Spotlight On posts focus on Xojo community members. We’ll use this space to tell the stories of people using Xojo, share amazing Xojo-made apps and spread awareness of community resources. If you have an app, a project or a person you want to see featured in Spotlight On, tell us about it!
You don’t need to have “developer” in your job title to build apps with Xojo and this month’s Spotlight On highlights the work of Enrique Contreras, a high school teacher and Assistant Principal in Madrid, Spain who exemplifies this idea. Enrique is an educator first and foremost, he uses his enthusiasm for programming and Xojo to help his school, its professors and students succeed. With his Xojo educational license, Enrique created a planning and gradebook app for himself and other professors at his high school. His latest program builds upon that success, adding the ability to handle everything from documentation and printing to school management. When he’s not overseeing the studies of the students at his school or teaching French, he goes back to his favorite hobby: programming with Xojo.
Q&A with Enrique Contreras
Mac, Windows or Linux?
I’d rather say “Commodore Amiga” because I grew up with the Amiga computer. But soon after, my father bought my first PC, so my answer is Windows.
What do you wish more people would ask/talk to you about when it comes to what you do with Xojo?
I wish people ask me for Xojo itself: “How can you do this or that in Xojo?” Make it more known, because people who are not developers can create incredible things in very easy steps with Xojo.
How would you explain your most recent project to a 5 year old?
The same way I explain it to my secondary students; “Look, I am very proud of it: this is not an Excel spreadsheet. I’ve created my own app just for grading you in the better way!”
What’s next on your “Learn Next” list?
I would like to learn how to deploy my Xojo software in the administrative-secured server of “EducaMadrid”. This is specifically a closed-secured platform for teachers and students in the Spanish Madrid area.
What is something that has surprised you about coding in the last 10 years?
In the last 10 years, or the last 20 I’d say… the basics of programming remain the same. Nowadays, you can do incredible things with a bunch of robust programming languages, but at the bottom of every single language, you always have the same logical sentences, same things under different names: if, then, var, for, loop, etc.
Xojo isn’t the only tool in your kit. What is a piece of software more people should know about?
IMHO, everyone must know the basics of databases, mostly SQL (or mySQL). Data is very precious, so is the way you store it, you search for it, and mostly the way you manage and use it.
What is something you worked on recently that you want to talk about?
Nowadays, as Assistant Principal of a high school, I’m working in new software capable of managing everything related to documentation, papers, documents, printing. My goal is to write a program very specialized for my school that combines all the current programs in one app.
When did you start using Xojo?
Almost 10 years ago, under the name of RealBasic. At the time, I was looking for a language- easy to understand and easy to deploy. And this is how I discovered such a gem as Xojo.
How did you find Xojo?
By chance: First, I learnt by myself a bit of Basic/TurboBasic on my old PC; then VisualBasic. But I was looking for something more powerful and easy at the same time. The “logical” answer was RealBasic at that time.
What did you first build with Xojo?
Good question! In fact, my first program in Xojo was a random number picker. At that time, my brother was the manager of a computer shop and he asked me if I could make a simple program capable of randomly picking a number among a short delimited range of numbers. It was Christmastime 2015 and he wanted to giveaway a small computer to his employees in a raffle.
What’s your biggest Xojo success?
My best (and currently only) achievement with Xojo is my program “ACDP” (Agenda y Cuaderno del Profesor/Planner and Teacher Gradebook; PTGB in English) I have been using it since 2018! And I’m very proud of it. Currently ACDP is a desktop Windows app that relies on the Excel interoperability provided by the Xojo classes in order to handle Excel documents. It relies on the provided SQLite class to store and retrieve all the information captured by the app.
What are you building with Xojo now?
Now, I have two projects in mind: one, easier and modest, which is a cooperative schedule program for my school. The second one, more complex and ambitious, consist of managing all the documentation of my high school.
Do you use Xojo for your hobbies?
Xojo is ONE of my favourite hobbies, indeed! Many people like playing videogames … me, I love programming in Xojo. It is addictive, in the healthy sense of the word.
Thank you to Enrique Contreras for answering questions and sharing his Xojo projects with the community.
If you have an app, a project or a person you want to see featured in Spotlight On, tell us about it!