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Tag: Software Development

Free Marketing! 4 Practical Tips For Developers New To Twitter

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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Learn The Fundamentals of Xojo Programming

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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A Cure For iOS App Obesity

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.

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Daring to Defy Software Extinction: A Limited History of Development Tools

In 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.

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XDC 2016 Recap

This year’s Xojo Developer Conference was held at the distinctive Hotel Derek in downtown Houston, Texas. We had attendees from 12 countries around the world, 30+ of the best sessions ever, fun live music, great networking and delicious food!

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Guest Post: 5 Tips to Control Development Business Chaos

Having problems controlling your projects and clients enough to enjoy your life and have fun developing software? If you can put a few systems in place, you will deliver better customer service, increase your productivity, and communicate better. Here are five tips to help you on your path of reigning in the chaos.

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The Chinook Sample Database

Have you ever needed or wanted a populated sample database with several related tables to play around with? Perhaps you are learning about databases and database design or perhaps you want to try out a new tool such as Xojo but want a pre-build database to start with.

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