At each XDC (Xojo Developer Conference) I lay out, however roughly, what Xojo’s short-term development roadmap looks like for the next 12 months or so. Despite how well-conceived that roadmap may be, sometimes unexpected events occur that change or delay things.
Comments closedTag: Software Development
At Xojo we’re a company of programmers who work with programmers and after 21 years or so, we like to think we know our stuff. In honor of International Programmer’s Day today, we’d like to offer our experience in the form of a listicle 😉
Whether you’re new to programming or an experienced developer, there are some things you’ll just never find in a reference manual. We’re passionate about writing good code and these are our 10 tips to be a better programmer.
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These days it seems everyone is working from home at least a few days a week. That is great for us humans and our home planet too. Your commute across the hall is quick and traffic-free, which is amazing for your personal stress-level and the local air quality. And your home office is likely to make you more productive and happier in your job, if set up right.
As more of us are working from home more often, it’s important to set some basic guidelines for your job and your sanity.
Here are 5 tips to help you set up your home office right, along with a peek into the Xojo team’s own offices.
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If your app will be used by people all over the world, take the time to consider localizing it appropriately. Localizing your app is a great way to increase downloads and grow your user base.
Here are 5 basics to consider when localizing your app:
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We’re starting a new thing! At the end of each month we’ll round up a few of our favorite things – from blog posts, announcements, technology, science and whatever other stuff the Xojo team thinks was noteworthy and I’ll post it. It’s the new Xojo Monthly Round Up!
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So you developed this great app, now how does your marketing team of one get the word out? Social media can be an amazing tool for developers without a big marketing budget and Twitter is a great place to start.
You’ve opened your Twitter account using a Twitter handle that defines and promotes your brand and your app, check. You’ve added a close-up headshot of yourself or a clear, simple logo, check. Now, how do you get the followers and engagement you need to successfully promote your app?
For those of you, like me, who didn’t grow up with social media, it can seem like an arbitrary and daunting undertaking. But dip your toe in and you’ll find Twitter can be fun, informative and rewarding.
Here are 4 tested and simplified tips to get you started marketing your app on Twitter.
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The ability to code is an increasingly valuable skill. At Xojo we believe that anybody can learn to make their own apps. And Xojo is a great language for students looking to add programming to their skillset and for citizen developers.
Learn to code using Xojo and you can build apps for Mac, Windows and Linux, web apps, iOS apps and Raspberry Pi apps (and Android- it’s coming!). With the exception of iOS which requires a Mac, you can build for any platform we support from any platform we support. Want to build Windows apps for your friends from your Mac? That’s what Xojo is great at! Want to make your work day easier with a database app to track your inventory? Xojo’s great at that too!
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John Gruber of Daringfireball.net recently wrote about the problem of so many iOS apps being over 100MB in size, which means they cannot be updated over a cellular connection. It really stinks to be forced to wait until you can get on WiFi just to update an app. And it can be especially bad if you really depend on the app.
Yesterday he mentioned that a big part of the problem is that apps written in Swift (and some other tools) end up bundling in a lot of standard libraries and developers don’t take the time to consider the ways in which they can trim their overweight apps down to size before shipping updates.
But you don’t have to be knowledgable about the many techniques you will need to trim your iOS apps. There is simpler solution to this problem: write your iOS apps in Xojo.
Comments closedIn 1998 Steve Jobs was the interim CEO of Apple and trying to keep his unprofitable company from sinking into bankruptcy. Just the previous year, when asked what he would do if he were in charge of Apple, Dell CEO Michael Dell said, “I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.”
The Mac had single digit marketshare. Creating a development tool, independently of Apple or any company that makes a platform such a tool would support, was considered a fool’s errand. There were plenty of tools available from large companies. Apple made MPW (the Macintosh Programmer’s Workshop). Symantec created THINK C. Metrowerks developed CodeWarrior. IBM’s VisualAge. Macromedia Flash. If you needed to create a cross-platform desktop app, you’d be told to look no further than SUN Microsystems Java: THE cross-platform language. We were all promised that Java was going to run on everything from our computers to our cars to our can openers. Java was the safe and popular choice. Developers made up only about 5% of computer users anyway. Honestly, who would be crazy enough to launch a new development tool in a market crowded by giants?
We were.
Comments closedThinking about speaking at XDC or any conference. Here are 13 guidelines to help you craft your best possible session submission, from topic to title, abstract and speaker biography.
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