  Paid time off is another huge benefit since as a consultant you don’t make any money if you’re not working.  I don’t have to worry about health insurance now either and as a small business you get totally screwed over when it comes to health insurance in the United States.  As a business it was our number one expense after payroll and it was a nightmare to deal with since practically every year there was a 20% (or more) increase in premiums unless you switch plans which is a huge pain in the ass since you worry about is the new plan the same or worse than the old one and how will it affect you and your employees.

I’ve always been thankful that Carol was wiling and able to do the HR, payroll, accounting, and contract side of the business as well as being an awesome project manager and data goddess (DBA) on top of all that.  Without that help there’s no way I would have lasted 20 years.  Me as a developer will always tell the client that ‘sure we can do that’ but it’s helpful to have the project manager say, ‘yeah, and this is how much extra it will cost.’  Someone has to be the bad guy with the client and it’s nice when it’s not you.

Consulting is very much a ‘drinking from the firehose’ type business.  You either have too much work or not enough.  There is no such thing as the perfect amount of business.  As a solo developer there’s only so many hours you can work so then you start thinking of having employees.  We were extremely lucky to have found the employees we had since most lasted five or more years and were exceptionally productive.  But dealing with employees is hard when it comes to hiring and firing (we had a handful that didn’t last 90 days for one reason or another).  They all had their strengths and weaknesses and some you can put in front of a client and others are less than ideal. Some are great at debugging and others are not. Some are great a developing new code and others are not.

I always felt that our employees were an asset to us.  I always tried to hire people that were smarter than I am (some would say this is a very low bar, I know) and some competitors were aghast that I would ‘train my future competitors’.  Having a good consulting employee is not the same as creating a future competitor.  If they were going to have their own business they’d have had one already.  I guess that’s always been one of my beefs is that people think that having a business is the same as having a job and they are far from the same (see all the arguments above).

Do I have as much time flexibility in my job as I did consulting?  It’s really hard to say during a pandemic since all of the robotics programs I’ve been a part of are on (hopefully) temporary hiatus, the music festivals we usually go to were cancelled, and we aren’t meeting in-person with the groups we usually do, and travel was restricted for most of 2020.  The company I’m with has people scattered across four timezones so there is a lot of flexibility in when people start and end work and we’re all remote anyway.  As long as the work gets done no one minds much when you start and stop or if you work weekends (I have quite a few coworkers that are being their kids teacher at this point and keeping them going via Zoom with their school teachers – honestly I have no idea how they do it).  But honestly, as a consultant I worked most weekends and did a fair amount of work at night too so I think I’m working a more reasonable and balanced workload now than when I was a consultant.

Consulting was fun and rewarding.  It has perks that are amazing if you have a good accountant and follow the rules and have multiple people that can help split the work load and responsibilities and you’re willing to put in the work (like writing blogs and developing products!).  The pain of consulting is oftentimes not worth the hassle.  Before you leave your full time job for consulting think long and hard about doing it and maybe think about all the negatives.  Maybe give me a shout to try and talk you out of it.

Wanted: Xojo ‘Snow Leopard’ Release

Posted on by

Ever since Xojo adopted the Rapid Release Model (RRM) there have been critics. The critics said that it was leading to a perpetual state of beta software. I’ve always felt that the assessment was a little too harsh but I have definitely come around to that thinking.

In my many years of Xojo consulting I played the “what version of Xojo do I dare use for this client?” For a few years the Windows drawing issues meant that one of the early Xojo 2017 releases was my gold standard. And then finally Xojo 2019 R1.1 was my gold standard for all projects. I haven’t fully tested it but I’m really hoping (and frankly needing) that Xojo 2020 R1.1 eventually becomes my new gold standard.

The shear number of new things between 2019 R1.1 and 2020 R1.1 is staggering. People are still finding bugs in API 2.0 that haven’t been addressed. And yet Xojo is on their way to major updates to iOS and adding Android, adding Helpers and who knows what else.

Feedback is broken for intents and purposes. The top 20 list is all feature requests with the exception of two items that are most definitely bug reports. One is a Web 1.0 WebListbox issue that might as well be closed now and the other is a Xojo framework issue with ParseJSON and that might as well be closed now too with API 2.0 out. Everything else on that list would be freaking awesome, but only if the rest of Xojo was more stable and less buggy.

Monday a Feedback Report 61895 titled “Do a Xojo ‘Snow Leopard’ version that focuses solely on bug fixes and performance improvements. For those that don’t know the reference, Apple released a version of Mac OS X named Snow Leopard that did very little in the way of new features but worked on stability, speed, and bug fixes. It’s still considered one of the better OS’s that Apple ever made. I think in large part because they kept their promise of fixing stuff and not adding major new features.

Anyway, back to our Feedback Report. Within hours it had climbed to number 13 on the top 20 list and then was closed by Geoff as “Not Actionable’. This seems intentionally obtuse on his part because I know several long-term developers that have advocated for such a release for a long time. I even wrote about it in June of 2018 https://www.bkeeneybriefs.com/2018/06/xojo-and-the-rapid-release-model/. So this is not a new idea.

Look, I’m a developer, too. Working on bugs is no fun (especially for obscure ones) so I get, from a developers perspective, that new features are way more fun and exciting. But just once I’d love to get a Xojo that didn’t have a bunch of new classes, API, targets, etc. just so that the existing things we have becomes better, more stable, less error prone, and an IDE that is faster and more efficient.

Is this idea perfect? Oh heck no. I realize that bug fix releases might not attract new users. But it does make people like me happier and a happier Xojo developer is a good thing. I think marketing should be able to make hay with the sunshine that results from a better product.

Is that too much to ask?

What About Bob?

Posted on by

A number of recent forum threads and blog posts have invoked my name.  I mostly didn’t respond to those individual posts and decided to write one big post.

I’m still in the community:  Sort of.  I took a full-time job just before the pandemic hit the US and I’m so thankful that I’m able to provide for my family in a stable and hopefully long-term position.  Xojo consulting wasn’t keeping me very active and that’s even after it was just me doing the Xojo consulting.  You can chalk this up to a variety of issues that all revolve around Xojo.

Consulting leads just don’t show up like they used to:  At the height of BKS we had 4 full-time developers and a DBA/Project manager.  That means we picked up at least two big projects a year and a ton of smaller filler projects.  Those just don’t show up any more.  Do cross-platform apps now use a different language?  Is it because of Xojo quality issues?  Is it because of bad press?  Is it because I expressed my displeasure with Xojo?  A global pandemic that greatly accelerated a looming recession? Sure.  All of the above probably.  But I know other consultants that are in the same boat though a select few have flourished during this period too.  So maybe it’s an ebb and flow thing.

The whole API 2 fiasco:  API 2 is of dubious quality for existing projects.  If you have a couple hundred thousands of lines of code in classic API code you simply do not have the time or resources to convert.  What’s worse, is that I have several Windows apps that crash (as in poof!  No crash log or catchable exception) in any version of Xojo that uses API 2.  This one thing keeps me using 2019 R1.1.  (Update, this was resolved in one app that used WebKit for the HTMLViewer renderer and is marked as fixed for 2020 R1.1).

If you want proof of this statement ask anyone at Xojo when the entire IDE is going to be converted to API 2.  That alone is a multi-year project and I don’t care what Geoff says – they are NOT eating their own dog food when it comes to API 2.  They decided that it wasn’t worth converting to API 2 for existing work.  That says volumes if you ask me.

More targets less engineers:  Xojo used to have only desktop targets which meant that everyone on the development team focused on desktop.  Since then they’ve lost/fired engineers and created more targets.  How much time and effort has gone into iOS, and now Android development?  You simply cannot tell me that they are adequately staffed to handle all of these targets.  Web has been a multi-year project as has Android.  In the meantime they touched every single class in Xojo for API 2.0 and given the results I’m not sure the platform as a whole is better for it.  As far as I know they have no *dedicated* compiler engineer and that seems to be an issue with 64-bit debugging.

Locking of threads and banning of users on the forums:  It’s their sandbox and their tools so they can do whatever they want with their forum.  But it sure seems like a lot of threads get locked (by non-Xojo employees!) and posts get deleted rather quickly.  Look, I get it, they want to present a consistent look to the world but the almost fanatical control of the forum feels…desperate. Banning of users should be the very last resort.

The comical stance that professional developers are not the core users of Xojo:  Xojo will deny this, of course, but I’ve been around for 20 years in this community.  I’ve seen a lot of developers come and go.  There’s the hey, this product is very cool phase.  Then there’s the now I’m going to do something hard with this tool phase.  Some get through it.  Many don’t.  With the many dealings with former Xojo users not once have I heard of Xojo contacting them on why they left.  

Hell, maybe the users that know Xojo the best are the hardest ones to please.  Maybe it *is* easier to find new buyers than to appease existing customers for renewals.  But it’s the existing users that are the best marketing tool of the company in my opinion.  How many times have I promoted Xojo over the past 20 years?  Many people accused me of working for Xojo and being a shill.

Trust is Earned:  One of the things that we, as developers, need is trust in our tool of choice.  For many developers that have been around a long time that trust was earned a decade ago.  The API 2 fiasco and the many new targets has eroded and downright sheared off the goodwill for many of Xojo’s most ardent supporters.  I don’t know how the company recovers from those hits without being brutally honest with users and themselves.  They simply cannot be everything to everybody.  With Swift getting ported to Windows and .NET Maui on the horizon, in addition to other tools that are making big strides in cross-platform development Xojo needs to be laser focused on quality releases or they might find themselves in the dustbin of history.  Earn back our trust and I think they’ll be rewarded.  Keep mucking around with the above issues and the future doesn’t look bright.  Again, in my opinion.

Where I’m at:  I’m still doing Xojo programming for a living.  I am not doing much consulting because I don’t desire to.  I’ve always tried to do the best for my clients and, frankly, Xojo is not living up to my expectations for my clients.  I think they’ve forgotten where they came from and what developers LOVED about the product.  I’m sure there are some people that find Xojo because of web apps or iOS but I can’t imagine it’s a lot of new users.  I could be wrong on that but I’ve wondered for many years who is Xojo’s audience.

My products, the ones I’m still selling, are getting minimal to no effort on my part simply because I’m not doing much consulting.  These products were things I used on a regular basis and with no consulting there’s no usage and no need to update.  I’m looking for homes for them because they deserve to have a developer that cares about them.  Some in the community have suggested open sourcing them and I can tell you right now there is no freaking way that’s going to happen.  No argument in the world is going to convince me otherwise so just stop sending me that recommendation.  I’m not asking for much (in my opinion) to get these products but perhaps that’s also indicative of how poor the Xojo 3rd party market is right now and an overall indicator of the health of Xojo.

I wish nothing but the best for Xojo.  This last year and half has soured my outlook to the point where I just can’t recommend it to anyone that’s serious about a commercial desktop applications.  I haven’t done a web project in well over a year and it’s been many years since I’ve done an iOS project in Xojo.  Without outstanding desktop support I’m left in limbo and wondering why the hell I keep renewing a license.

I know I’m not the only one with these thoughts and ideas.  Feel free to add comments below.  Please try to be respectful towards Xojo employees and each other.

Xojo 2019 Release 3.1

Posted on by

Last week Xojo 2019 Release 3.1 hit the internet.  This small bug fix release is a critical update and is recommended if you are using one of several areas.  Let’s get into the details.

One of my biggest issues of concern with API 2.0 is with a dangerous memory leak in the DatabaseRow class.  Doing practically anything with a database would quickly eat of RAM until it brought your machine to its knees.  R3.1 fixes this issue and also a memory leak when using ODBC.

A couple of iOS bug were fixed in this release.  R3.1 fixes a regression that caused iOSTextAreas to overflow their bounds when the border was set to None or Regular.  iOSView headers no longer show the previous view during the PushTo animation.  Xojo added the Operator_Compare to the ColorGroup so that it can be compared against a color value.

A number of API 2.0 bugs (besides the database bugs noted above were fixed):

  • TextArea.SelectionAlignment now accepts enum values.
  • String.IndexOf now properly matches its signature when you leave off the startPosition but include ComparisonOptions or Locale.
  • If an empty name is used in the TimeZone constructor it will create an instance for the current timezone.
  • String.LastField now works
  • SerialConnection.Connect no longer raises an Error event.  It now throws an exception as expected.
  • DateTime no longer reports a Nil TimeZone

In Windows, having multiple HTMLViewers on a window (or multiple windows) no longer continuously switches focus.

In MacOS setting FolderItem.Visible no longer inverts the visibility.

The Plugin SDK now lets you access the new API 2.0 string extension methods.

The burning question that everyone wants to know:  Do I think that Release 3.1 is safe to use?  The answer is a definite maybe.  Let me explain.

I’m still not sold on API 2.0 being completely stable.  A few additional bug reports were filed after R3.1 was released including a GenerateJSON bug with Variant arrays (Feedback 58940), and a DatabaseColumn.Value bug where value always returns a String value (Feedback 58934) where it should be bringing back the correct data type.  Both of these bugs are marked as fixed and ready for 2020 R1.  Unfortunately we don’t know when R1 will drop but if I was a betting person I’d guess sometime in March either the week of Xojo.Connect or maybe even later.

If you’re using Classic API then I believe R3.1 is safe(ish).  I’ve experienced some oddities in the Constants Editor but I can’t replicate an issue where it reverts the value with no intervention on my part.  The new ColorGroup Editor for iOS projects just seems sluggish but that may just be the result of the new ColorPicker.  If you’re doing iOS projects you pretty much have to use R3.1 to stay up to date.

I have migrated a few projects to R3.1.  A few that I’ve attempted have had compilation issues and I haven’t gone back to determine if they were plugin or code issues and frankly I’m not that big of a hurry to upgrade.  R1.1 is still working fine for me and I don’t need the hassles involved with major Xojo upgrades.

So my advice is to test the heck out of your projects if you upgrade to R3.1.  I say this every release (because its true) but if you’re using API 2.0 then massive testing is a necessity. I put it this way: do you want to bet your company and/or product on trusting a new API?

What is your experience with 2019 R3.1?  Is it worthy?  Are you holding back and, if so, why?

Why Do People Leave Xojo?

Posted on by

I’ve been a member of the Xojo community for nearly twenty years.  In that time I’ve seen a lot of people join the community, become fantastic contributors, and then suddenly leave the community.  There are a lot of reasons developers would leave the community but I thought I’d capture some of them.

Xojo scratches an itch and if the developer no longer has the need to scratch that itch they use a tool that scratches their next itch.  Xojo is great for cross-platform applications but certainly less so if you need only a Mac or only a Windows application.  Xojo’s strength is cross-platform which means compromises in abilities and controls so I can understand people wanting a pure Windows or MacOS application.  Apple and Microsoft have large developer communities that are attractive.

The Rapid Release Program held much promise when it was introduced many years ago.  Xojo went from two big monolithic releases a year to three, four or more releases per year.  Sure, Xojo fixes a ton of stuff in each release but they also seem to break stuff in each release.  I know we have a list of verboten releases for various platforms and it gives the impression of a perpetual beta status for Xojo.  I have been a big fan of releases that are almost all bug fixes with no new features but those are pretty rare.

Xojo is a modern object oriented language and is quite powerful but it’s not a popular language.  Many developers have never heard of Xojo.  There is no standards committee that adds features to the language and the language itself is closed source.  If there was a standards committee I suspect there would be some serious language additions done sooner rather than later.  It certainly would have given much more forethought into API 2.0 and how it would affect the existing user base and the documentation done long before any coding started.

Xojo isn’t like any other development tool I’ve ever used.  It’s great that it doesn’t allow a developer to make a stupid mistake when declaring a method.  It forces you to use the Xojo IDE user interface to do everything from creating methods, declaring properties, constants, enums, etc.  I’ve never used another developer tool that does this.  Xojo pretty much forces you to use it the way they want you to rather than what most other languages do with a text editor.  This makes it easier for beginners but if I’m being honest it’s a drag for someone like me that (usually) knows what they are doing.  Forcing developers into the Xojo-way of doing things makes the IDE seem like a toy at times.  It’s certainly slower.

Change does not happen quickly with Xojo.  It has a small development staff and I’m always amazed at how much they get done.  But it means that it can take an incredibly long time for things to change and become stable.  The transition to 64-bit was a huge multi-year project.  iOS was a huge multi-year project.  Web 2.0 and Android have become huge multi-year projects (with still no idea on when we’ll see them).  The new targets might be good eventually but history shows it will take a few releases before they’re really stable.  Meanwhile older targets seem to get significantly less attention.

Xojo isn’t really a business development tool.  When I say business I mean databases and reports because that’s practically every application we’ve done for the past twenty years.  Doing database development in Xojo is NOT Rapid Application Development (RAD) because you have to deal with everything database related yourself and the IDE and compiler give you zero help.  Reports are simplistic and aren’t exceptionally powerful and there’s no way for an end user to create or edit reports.  There’s a reason why BKeeney Software has its own database Object Relation Model (ORM) classes and reporting tools and classes because we have to use them in nearly every project we do for clients.

In addition to all that it’s really missing some things that business users need.  The TextArea control has pitiful RTF support, there is no built-in calendar, date, or time controls.  The built-in grid (Listbox) is more powerful than many people give it credit for but cannot hold native controls and can be very slow with large data sets.  There is no PDF read or write support either.  There are 3rd party options for all of these things but something lightweight would go a long way to supporting new business users.

These are a few of my thoughts.  What am I missing about developers that leave Xojo?  And is there a way to stop them from moving away from Xojo?  What are they doing to?

Xojo 2019 Release 3

Posted on by

Xojo 2019 Release 3 hit the internet today.  It’s only been three weeks since R2 was released and while this release has a number of bug fixes that are important this release is mostly about iOS.

R3 introduces a new ColorGroup class that will eventually come to all targets but for now it’s only available for iOS.  The ColorGroup has its own editor and allows the developer to set or choose colors they want to use.  You can choose Single, Dual, or Named colors.  I’m not entirely sure the point of the Single color, but Dual allows you to change a single color based on Light or Dark mode, and then there is the Named option.  

I feel that the Named option is the more valuable of the settings as it allows you to select what type of ‘color’ you’re using and allow to use, or modify the default colors in Light or Dark Mode.  For example, if I simply wanted to use the default colors of an iOSLabel I can select the ColorGroup from a new popup in the Inspector.  The control then will automatically use the Label color.  But if I want to override the defaults I can do so here for both Light and Dark modes.

This has the promise to help Xojo developers that are supporting Light and Dark Modes in their applications.  Since it’s currently for iOS only and I’m not actively working on an iOS project I can’t speak to its effectiveness and usefulness in coding.  I feel that the ColorGroup editor was slow to respond to color picker changes.  If you have some firsthand knowledge of the ColorGroup in action please leave a comment below.

The iOSTextArea control has a new Border Style and Border Color properties that allow you to create rectangle and rounded borders.  SF Symbols can be retrieved by the iOS framework using the iOSImage.SystemImage shared method.  The iOSRectangle now supports Blur effects.

After iOS there are number of new additions and changes that are part of the API 2.0 work.  If you are interested please read the release notes.  I am not actively using API 2.0 in any projects so these changes don’t mean anything to me yet.

Some Windows bug fixes:  The Draw Caution/Note/Stop icons are updated to the newer look for Windows Vista and later.  The app now terminates when the system sends a shutdown message (like when an installer is trying to update the app).  The GroupBox no longer draws funny when the caption font size is different than the default.

Some Linux bug fixes:  Changing the Label Text Color no longer leaks memory.  Clipping the listbox graphics in the CelLTextPaint or CellBackgroundPaint now works as expected.

With iOS Dark Mode out of the way, hopefully this means that 2020 R1 will have the long awaited Web 2.0.  My gut feeling is that Web 2.0 won’t be released until Xojo.Connect at the end of March and even then it might be only in beta form.  Web 2.0 is a complete rewrite from the ground up that’s been underway for a while.  Maybe I’m wrong but experience says they’ll want something big and flashy to show off.  Of course I also expect more from Android but I still expect that to be in alpha and nowhere near ready for release.

R3 is mainly an iOS release for Dark Mode and some changes for API 2.0 and then mostly bug fixes.  As always, before using you should read the release notes and then thoroughly test your application before issuing any releases.

RAD Studio vs Xojo

Posted on by

In my quest to find a Xojo alternative I came across RAD Studio https://www.embarcadero.com/products/rad-studio that is owned by Embarcadero.  RAD Studio can work with C++ or Delphi (object Pascal) and build for Windows 32 and 64-bit, MacOS 32 and 64-bit, Linux, Android, and iOS depending up on the license.  They also have a Community Edition that can build for Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS but is free until company revenue reaches $5,000 or you get to 5 developers.

The RAD Studio IDE is Windows only even though it will allow live debugging into the other target environments.  For my testing I was running the IDE using Parallels 15 in Coherence Mode running Windows 10 64-bit.  The VM resides on an external SSD via Thunderbolt 2.  I found the environment to be responsive despite being in the VM environment.

During installation it asks if you want C++ or Delphi for MacOS, Windows 32 bit Windows 64 bit, Linux, Android and iOS.  I selected Win32 and MacOS.  It took a good 15 minutes to install.  You definitely need a large VM to do this.  I ran out of space on my VM and had to start over again after clearing up some space.

To start testing, I created a New Multi-Device application.  Doing a Hello World was simple enough.  Double click on the on the label in the Palette, or drag and drop onto the form.  Scroll down in the Object Inspector and change the Text property to “Hello World”.

At this point I’m ready to rock and hoping for the best.  Pressing the Run button runs the app and voila a Windows app with a window saying “Hello World” pops up.  Passes the first easy test.  But what about getting the Mac version going?

To set up for the Mac (or iOS, Android, Linux or even another Windows computer) you’ll have to install the Platform Assistant Server (paserver for short).  Paserver is a command-line application that you install on Windows, macOS, and Linux so that RAD Studio can connect and do its thing.

I had to read through the help file to figure out how to do this.  PAServer20.0.pkg is located in C:\Program Files (x86)\Embarcadero\Studio\20.0\PAServer and you copy it to the Mac side to install it.  The PAServer installer is using a code signing certificate that’s expired but it’s easy enough to work around.  The installer puts two applications in your Applications folder:  PAServer-20.0 and PAServerManager.  But for now we’re only concerned with the PAServer-20.0 application.  Go ahead and double-click to start it.

This opens the Terminal and the first thing it asks you for is a Connection Profile password.  I set it to blank for ease of setup.  It automatically opens port 64211 and a Mac security prompt immediately pops up asking if I want to allow incoming connections.

Going back into RAD Studio if I go to the project listing that shows my targets and I select Properties from macOS 64-bit I can setup my paserver now.  Select which SDK to use (Mac 64-bit), then input the TCP address of the Mac.  Test the connection and then select OK.  A bunch of files get copied over to the Mac side.

Trying to debug run the application on the Mac side generates an error.  Module not found:  dccosx64260.dll  After contacting the sales rep for help it appears that I had version 10.3 Update 2 and the fix for this problem was in Update 3.  Maybe I just missed something in the myriad of menu’s but I never did find an “Update” in the application.  I had to go to their website and search for updates and download an updater.  The updater then proceeded to uninstall the previous version and then proceeded to give me the default settings (not what I’m looking for).  It seems that the installer is pretty stupid.  But it installs.

This is really where my review should end.  After spending a number of hours trying to get this working I was unable to actually see a Mac app running.  Despite updating the entire RAD Studio (twice) and update paserver I could never get any of the demo apps to run on the Mac.  I know this works since I saw an Embarcardaro  engineer do it.  I’m sure it’s something I’ve done wrong but I figure if I can’t figure it out in a couple of days of messing with it then it’s not a trivial issue.  It was very frustrating.

Initial thoughts on the IDE:  This is a very typical 90’s looking MDI Windows application with one big overall window with various smaller windows inside of it.  I find it to be very busy but not awful.  I can live with it.  I have to remind myself that I’m a spoiled Mac user and I expect ‘pretty’ and functional UI from every application.

The Projects list shows all of the available targets and seems pretty straightforward.  This window disappeared on me once and the only way I found to get back to it once reopen the project.  I’m sure there’s some menu command to get it back – I just couldn’t find it.

The Object Inspector is listed alphabetically and not grouped into functional groups.  It has two tabs, Properties that shows the properties and Events which shows the available events.  Double clicking on a control, like a Button, automatically drops you into the Code Editor and into the Action event.  All code for a form or library is available as a complete text file rather than the way Xojo presents it to the user in a singular fashion (i.e. you get to see one method, property, or event at a time regardless of your coding skill level.

Here’s where things got really confusing for me.  A multi-device project has one library (FMX) whereas a Windows-only project could use that one or one called VCL.  Then there’s the choice of what language to use C++ versus Delphi.  I was really confused on how to even figure out how to do a simple message box on the click event.  I don’t see this as a huge problem as it’s common with learning any new framework so it’s just a matter of finding the right documentation and doing some reading.  But it is a little concerning that I wasn’t able to find this readily.  It was frustrating.

Code signing is built-in for all target types.  For Mac deployment (assuming you can get it working) has built-in Notarization but it should be noted that you have to have a Mac and use paserver application to do code signing and notarization.

Another interesting thing is that you can have Windows, Mac, Linux targets all in one project file.  That’s not too much different than Xojo but what’s also interesting is that you can have Android and iOS targets as well.  The form editor gives you a simulation of what the UI looks like native to that platform.  I’ll be honest, it’s not a great simulation but it’s enough for you to get the gist of how it will look.  Of course, it’s convenient that you can reuse code amongst all of the targets in the same project.

During a demo with a sales rep and engineer I asked if the Mac controls were native.  They said they were but I can say with 100% certainty that the standard tab control in RAD Studio is not using the standard Mac tab control (that looks like segmented buttons centered on the page).  So I wonder about the veracity of this claim.  I could never verify this as i was unable to get a Mac app running on my machine.

RAD Studio has considerably more built-in controls than Xojo.  It really puts Xojo’s control library to shame.  It has everything to get going without having to jump to the 3rd party market.  However, when you do need something not provided (or that needs more features) there is a window to find them.  Simply go to the Tools->GetIt Package Manager menu option and use the search field to find what you need.  Additional filters allow you to see all, free, already purchased items and so on.  Need a PDF viewer, reporting tool, or advanced grid?  It’s in the list along with details about it and it has a convenient Install button right there.

RAD Studio is more expensive than Xojo but it does things that Xojo cannot currently do (Android for example).  To create macOS, Windows, Android, and iOS applications it costs $2540 for the first year and that includes all major updates, hot fixes and ongoing maintenance of previous releases, and 3 developer support incidents.  The Enterprise license allows you to do client/server databases, build for Linux, and build REST API applications for $4217.

In many ways, RAD Studio is what I wish Xojo was striving for.  It has a definite “we’re serious” feel to it.  The 3rd party integration is really nice.  The documentation is very expansive and relatively easy to find things although as I noted above I had issues figuring out how to do a simple message box.  It is nice to see that they have hot fixes available rather than having to wait for a major update.

For a company that touts its cross-platform development capabilities I find it kind of funny that they don’t have a Linux or Mac version of their IDE.  If they did I think they’d learn a few things about making Mac applications in making their IDE truly cross-platform.

The fact that I’ve struggled to find answers to installation issues says that it’s not an easy language and IDE to learn.  I suspect that having dual languages (C++ and Delphi) along with multiple UI libraries makes getting started much tougher than it needs to be.  Getting the cross-platform applications working seems to be finicky and while I’m sure it works I threw my hands up in frustration.  

Yes, I’m spoiled because the Xojo IDE (mostly) works the same on Mac, Windows, and Linux and compiles for the other platforms without needing to run a special app on the target platform (iOS requires a Mac but that’s an Apple restriction).  While it’s true that there have been hiccups with API 2.0 the language is still undeniably Xojo and the Language Reference is decent with working code examples.  Where Xojo is deficient is in default controls (like Date, Time, Calendar) and there is zero 3rd party controls/libraries discoverability in the Xojo IDE.

If you have a different experience with RAD Studio I’d love to hear from you.  Are you doing macOS and iOS development with it? Did I do a fair review (keep in mind I’m coming from a Xojo)?

Comparing Lazarus to Xojo

Posted on by

In my search for Xojo alternatives I was pointed to Lazarus https://www.lazarus-ide.org which is a cross-platform IDE that uses a Delphi-compatible language (i.e. object Pascal). I was pretty happy to see that it has a Mac version of the IDE and I will freely admit that I prefer to work on MacOS for a variety of reasons. Among them is usually ease of installation and Lazarus completely fails on this count in my opinion.

Let’s start with installation. The Lazarus website takes you to a SourceForge repository that has three downloads. fpc is the compiler, command line tools and non-visual components. fpcsrc is the sources of fpc and its packages and you need that for code browsing. And then finally there is the lazarus IDE itself with visual components and help files.

First issue is that none of the Package files are code signed which means you automatically have to work around Apple’s security. Not hard but still it doesn’t give you warm fuzzies right off the bat. I forget which step made me do this but I had to upgrade to the latest version of Xcode and install the Xcode command line tools.

Then there was the issue that the Lazarus downloads doesn’t included a Mac version that will run on newer Mac systems. So you end up going to the Free Pascal Compiler repo on SourceForge to get it to install.

Finally, you get to the point where the Lazarus IDE installs and then you get to the configuration screen. As you can the FPC sources can’t be found. But wait, wasn’t that part of the big three downloads I did to begin with?

In the long run no amount of reinstalling or internet searching could solve this problem. There does happen to be an entry in the ComboBox at /usr/local/share/fpcsrc and when you use that option a dialog warning you “Without the proper FPC source code browsing and completion will be very limited.” But it lets you ignore it and actually open the IDE. For now we’ll ignore that the debugger doesn’t appear to exist either.

A blank project appears including a blank form (Form1). The component library window is spread across the top of the window with 15 tabs to break it up. In the Standard tab double click on the TLabel adds it to the form. From there you can drag the control to the location of your choice.

Things go very downhill from here. The label is selected and the eight handles appear and the mouse cursor changes when hovering over them. One would think that you can simply grab the handle to resize the control. Alas, I could not with the label even though I could with the other controls. I couldn’t even change its width from the properties list.

The properties list is pretty standard. All of the properties are listed in alphabetical order which I can live with but I definitely appreciate the grouping that Xojo does (although I still prefer the older Real Studio properties list to the Xojo Inspector). Logical groupings make life easier in a properties list.

A tab control on the properties list also shows the available events for the control. If you click on the right side of the event I immediately get an error “Error: include file not found ‘typshrdh.inc'”. Um…sure. Anyway, at this point I can’t do much more without getting these setup properly.

After spending a couple of hours over the course of three days I’ve given up. My Google-Foo is pretty strong but I keep getting nowhere. The directions I’ve found are pretty minimal and I’ve done what they say I should be doing to no avail.

All of this tells me several things. The lack of documentation, particularly for MacOS, tells me that that it’s not well maintained for MacOS and I don’t think it’s used by Mac developers very much. And this is long before I get into evaluating the language and libraries that are available for it.

For ease of installation and getting that first Hello World application up and running Xojo is by far the clear winner. Look, I don’t expect an open-source project to be as easy to setup as a commercial tool so perhaps it’s not a fair evaluation. But it is one of my criteria because I have clients that take over development of their projects after we do the initial work. So if I’m having these types of problems I can’t imagine a less skilled developer having any less.

If you’re using Lazarus on the Mac I’d love here from you. Drop me a line at support@bkeeney.com and perhaps we can get me past this hurdle so I can do a real evaluation of the tool.

Customers For Life

Posted on by

I highly recommend you read/watch this post: https://socialtriggers.com/lose-customers-alienate-clients/

I’ve been doing consulting work for over sixteen years and a vast majority of it using Xojo. During my time with my own clients I’ve tried real hard to keep them happy because I’ve always known that happy customers come back. Finding new clients takes a lot of effort.

I know I’m not the least expensive Xojo consultant out there and I’m certainly not the most expensive either. Our billing rates reflect what we feel is a good value. If our rates are too high for a prospective client I’m okay with not getting their business because it’s not worth it to me to compromise on that (and I’ve pointed them to other developers that I believe could help them). Sometimes they come back later and sometimes they don’t.

The post I linked to talks about getting ‘Customers For Life’. I’m happy to say that we’ve had some of the same consulting clients for well over ten years. I try to make them feel appreciated and that we listen to their concerns. When things go wrong we try to make it right. Some clients have left and I hope they’re happy with the new developer they decided to use. But a lot of them stayed and that makes me very happy.

As the post said it’s not all that hard to keep a customer. All you have to show is that you have their best interests at heart. As Maya Angelou said, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

How does this all relate to the general theme of my blog? Well, it’s no secret that I’ve been unhappy with Xojo recently. I’ve felt for many years that Xojo doesn’t court people like me (consultants and 3rd party developers) with much fervor. I’ve generally been okay with that because the product works well for what I do for my customers and if they’re happy I’m happy.

The whole fiasco with API 2.0 has left me feeling rung out and unappreciated. Many of the beta testers gave their opinion and concerns about API 2.0 very early in the R2 beta and those concerns were either ignored or dismissed. Those concerns have since been confirmed by the 3rd party developers.

If you had asked me a year ago would I be this mad at Xojo? I’d say, not a chance. After all I’ve been their customer for a long time. I’d hate to add up all the money I’ve paid them for licenses, consulting leads, and conferences over that period not to mention the number of blog posts, the many hours to create training videos, and in general promoting their product. Obviously helping them has helped my business. I’d like to think my work has helped them too.

So what happens when they lose a customer for life? We’re going to find out, I guess. I’m not going away any time soon since I’m not going to abandon my consulting clients but rather than renewing annually like I’ve done for many years I believe I’ll wait until I’m forced to upgrade for whatever reason, or they release a version I can use.

I’ll still blog about the product because that’s what I do and I’ll continue to update our Xojo products because we use them too (converting to API 2.0 is still up in the air for now). Will I start looking at alternatives to Xojo? Yes because they’ve made me feel like I’m unimportant to them. They don’t want customers for life they only seem to want new Xojo developers.

Finding an alternative to Xojo won’t be easy. Despite its warts it’s still a pretty unique product. There are lots of alternatives that don’t do something that Xojo already does, but the flip side is that there are products that do some things way better than Xojo.

Over the upcoming months I’ll start letting you know what I’ve been looking at and why. It might be illuminating and it might just end up being that I stick with Xojo because I just don’t find an alternative (I doubt this but it’s a possibility). I’m looking at the overall package from the IDE, to the language, to the 3rd party market, to the consulting market. It’s a big task.

Could Xojo win me back? Anything’s a possibility. Heck, I want to be excited about the product again. I need it to succeed for my clients to succeed. But for now, I’m satisfied with 2019 R1 and looking for alternatives.

XDC 2019 Is Almost Here!

Posted on by

The Xojo Developers Conference (XDC) is just around the corner.  In less than two weeks Xojo developers from around the world will gather in Miami to talk Xojo for three full days.  The speakers have sent in their slides and gotten feedback from Xojo and flight and hotel reservations made.

This is my favorite part of the year!  Really.  BKeeney Software has been around for nearly 18 years and in that time I’ve gone to many Xojo Developers Conferences including those sponsored by Xojo, sponsored by Monkeybread Software, and even held a few I helped host with the defunct Xojo developers user group.  

Many of the developers that attend are my friends.  Many more are colleagues, and competitors.  Some are current and old clients.  Some of those clients I met at XDC looking for developers for their project since there will be no greater concentration of Xojo developers on the planet!

You’d think that with as many developers conferences under my belt there would be nothing new to learn.  I disagree since Xojo is always morphing into the next phase of its existence.  When I started, 68k Mac apps were transitioning to PowerPC.  They added Windows and Linux targets.  They added Cocoa for MacOS, 64-bit builds for Mac, Windows, and Linux, the ability to create web applications, Raspberry Pi apps, and mobile applications for iOS.  

I expect this year we’ll learn a lot more about Xojo for Android which will be a significant new target and make iOS that much more relevant with Xojo.  We’ll learn about InterOps that aims to make adding libraries much easier for iOS, MacOS, and Android.  And I’m sure we’ll see a lot about Web 2.0 that will make Xojo web applications more powerful and more robust.

At the end of the week, it’s always sad to go home.  The bonds you make while sitting across the table from someone at a meal, or over drinks at the end of the day, is something that you can’t get in the forums, email, or via videos from the conference.  Don’t get me wrong, the Xojo forum is one of the friendliest developers places I’ve ever experienced, but there is something truly powerful about chatting with people and being able to read their body language and talk about their developer experiences that far outweighs the convenience of the electronic venues.

If you have the means I highly recommend making it to XDC.  It’s well worth it.  You’ll get to meet some awesome people, learn a bunch of new things, probably see some alpha or beta of new features, and overall have a good time with your extended Xojo family.

If you’re going and we haven’t formally met, please feel free to stop me and introduce yourself.  Remind me how you came to find me and what products, if any, you use.  Tell me what features you like, or don’t like.  Just say hi and then go talk to the many other Xojo developers there – you might just find friends for life.

Of course I’ll blog about the keynote and the cool new things that I see at the conference.  See you in Miami!