Yuck! It happens to everyone, from beginners to experienced developers: sometimes you’ll get stuck. Perhaps the code you’re working on just won’t do what you want or maybe you’re having trouble understanding code plucked from the internet. Talk to the duck. The rubber duck, that is. The term “rubber ducking” or “rubber duck debugging” is a software development technique where you explain the problem you are having to a rubber duck (or appropriate substitute). Often the act of explaining the problem to someone else, even if that someone is not real, can help you figure it out. It might be like inspiration struck.
Comments closedTag: Development
I recently watched this video from Computerphile on YouTube (one of my favorite channels). It demonstrates a simple bit-shift operation can generate amazing random strings of numbers. I thought I’d quickly convert it to Xojo.
Comments closedWith API 2.0, Xojo has taken the opportunity to transition to more consistent APIs, modernize frameworks when we can and generally prepare for the future so that you can continue to use Xojo to make great apps for a long time. We are excited about the future of Xojo and can’t wait to see the apps you create!
Comments closedBrent Simmons did an excellent job explaining why developers shouldn’t provide ETAs.
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Recently we changed the name of Xojo Enterprise to Xojo Pro Plus. This brought about a lot of questions. For users whose businesses rely on Xojo, upgrading to Xojo Pro Plus can be very beneficial. For everyone else in the community, this change doesn’t effect you or your Xojo license.
We offer a range of license types as well as ways for users to get additional help from us. But our help comes at an opportunity cost for us because if we are helping someone with their issue, we aren’t helping others at that time. Xojo Pro users get higher priority support than Xojo Desktop users, who get higher priority support than Xojo Lite users, who get higher priority support than those using Xojo for free. Xojo Pro Plus users get the highest priority support of all.
Here is what Xojo Pro Plus is, what it isn’t and what that means for you.
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I’ve spent most of my career developing custom software. I’ve worked as an in-house developer creating custom “line of business” solutions. I’ve worked for software development firms that provide custom software for clients. And I’ve primarily been a self-employed custom software developer since first going out on my own in early 2000. Today, a lot of the work that I’m doing involves developing custom software solutions using Xojo.
I’m often asked by other developers – some who are already using Xojo and some who are not – where the opportunities for Xojo developers are, and how to find them. I also occasionally see these types of questions posted on the Xojo forum by developers who want to use their knowledge of and passion for Xojo to start their own business. So I thought I’d share some of my experiences and observations.
Comments closedThere are low-code platforms that don’t provide ability to call directly into the operating system. Fortunately, Xojo does. Our vision for Xojo has always been to make the tool easy to learn and highly productive to develop applications, without sacrificing power when you need it.
Comments closedI started learning how to code as a teenager. Back then there weren’t very many programming languages. I remember BASIC, Pascal, Fortran, COBOL, C and a handful of others that were highly specialized. Why so few? Because in the 1970’s, computers just couldn’t do very much compared to today. The available languages were sufficient for the limited tasks computers had been assigned to manage.
Over the last several decades, computer technology has exploded. The smartphone I carry around in my pocket is far more powerful than the fastest computers of my youth. As a teenager, I rarely encountered anything where a computer had played a part. Today the rare encounter would be with things where computers had played no part. Computers handle so many tasks now that, as a natural consequence, there are thousands of programming languages with more appearing every year.
With so many languages, it can be difficult to choose one. What is important in a programming language?
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Employee turnover is expensive, time consuming and stressful. But the need for new skills, whether to bolster your existing sales and services or to usher your company into emerging markets, is a constant. You already have excellent employees that “know the ropes” of your business but they don’t always have the skills needed to take those next steps. These employees may be called “power users” or “business analysts”. This is where upskilling comes in, giving rise to the age of the citizen developer. The citizen developer is able to use low-code and rapid application development tools to make apps that improve efficiency or more easily collect or gather data that can benefit the company.
Encouraging and even educating your employees to become citizen developers doesn’t mean eliminating the IT department, it means improving productivity and efficiency with collaboration and innovation. After all, who better to say exactly what the marketing or sales department needs in an app, tool or automation than the department members who will utilize it the most?
This is where Xojo comes in. Our long history (over 20 years) as an easy-to-use, rapid application development tool makes Xojo an ideal choice for would-be citizen developers.
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Whether you are looking to learn something new or perhaps just looking for some inspiration, podcasts can be a great investment of your time.
Check the points in bold under each podcast to see what its focus is.
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