Although not a new trend in software development, rapid application development (
RAD for short) is again on the upswing. What is RAD? It’s all about creating software quickly. The technology world is
always changing rapidly and change only seems to accelerate. Being able to create your own software and easily adapt to changes is incredibly important to nearly every business.
To that end, more companies are wondering how they can improve the speed of their development. A large IT department can take months (or years) to write specifications, design architectures, develop, test and ship. It can sometimes be too much for the organization to sustain; and for some types of apps, it may be overkill.
One solution is to look at having smaller teams that work with RAD tools to create smaller, focused apps more quickly.
As it turns out, a tool like Xojo is a great match for companies looking to go to RAD.
Lots Of App Types
Odds are your app needs are going to span multiple platforms. Web application is a great way to easily distribute apps. Desktop apps are a necessity for speed and functionality. And there are more mobile devices in use than anything else. Why are you using separate tools to target all these platforms? Xojo can create apps for all these platforms.
Desktop Apps
Xojo has been creating desktop apps since 1998. These days, Xojo can create desktop apps for Windows, OS X and even Linux- all from the same source code! As more companies are starting to use OS X and Linux, having a tool for creating apps that can be used by everyone in your company can significantly save on costs.
Xojo desktop apps are native apps, compiled down to machine code. That means there are no other frameworks that need to be installed, making them easy to deploy.
Your development team can take advantage of Xojoâs object-oriented programming language and UI designer to create apps faster than you ever though possible. I often like to tell people you’ll have Xojo downloaded, installed and your first app created before you finishing installing other tools. Heck, Visual Studio 2015 is over 27GB!
Web Apps
Since 2010, Xojo also has been able to create web applications. But Xojo doesnât create simple HTML-based web apps. Xojo web apps are asynchronous and use a JavaScript framework, making it incredibly simple for you to create web apps that look and function like desktop apps. And you wonât have to learn a bunch of different and unrelated web app technologies. Xojo handles it all, but is not locked down so you can also interface to other JavaScript libraries if you want.
And to make deployment as simple as a single click, sign up for
Xojo Cloud web hosting to get fully managed, secure web app hosting as well as Xojo apps and MySQL and PostgreSQL databases.
iOS Apps
Xojo’s newest suported platform is iOS. In fact, Xojo might be the easiest way to create iOS apps. The layout editor and event-based programming model make creating iOS apps easier than ever. Of course, Xojo creates native, 64-bit iOS that are ready for distribution in the App Store, Enterprise Deployment or any of the
other options provided by Apple.
Industrial-Strength
- Works with source control systems such as Git and Subversion
- XojoUnit: Open-source Unit Testing Framework
- Lots of open-source projects are available
- Actively developed with quarterly updates
- Friendly, helpful user forum
- Comprehensive Developer Center
Xojo is free to use, so download it today and get started with RAD.