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!

The Idea

Early each month we will share a blog post that introduces an app “theme” and recaps the prior month. A week or so later, we will create a Forum topic and post an example project created by one of the Xojo team. To participate in the Year of Code, make a Xojo project that that demonstrates the theme in some way, share it on GitHub to make it easily accessible to everyone and then add a post about it (with your GitHub link) to the Forum topic.

If you have not used GitHub before, here is a blog post on how to share a Xojo project on GitHub.

Ideally, these will be small, focused apps that can be made in a few days. The idea is to have fun creating something that others might learn from. But I guarantee you’ll learn something as well. After all, the best way to get better at coding is to always be coding.

How To Participate

Each month Xojo will announce a new theme and share an example project. Share your own projects in the Xojo Forum thread for that month via GitHub, preferably. Projects with code shared at other sites can be eligible as long as the code is accessible to everyone. Learn how to use Xojo and GitHub.

The Prizes

And yes, there will be prizes for those that participate. Each month all participants (everyone who shares a project that month) will be entered for a chance to win a monthly prize of $100 at the Xojo Store plus a 25% off coupon for GraffitiSuite.¹ The $100 can be applied to any Xojo license purchase or Extras Store item. At the end of 2025, all participants from the year will be entered to win the grand prize of a Xojo Pro license, $250 cash and a free year of GraffitiSuite. The more months in which you participate throughout the year, the more chances you’ll have to win the grand prize.

January’s Theme

Now that it is January (Happy New Year, everyone), the 2025 Year of Code kicks off with this theme: Desktop apps. People have used Xojo to make wonderful desktop apps since its inception in 1998 so this is an ideal first theme that is broad enough to allow anyone to participate. Look for a post next week announcing this months’ project details. Once it is posted, I will start a forum topic for others to share GitHub links to their projects and apps. In early February we will do a blog post that highlights what people made this month and introduce February’s theme.

I hope you will join us for the 2025 Year of Code and I look forward to seeing what you make with Xojo!

#2025YearOfCode

1. Monthly winners are excluded from future monthly prizes but each monthly participant earns an additional entry into the grand prize drawing. ︎

Year of Code Project

• Year of Code: Kickoff
• January Project: Desktop Apps | Forum Discussion
• February Project: Database Apps | Forum Discussion
• March Project: Web Apps | Forum Discussion
• April Project: User Interface | Forum Discussion
• May Project: Mobile Apps | Forum Discussion
• June Project: Code Sharing | Forum Discussion
• July Project: Charting | Forum Discussion
• August Project: Console Apps | Forum Discussion
• September Project: Games | Forum Discussion
• October Project: Multi-Platform | Forum Discussion
• November Project: PDF | Forum Discussion

How to Play:

Each month we’ll announce a new theme and share an example project of our own. Share your projects to the Xojo Forum thread for that month via GitHub (all the links you need are posted above ↑ ). Learn how to use Xojo and GitHub.

The Prizes:

Monthly winners get $100 at the Xojo store. Every month you submit a project is another chance to win the grand prize. The grand prize is $250 cash plus a Xojo Pro license and a year of GraffitiSuite and will be announce in December. Learn more about the prizes.

LX Aer is an AI-powered educational platform developed by student-turned-entrepreneur Leo Medvinsky. In 2020 as the pandemic forced schools to begin using remote learning tools, Leo, a student at the time, saw the gaps and the flaws in the tools he was offered and did what so many Xojo developers do, he decided to build something better. A quick view of LX Aer demonstrates it’s the solution someone who actually uses such a system would create. LX Aer is a modern take on the LMS with a user interface that centers the student and teacher. Currently, LX Aer uses Xojo Web for the backend and the project has 30,000 lines of Xojo code and growing.

10 Questions with Leo Medvinsky of LX Aer

Using Xojo Web for just the backend (web services) is somewhat surprising, tell us about that?

The LX Aer web app is designed to be the digital hub for students, teachers, and soon, administrators. The original web app was written in between 2020 and 2021 and used Xojo Web for some web service work but was mainly used the conventional way for Xojo Web pages. To increase speed and reliability as well as to improve performance, the decision was made that our next product (a standalone attendance tracking system) would be written using Xojo Web as a backend, with a Xojo iOS app and a standard HTML/CSS/JS web app to accompany it. We found that Xojo Web was a great way for us to have business logic on the backend, with great performance and amazing ease of management with Tim Parnell’s Lifeboat. When, in 2022, we were unifying this attendance system into the LX Aer suite, it was decided that the LX Aer suite would be combined into the attendance technology stack, rather than the other way around. This was a large time investment as it involved rewriting and rethinking significant portions of the existing product offering but has brought our software to a much stronger position.

What is your experience with Xojo Web performance for larger scale apps like LX Aer?

Up until recently, when we began self-hosting most things, we had two instances of the LX Aer Backend running on a Debian server in AWS with just 2 GB of RAM and performance was very good. We are actively developing solutions to allow for much greater scalability and distribution of load across not just instances (with Lifeboat), but across several different servers. Our database server runs CubeSQL, and Marco and I have been discussing ways to implement database sharding into CubeSQL to allow for greater scalability. While we are a startup without too many users right now, LX Aer needs to be able to support the thousands of users each school brings, along with all of their data requirements.

Can you tell us why Xojo was chosen as the backend and what other options were ruled out?

My first programming language was Visual Basic .NET. The original software I had was a simple quizzing application designed to help the user study for tests, but it could only run on Windows. This was a significant limitation. I (mostly) loved the syntax of VB compared to other languages I’ve worked with (Python, C++, Swift…), so I decided to try Xojo when I came across it in 2020. It was an amazing feeling to be able to write with the syntax I already knew to and make an iOS app, albeit a limited one, the same day I downloaded Xojo. Having experimented with Xojo, I started working on major projects in it very soon, and when a web development need came up, it was my go-to. Over the years, I have considered many alternatives, and many in the developer community (not Xojo’s) have discouraged me from relying on a proprietary language for such critical software, but I have never had any interest in switching. Every step of the way, Xojo has scaled with our needs.

Mac, Windows or Linux?

I flip-flop constantly between my dev machine, a Mac, and my business machine, a Surface. I tried many Linux distros on several occasions and have never been much of a fan of it as a consumer operating system.

What do you wish more people would ask/talk to you about when it comes to LX Aer?

Security. LX Aer’s tagline is “Security, Reliability, Innovation.” Notice how “security” comes first. While the Aer Intelligence platform offers incredible AI tools built into LX Aer to improve educational outcomes, and this is one of the largest attention grabbers, I would argue that security is our most interesting innovation. Having graduated from high school just over a year ago, I recall when I found my student data leaked online after a massive breach of PupilPath, a learning management system that my school used at the time. I also recall the school I transferred to for my senior year and the software they used, Genesis, which allows a user to view their own password in plaintext after logging on. This, among other things, motivated me to always put security first. In 2023, we launched LX SecurShield, which provides encryption for student data WITHOUT storing keys on the server, while still allowing a user to seamlessly log on from any device, without any of the hassle typically associated with client-side encryption. LX SecurShield is truly unique and is something I wish more people took an interest in.

How would you explain your most recent project to a 5-year-old?

LX Aer is creating an AI chatbot that will help teachers teach and students learn!

What’s next on your “Learn Next” list?

Tough question… maybe French?

What programming moments made you think “Wow, I love my job so much”?

I’ve always been technically minded, but I have seen it as a means to an end, rather than the end itself. I never wrote code for the sake of writing code. I always had a long-term project in mind. LX Aer has been a project of mine for over 4.5 years, and has changed immensely from March 2020, when it first began. Consequently, the programming moments that made me think how much I love my job were when I was able to finally push an innovation over the edge into a working state. When I was developing LX SecurShield, it required significant portions of LX Aer to be rewritten to support the new encryption. After developing a proof of concept, I worked almost nonstop for close to a week to develop it into a usable and stable state, with several all-nighters along the way. At the end of it all, I thought, “wow, I love my job so much, even with all the craziness associated with it!”

What is something that has surprised you about coding in the last 10 5 years?

10 years ago, I was 8 and had no experience writing code (though I was still the go-to tech support for my friends/family). This is a tough question, but if I had to pick it would be the difference in writing code for someone else vs. writing code for your own company. Writing code for someone else is 1,000x more difficult than writing code when you’re your own boss. As for something in the industry itself, I am always surprised by the tendency of web developers to jump around from platform to platform… Angular, React, etc. It just fascinates me.

What is a piece of software more people should know about?

To those in the Xojo community writing a web service, I cannot recommend Tim Parnell’s Lifeboat and Marco Bambini’s CubeSQL enough. To anyone working with cryptography, Björn Eiriksson’s Einhugur plugins are just incredible! 

To people in general, I think it would be great if more people knew about Proton. They’re a Swiss company that develops mail, cloud storage, calendar, VPN, and password storage software, all of which uses client-side encryption and is easy-to-use. They were my inspiration for LX SecurShield. 

What’s something you worked on recently that you are excited about?

It would be somewhat cliché to say that I am excited about AI (Aer Intelligence), but I am. Especially in the EdTech industry, I see so much potential for it to improve educational outcomes and make lives easier for overworked teachers.  With our software having won the Pitchfest award at the prestigious Future of Education Technology Conference this year, I believe, largely because of our AI capabilities, I think it isn’t just the LX Aer team that’s excited about AI in education.

Thank you to Leo Medvinsky for answering our questions. If you want to learn more about LX Aer visit https://www.lxaer.com/. To all those in the Xojo community, as a token of gratitude, Leo is offering a free license until December 31^st, 2024. Email sales@lxaer.com and say that you’re part of the Xojo community! “Although I have not been very active in the Xojo community in terms of engagement,” Leo says, “without the exceptionally great resource that is the Xojo Programming Forum, as well as the software and plugins made by those in the community, such as Tim Parnell, Marco Bambini, Christian Schmitz, Björn Eiriksson, and Sam Rowlands, none of this would have been possible.” See the full LX Aer Xojo community credits at https://www.lxaer.com/credits.

Textbook, Books & Magazines

• Introduction to Xojo Programming Textbook – This is where you start if you are new to programming. Learn the fundamentals of programming. The book uses Xojo to teach programming, but the concepts are applicable to any programming language.
• Teacher’s Guide – A guide to help teachers introduce students to the basics of programming. using the Textbook
• I Wish I Knew How To…. – A Book Series from Eugene Dakin that covers many topics including I Wish I Knew How to … Program SQLite with Xojo, I Wish I Knew How To … Program the Canvas Control and I Wish I Knew How to … Program Plugins with Xojo on Windows, to name a few.
• xDev Magazine – A staple of the Xojo community. Subscribe annually or review the collections, books and back issues for articles.

Xojo Documentation

The Introduction section in the Xojo Documentation is great place to start if you already familiar with Xojo or object-oriented programming. From there, you can choose a QuickStart for Desktop, Web, iOS or Android. Xojo’s Documentation site is organized by the following sections:

• GETTING STARTED – step by step tutorials and a high-level overview
• TOPICS – categorized discussions on accomplishing specific tasks
• API – guide to the specifics of the Xojo language and framework
• RESOURCES – information including licensing, system requirements, how to report bugs or request features, etc

You can also find many Third Party resources from the Xojo community in the Xojo Documentation, including books, magazines, tutorials, free source code, open-source projects and more.

Browse the sections or search for exactly what you need.

Xojo Examples

Experiment with Xojo example projects. Run example code, edit it and use it to get your own project started.

• In Xojo, choose File > New Project and then click on Examples.
• Search for a specific example.
• Download the examples to work off-line.

Xojo Programming Blog

The Blog is an ever-growing resource that offers insight into Xojo features with code examples and best practices, plus community news and events. The Xojo Programming Blog includes guest posts from Xojo users and third party developers as well as posts from Xojo team members.

Xojo Video Library and Webinars

Xojo’s YouTube Channel has hundreds of videos from beginner topics, object-oriented programming concepts to how to use databases with Xojo. It also hosts recordings of the Xojo Webinars.

Xojo Forum

A search of the Xojo Forums often leads to a helpful discussion or a solution to that thing you just could not figure out on your own. And if it doesn’t, forum members are friendly and free with their Xojo knowledge. The forum is free for everyone, no license required. Enable Forum Access in your Xojo Account and go to the Xojo Forum to read the discussions and ask your questions.

Email Xojo, we’re happy to help you find a resource or take a request for a topic for a future blog post, webinar or tutorial.

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Students looking to begin their journey into programming choose Xojo for its ease of use and dedication to cross-platform development. Plus, Xojo is true rapid app development and is ideal for building prototypes and mockups really fast. All of these features benefit from Xojo’s OOP-focus. Xojo also has an active and helpful community and years worth of free, on-line resources.

Ease of Use from App Design to Build

Xojo is known for its user-friendly and visual development environment. It employs a drag-and-drop interface, which can be helpful for students who are new to programming and those who want to rapidly prototype software without delving into complex coding. Xojo is efficient, featuring a streamlined development process and extensive feature set, you can create applications fast without sacrificing quality or functionality. Xojo is based on object-oriented programming principles. Learning OOP through Xojo can provide students with a solid foundation in programming concepts that are widely applicable in the software development industry.

Multiplatform Development for Windows, macOS, Linux, mobile, & web

Xojo is incredibly versatile. Whether you’re interested in desktop, mobile, or web application development, you can built it with Xojo. With its cross-platform capabilities, you can even build applications that run on multiple platforms from a single code-base. This can be particularly valuable for students working on a MacBook but needing app for a Windows machine or vice-versa. Write your app once and compile it for macOS, Windows and Linux.

Rapid Application Development for Prototypes and Mockups

Xojo is designed for rapid application development (RAD), making it an ideal choice for students who need to create functional applications quickly. Students can use Xojo to build practical, real-world applications. This hands-on experience can be valuable for learning and demonstrating software development skills, especially for those working on the design and usability aspects of software development.

Community and Resources

Xojo has an active community and offers resources, including documentation, tutorials, and forums. Students can benefit from this support when learning and troubleshooting. With an active and friendly community of developers, top-notch support team and extensive documentation and tutorials, you’ll always have the help and resources you need to succeed. Learn at your own pace, and have access to the support you need to overcome challenges along the way.

No matter why you choose Xojo, whether for its simplicity, cross-platform capabilities, rapid development or community and resources, Xojo is a valuable tool for learning programming and software development concepts. Xojo is a great place to start when building or looking to expand your development toolkit.

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Xojo is free to download and free for development and learning, for everyone. Teachers and students can download Xojo to as many computers as they want. Teachers can activate their license on 3 computers in order to build apps, while students can use the free Xojo IDE to develop, run and debug their projects. Whether you teach on Windows, Mac or Linux, the Xojo IDE is cross-platform so you can code on your platform of choice, and so can your students. If you are teaching Desktop development, your students can stretch their skills and use Xojo to learn to make Web, Mobile or Raspberry Pi apps. Xojo is all about making developing for different platforms and devices easier with one cross-platform, object-oriented language, in fact, that’s how Xojo got its name.

A Xojo Educational license makes apps for all supported platforms (Desktop, Web, Mobile, Console & RPi). Students can create native user interfaces quickly and intuitively with drag and drop from Xojo’s library of built-in controls. Xojo includes modern support for inheritance, interfaces, polymorphism, graphics, internet protocols and more. Xojo comes bundled with SQLite and works with databases like PostgreSQL, MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server. Free technical support via email is included with the Educational license and access to the Xojo Forum is free for everyone. Apps compiled with Xojo are native, stand-alone and yours forever.

The More You Know

• Xojo documentation, example projects, tutorials, YouTube channel and Intro to Xojo Programming Textbook and Teacher’s Guide are all free.
• Video: Success With Xojo In Improving Student Retention In Intro to Programming Classes, Dr Ed Lindoo, Regis University
• Xojo Pi for building Raspberry Pi apps (Linux 32-bit ARM apps) is free.
• Students can get Xojo and tons of other free programming tools in the GitHub Student Developer Pack.
• Xojo is celebrating 25 years as a development tool and programming language in 2021!
• Still not sure Xojo is right for your classroom? Email Xojo directly with any questions at hello@xojo.com.

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