Today marks the 30th anniversary of founding of this company. It’s hard to believe that nearly half of my life has passed since then. I could not have imagined that I would still be doing this 30 years later. I frequently remind my kids that you can plan all you want but be prepared for things to change. My experience at Xojo is a perfect example of that: things have to change and adapt to survive.
That’s why Xojo is still here: relentless adaptation.
Back when Xojo was REALbasic, version 1.0 only supported MacOS 8/9 and the 68000 and PowerPC processors. Since then we have seen countless changes in the computer technology landscape. Classic MacOS, Windows NT, Windows 95, Internet Explorer 6, Early versions of GTK on Linux, diskettes, and spinning hard drives are now ancient technology.
Xojo itself has changed dramatically over time as well. Though the basic idea of it, that you should be able to quickly and easily both learn Xojo and build apps, has not changed. Some code from an example project back then would be recognizable to a Xojo user today. Assigning variables, conditional statements, loops, even many classes like Graphics, FolderItem, TextInputStream, would all look familiar. That said, almost everything else has changed:
- The IDE was originally written in C++. It is now written in Xojo.
- There entire Xojo framework was originally written in C++. Today it’s a big blend of languages including quite a bit of Xojo.
- It originally had a single pass compiler. The entire compilation process has been rewritten. It is a modern, two-pass system that uses LLVM as its backend.
- REALbasic v1 could only produce desktop apps for MacOS 8 and 9 running on 68000 and PowerPC processors. Today, Xojo supports x86 and ARM processors, desktop apps for Linux, MacOS and Windows, mobile apps for Android and iOS and web apps.
- The documentation was originally almost entirely in printed form. It cost $30, weighed 49 ounces (just over 3 lbs.) and we shipped it to you right from our office. Now, the documentation is all online.
- The way users reported bugs and made feature requests has changed several times over the years.
- The community formed in mailing lists, and occasional Xojo events, now exists on our online forum.
And that adaption continues. We improve the frameworks with each release. We have added the ability to build Libraries. We are working on making web apps more responsive. We are continuing our march towards updating the Windows framework to WinUI. We are making changes to the Xojo IDE so that you can use AI tools such as Anthropic’s Claude Code, Google’s Gemini Code Assist, and Open.AI’s Codex, which, coincidentally, was almost the name we chose for what is now Xojo.
Companies survive by adapting, and Xojo, Inc. is no exception. Over the years we’ve changed everything from offices, personnel, and policies. While the team has changed over the years, many members have been with the company a very long time. In the tech industry, the average turnover is 2 to 3 years. Over the last 30 years, our average turnover is 7 years. Counting current team members, however, it’s a whopping 16.6 years! And among the current engineering team, there are 136 person-years of development on Xojo. We started working out of my apartment, then my house and then into an office here in Austin, Texas. Over time, about half of us found we were working from home a lot, so we decided to go entirely remote in 2008. We have changed many of our internal policies to make Xojo a great place to work. Every member of the Xojo team works so well together that it makes coming to work every day genuinely rewarding.
In general, only about 5% of businesses last 30 years. In tech it’s closer to 1%. It’s an honor to be a member of the tech industry’s 1% club!
What drives all of us at Xojo is helping you turn what started as an idea, into reality. We couldn’t have done it without all the dedicated Xojo users. That some of you have been with us for the entire journey, so far, is especially gratifying.
On behalf of the entire team, thank you for making Xojo possible.
Geoff Perlman is the Founder and CEO of Xojo. When he’s not leading the Xojo team he can be found playing drums in Austin, Texas and spending time with his family.