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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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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Day 1: Wet your Feet!

Download Xojo to your platform of choice, Mac, Windows or Linux. Xojo is free for learning and development, you can write, run and debug your apps all without a license. Everyday in the 14 Day Guide can be done without a Xojo license. So go ahead and download Xojo to get started!

Tip: You can find the Xojo System Requirements for your operating system (OS) of choice here.

Once downloaded, launch the Xojo IDE (Independent Development Environment, i.e. the Xojo app) and you will be presented with a window pointing you to many of Xojo’s resources. I’ll show you where to start this time, so go ahead and click Start Using Xojo in the bottom left corner to get to the Project Chooser.

If you’re interested in developing Desktop apps, point your browser to the Xojo Desktop QuickStart and follow the steps to build a simple desktop application with Xojo in 30 minutes or less. You can do the same both for Web and iOS projects if you are interested in starting there. You can find resources in other languages in the International section of the Xojo Dev Center.

Video: If you prefer to video, there are videos you can listen to as your follow the QuickStarts on Xojo’s YouTube channel.

The QuickStarts will introduce you to main concepts and have you writing your first lines of code in Xojo! If you have extra time today, try the Tutorials next. They are just a bit more in depth than the QuickStart and will likely take you less than an hour to complete. The tutorials focus on further familiarizing you with the main areas in Xojo like the Editors and how to layout and interact with some of the native controls.

Tip: After completing these, try to reproduce the projects without relying on the documentation. Doing is a great way to learn, so try to do your own simple project from scratch.

Day 2: Getting Programming Basics

Whether you know other programming languages or if Xojo is your first language to learn, understanding the fundamentals of programming will give you a leg up. For day 2, I recommend that you download the Introduction to Programming with Xojo textbook (available in PDF and iBooks formats) and work along with the first 2 chapters.

This book will introduce you to more of the Xojo language and walk you through writing projects complete with code snippets that will help you grasp the basic concepts behind: variables, programming structures like loops, functions and parameters, plus you’ll get your first contact with the Xojo Debugger (the Debugger allows you to find and fix bugs in your app).

Tip: Don’t get discouraged if you don’t know a word or concept. You are learning a new language after all. Take a moment to Google it, yep, Google it, programmers Google things all the time or search the Xojo Documentation.

It will take some time to get through the content and all the examples in the textbook. The important thing is not how much you advance in one day, but to understand and retain what you learned! Don’t get down if you feel like you still don’t understand what the code does; it’s only day 2!

Day 3: Find Out More

On Day 3, continue with the Introduction to Programming with Xojo textbook. Try and get through chapter 5 today. Perhaps some broader aspects of coding are coming into focus. While going through the chapters of the textbook, you might have questions or want more information.

As with the Introduction to Programming with Xojo book, you will not read the Documentation in one day! But it will help you as you develop your own apps that put into practice what you have learned from the QuickStart, Tutorials and textbook.

Watch The Video: Watch the first video in our Programming with Xojo Course. It’s a on-going series of videos focused on taking you from zero coding knowledge to writing your own apps. And it’s just another way you can learn how to code with Xojo.

Day 4: Get Object-Oriented!

There are many Object-Oriented programming languages and OOP languages offer many advantages. As you have hopefully already learned, the Xojo language is OOP and that is one of the reasons it can be easy to grasp and start using.

Tip: Object-Oriented programming (OOP) is a style of programming based on “objects”, which are data structures that contain data (properties) and code (methods). These data structures are called “classes”. Classes are the fundamental building blocks of all Xojo applications.

To speed up that way of thinking, today I recommend you that you watch the Understanding Object-Oriented Programming with Xojo video. It’s 1 hour long so you should be able to also get through chapter 9 of the textbook

You want to start thinking and writing code so you can reuse it and evolve it without breaking what you have already done. Here is a good (and short!) tutorial that puts this into practice. It will teach you how to do one of the first things most developers want to do – modify the behavior of an existing control so it fits a specific need or create your own controls.

Day 5: Look at the Examples!

At this point you should feel pretty comfortable using Xojo and writing simple apps using the Xojo language.

There are 400 project examples included with Xojo. If you are looking for an example about how to do something specific, these are a great starting point. Use the example code “as-is” then modify the code to adapt it to your particular needs or simply to learn a particular technique.

Tip: Not quite comfortable yet? Take an extra day and do a Tutorial if you didn’t already, or try the Programming with Xojo Video Course.

Day 6: Databases

Modern apps make use of a wide variety of technologies and one of the most common you will hear about is databases. For a lot of projects, databases are a must. A database is “an organized collection of data generally stored and accessed electronically from a computer system.” Xojo comes bundled with the SQLite database and supports PostgreSQL, MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle databases. Plus, you can use ODBC to connect to other databases such as Access, FoxPro, FileMaker, Firebird and even IBM iSeries.

The Xojo framework is large enough so you can find the classes you need, ready to use. Since Xojo comes bundled with SQLite, that’s a great place to start. Today, I recommend you do the “SQLite Basics” and “SQLiteDatabase and iOSSQLiteDatabase for Beginners” lessons that will teach you from the ground up, no previous experience working with databases is required.

Using Other Databases: In addition, there are videos in the Xojo Database playlist, topics range from designing a database, to the creation of a database based application, PostgreSQL, ODBC, or even creating REST web services in order to work with remote databases from mobile devices.

Day 7: Create Your Own Project

Doing is an excellent way to learn so today let’s start to create your own project from scratch. Start simple, something basic that can grow with you as a developer – a notes app, a shopping list, a time tracker…

Today is not about reproducing examples, but rather putting together all the pieces you’ve learned so far to make a new app. Sure you’ll may have questions about how to do something, so try using the multiple help features in the Xojo IDE. For example:

• Autocompletion: Start typing and the IDE will help you to autocomplete the name of a function, method, class or object instance. You don’t have to remember every class or object property, press the tab key and a popup menu will list them for you.
• Controls: Remember that the lower area of the Library panel offers information about the purpose of every user interface (UI) control, and that they are grouped by functionality; you only need to put the mouse pointer over to get a description about what they do.
• Event Handlers: Not sure about the Event Handler you need to implement in a control so it reacts to the user’s actions as you expect? The Add Handler panel is very descriptive about the mission of every supported Event for a particular control. Just go through them and read the provided information.
• Contextual help is everywhere: put the mouse pointer over the name of a function and you’ll see the expected parameters and their types.
• Global Help: Of course you can access the global help to get to the documentation for all the available Classes, concepts, datatype and language keywords among other topics. In addition, the documentation is full of example code snippets you can simply copy and paste in the Code Editor to implement (probably with some modifications to adapt it to your app).

Day 8: Get Stuck Unstuck

How’s your first project going? Don’t be down if it’s rough. It’s inevitable that you will reach a point when the information available is not enough to solve a particular problem. When that happens, I recommend joining the Xojo Forum and post your question there. Don’t be shy, the Xojo community is one of the best developer groups around. It’s likely you’re not the first one facing a particular problem and you may find your question and the answer already in the Forum! With the right search the solution could be in front of you in a few seconds!

Also check out this blog post on various ways to Get Unstuck.

Pro Tip: Ask for help after you tried everything you already know and after looking for the answer in the Xojo Dev Center! People appreciate that you have tried to figure it out on your own first and it helps to let them know what you have already tried that didn’t work.

Day 9: Be Cross-Platform

Remember that Xojo is a cross-platform development tool. That means that you can develop for any platform from your preferred development platform, Mac, Windows or Linux.

Note: A Mac is required to compile your apps for macOS. You can develop your desktop app on a Windows or Linux computer but ultimately, testing and compiling for macOS must be done from a Mac. A Mac is required for developing and compiling an iOS application.

The ability to write one app, with one set of code, and deploy it for 3 operating systems is pretty excellent! Of course, you will likely need to do some amount of testing (and debugging) on each OS. There are several solutions that let you create virtual machines running on other operating systems. For example, you can choose between Parallels, VMware Fusion or VirtualBox on macOS. Any of these will let you install Windows and/or Linux on your Mac computer. 

Creating a cross-platform app also means that you will need to make sure that the user interface behaves as expected on each different operating system. At some point, your app might need to change slightly for a particular operating system. For example, on Windows you might want to use the Registry, but on Mac you might want to use a plist. You can handle these special cases using conditional compilation. You can also use Target Attributes in the Attributes section of the Inspector Panel for items like classes, methods or properties, to decide what should be compiled for a particular target.

If you haven’t already try and finish the textbook today.

Day 10: Make the Xojo IDE Fit You

As you spend more time using Xojo, you’ll feel the need to change some preferences so they best fit the way you use it. Take a deep look at the Preference panels; you can chose your code font of choice, the keyboard shortcuts you prefer to use, the Navigator behavior, you can even choose your theme for the IDE.

These preferences, among others, will let you feel more comfortable and even code faster! For example, what if you prefer to have the Inspector Panel and Library in their own floating panels? Would that make a difference for you? And what if you edit the keyboard shortcuts so they fit better with the layout of your keyboard?

More From the Xojo Blog: Menu Shortcut Editor and Xojo Navigator Tip- Show or Hide

Day 11: Advanced Topics

As you move on in your 14 day learning path, let’s focus on more advanced topics for the development of more complex products. For example, XojoScript lets you execute new Xojo code dynamically in an already compiled application.

From the code and language sides, you should definitely learn about Design Patterns. The Xojo Blog has some great introductory posts about the Singleton and Observer Design Patterns, among others.

Take a look at Modules, Interfaces, Delegates, Enumerations, Declares and the related Xojo data types that let you access external libraries from your code. Is also a good point in time to explore differences like Internal or External project Items, adding your own properties to the Inspector Panel, and the use of Git, SVN or other source control solutions.

In addition to debugging your apps, Xojo includes a feature that will Analyze and Profile the execution of your project, letting you know where your app bottlenecks are (if any) so you can put your efforts on optimizing that portions of code.

From the Xojo Blog: The Xojo Blog has a lot of posts that offer examples on more advanced concepts and topics.

Day 12: Let’s Review

You’ve learned a lot in the last 12 days, so let’s take a breath today. Take some time to review, maybe look up in the Documentation that question you were thinking about in the shower yesterday. Or watch some of the videos in the Programming with Xojo Video Course. Take today to reinforce and refine the skills you have acquired. And don’t forget to pat yourself on the back for a job well done!

Day 13: Refactorization

Compare the code you wrote the first days with the one you’re writing now with all the acquired knowledge. I bet you’ll find something that can be done better. Do it! Don’t hesitate to rewrite your code and optimize it so it runs faster, better and is more reusable, making it easier to maintain and evolve.

This is known as refactorization, aka spit and polish, and there are many books focused on the topic. Xojo includes some options that will help you to do that, mostly from the contextual menu, every time you select an item in the Navigator a block of code or even using the Search and Replace panel.

Day 14: Keep Learning!

Don’t stop here, coding is a journey! As you advance writing code, you’ll feel the need to learn new things, and there are tons of resources at your disposal!

A good place to visit is the Community Portal and also the Open Source section of the Xojo Dev Center. Here you’ll find a number of ready-to-use libraries from other reputed Xojo developers, ready to download, inspect and, thus, to learn from!

We hope you have enjoyed our 14 day coding adventure. Tweet to us @xojo and let us know how it’s going and if you have any questions, reach out to us at hello@xojo.com.

1. Xojo is for everyone

It doesn’t matter if you are just starting to learn how to develop software or if you are already a seasoned developer, Xojo is for everyone! If you are getting your feet wet in coding, then you’ll find that Xojo offers a programming language that is extremely easy to grasp from the start. In fact, you’ll find a lot of contextual help in Xojo while coding, and access to the global Help menu is only a click away.

In addition, the Xojo Documentation website offers really easy-to-follow QuickStarts, Tutorials and Guides letting you make your own Desktop, Web, Android, iOS, Raspberry Pi or Console apps in no time! Add that to the more than 300 video-tutorials you can find in the Xojo YouTube channel, and the fact that all the Xojo language documentation is packed with code snippets showing how to implement a particular feature- copy, paste and you are set.

Need some starting points for a better understanding of how Xojo Projects work? The Examples folder included with the Xojo Download includes dozens of complete example projects you can open, run and inspect to see in detail how to implement a particular task or behavior; then you can  adapt and use these for your own projects. Even you can use the Search feature for filtering the example projects by platform, operating system or other criteria.

One thing you’ll notice the very first time you run Xojo is that you aren’t inundated with features you don’t even know what to do with yet! Everything is clear and concise in front of you, hiding the complexity generally associated with the development workflow.

As you advance in your learning process and get more experienced in coding, you can discover more advanced features at your own pace. And even then, things like Web debugging, iOS or Android deployment or truly multi-platform development, are still effortless. Xojo does all of this without installing thousands of files on each operating system or requiring the additional installation of other components in order to properly work.

What if you’re an experienced developer coming from another development environment or language? Then you’ll be able to learn and master the Xojo programming language in a blink while watching your productivity increase! In fact, Xojo is an Event-Driven OOP (Object Oriented Programming) language, sharing the same “dot notation” syntax used by the most modern programming languages; and Xojo offers guides to port your existing projects, for example, from FoxPro or VB6 to modern and truly multi-platform deployment with Xojo. And even if you are coming from other development environments as FileMaker or 4D, Xojo makes your solutions available for a more wide range of platforms as native apps and without hidden or extra deployment costs.

Being an OOP language means that Xojo will share the same set of paradigms and/or syntax you are used to dealing with in other programming languages; ranging from PHP to C++, Objective-C, Swift, JavaScript, Python, and others. In fact, you’ll discover that several of the language keywords, instruction blocks and function or methods calling conventions are very similar to the ones found in those.

Add that to the rich and complete Xojo Framework and the fact that you can even use external libraries if you need to; and you’ll realize all the possibilities you have at your hands for creating apps and complete solutions that can be used by individuals or companies of all sizes.

2. Make all kind of apps!

While several languages and IDEs are more suited or focused on developing a particular kind of products (database driven, mobile, IoT, etc.), with Xojo you’ll be using the same IDE and programming language to create all of these and more!

For what it is worth, that means that even if you are a self-employed developer, a Citizen Developer or need to develop a solution for a company, you’ll be saving a huge amount of time, money and resources in order to get all these things done with a single development environment. That translates into reduced costs and increased ROI in your development investments; from the simplest ones to the more complex and demanding, including Console apps acting as Daemons, background processes, task helpers… or APIs development as the middleware to interact with both Mobile, Web, Desktop or Raspberry Pi clients!

Do you offer consultancy services or are you working as a freelance developer? With Xojo you’ll significantly reduce the amount of time you usually spend following multiple changes and evolutions in programming languages, frameworks, SDKs, technologies and, probably, third parties IDEs (among other resources) in order to keep going with your business.

At the same time, due to the fact that Xojo shares the programming language and IDE among all the supported platforms (Desktop, Web, Android, iOS and Raspberry Pi) and architectures (both 32 and 64-bit / Intel and ARM), you can also expand the kind of solutions you can offer to you current or potential clients and keep them running as the technology evolves!

3. Truly Native, Cross-Compiled, Multi-Platform Apps!

Some development environments or programming languages are focused (or are more appropriate) to a particular platform or target. With Xojo you’ll find that all of your apps will be compiled to native binary code on every supported platform.

That means that they will not incur the performance penalties imposed by byte code translations or that they can be easily reverted to source code, even your Web products!

What’s more important: the compiled apps will look and behave as you expect on every one of the supported operating systems.

In general, all of this means that you can be more confident about the fact that your intellectual property will not be the targeted or exposed by the most common techniques or exploiting attacks; and that translates into additional peace of mind regarding how you protect your investment in developing and deploying your solutions.

Even Xojo is created with Xojo! That is, the IDE offers the same look and feel and set of features from Windows, macOS and Linux.

4. Do more with less

During the designing, coding, testing or deployment phases of the product you won’t need to do complex set-ups or check for ever-changing dependencies! The Xojo IDE abstracts you from all the inherent and underlaying complexity, so you can focus on what really matters: the features that make your product truly unique.

This kind of complexity abstraction is evident not only for Desktop apps, but also for Android and iOS deployments and is especially evident when deploy web apps in combination with Xojo Cloud.

In this last case, you only need to click a button in Xojo to have your web app transferred from the IDE to your Xojo Cloud server. Your app will be up and running in a matter of seconds, without needing to deal with complex server configurations or investing all the required time in being sure that you have all the server security issues covered and under control. Think about that for a moment: if you are a small company or just an independent developer, you don’t need to invest  extra resources, time and money in order to have your web apps secured and running with confidence.

Of course, if you have the resources and/or the required knowledge, you can deploy your web apps yourself on any VPS or web hosting service of your choice that meets the Xojo Web deployment requirements.

But the best part is that it doesn’t mind if you’re developing for Web, Android, iOS, Desktop or Raspberry Pi: you can develop for any of the Xojo supported platforms from the operating system of your choice! In the case of macOS and iOS apps, development can be done on any platform a Mac computer is required for compilation.

In summary: it doesn’t matter what OS or platform you want or need to code for, you’ll be using the same IDE and programming language in all the cases, abstracting you from all the particularities and underlaying complexity on every case. And that means doing more in less time!

5. Rapid Application Development

It doesn’t matter if you are creating a Desktop, Web, Android or iOS app; or if you want to build your solutions for Intel or ARM based architectures. With Xojo you will be able to design the user interface via Drag & Drop from a rich set of controls ready to use. It’s that simple. In fact, the Layout Editor provides visual clues to precisely align every control in the Window, View or Page of the app; and if you’re targeting for macOS, Web, Android or iOS you’ll be able to see how your designs react when used in Dark Mode!

Reacting to users’ interactions in your apps is as easy as selecting a user interface control in the Layout Editor, adding the kind of event you’re interested in from a list (with contextual help about what it does and when it is fired), and writing the code you want to be associated and executed to that particular Event.

Add that to the fact you can reuse your already developed Classes, Modules and other resources; you can even reuse your code between different kinds of projects and targeted platforms!

6. No chains!

It doesn’t matter if the apps or solutions created with Xojo are intended to be used by dozens or thousands of users, even if they are database driven! With Xojo you don’t have to pay royalties for absolutely anything! Even better: you don’t need to buy a license in order to try, learn and use Xojo! There is no limited trial, feature limitations or other drawbacks when using the free IDE. Download Xojo and begin learning, developing, running and debugging your projects all without a license.

Features include, the access and use of the supported database engines: from SQLite to MySQL/MariaDB, PostgreSQL, or any other you can access using ODBC, and of course the included features to work with Reports.

You can buy a Xojo license when you decide that is the time to build your projects. Further, all Xojo licenses are covered by a 90-day money-back guarantee.

In addition, you don’t even need to pay for what you are not going to use (or going to use right now). What does this mean? Well, let’s say that if you only work with Windows and only want to create apps for Windows, then you only need to buy the Windows Lite Edition license for that ($99 USD), while if you need your apps to be run from all the supported Desktop platforms (including Raspberry Pi), then the Xojo Desktop Edition license is probably what you’re looking for ($299 USD); or if you really want to grasp all the Xojo power and target all the Xojo supported platforms (Desktop, iOS, Web and Raspberry Pi), then Xojo Pro is undoubtedly for you ($699 USD)! Oh and Xojo Pi, for building desktop and console apps, is free!

You can even upgrade to Xojo Desktop or Pro at any time if you decide that you need to use more advanced features not present in your current edition. In other words, you don’t need to buy a new license from scratch if you don’t want to. You can even change your Xojo Cloud plan at any time you require!

7. You’re not alone!

With more than 400,000 users around the world and more than 20 years on the market, the awesome Xojo community is one of the best programming resources you can find around to join to. In the Xojo Forum you’ll find the largest community and best place to get your questions answered by a large group of enthusiastic and seasoned Xojo developers.

It doesn’t matter if it’s a simple or a more complex problem, you’ll feel welcomed and probably have your problem solved in record time! In fact, many of the replies come from members of the Xojo Staff, ranging from Customer Service to anyone on the Engineering Team or even the Founder and CEO of Xojo himself!

Of course, you have other resources you can (and should!) visit, ranging from a dedicated publication about Xojo development, to Users Groups and Xojo Pages in Facebook, developers blogs about Xojo, and of course the official Xojo channels in Twitter, Instagram or Facebook. Don’t worry, you don’t need to search the entire web to find these, we have collected some of these valuable resources here and here.

And if you need to get a richer experience and more in-depth knowledge, in a face to face way, then you won’t want to miss any of the usual Xojo Events taking place in several American and European cities each year! There you can chat with other Xojo developers to exchange experiences, attend technical sessions, socialize and create new relationships that can lead in new work projects, etc.

The biggest of these Events is XDC, with Xojo developers coming in from all around the world, and where you will be able to attend sessions from expert Xojo developers and where you can talk with all the Xojo Team!

8. And you won’t be left behind

Did you know that Xojo is still able to open and run projects from earlier releases, even many, many years ago? Sure that in more complex projects you will need to upgrade code, and that’s because Xojo has evolved, and continues to evolve, to match the own industry changes and evolution.

In fact, the apps created with Xojo are 64-bit compliant (although you can still generate 32-bit code, if you need), with support for HiDPI graphics, Dark Mode support both on macOS and iOS, the latest iOS SDK, native Silicon and M1 compilation and meeting other non-visual changes imposed by any of the current operating systems.

You can expect several Xojo version releases every year, adding new features, improving existing ones and fixing bugs. But we also keep a bigger picture about the medium to long term evolution of Xojo, so you can always see the big features we are working on that will be coming in future releases of Xojo. That way, all the effort you’re putting in the apps, products and solutions you create today won’t be left behind in the future. You’ll be able to improve and enrich them for your users, keeping them current as operating systems evolve.

Need to request a feature is important for you or did you find a bug you can’t workaround? We listen to you. Go to our Issues tracker system to get in touch with us about the things you want to be added or improved.

9. Add your own features!

The Xojo Framework is large enough to accomplish most of the usual app requirements you may need; but sometimes you need to go a bit further, even the thousands of already existing external libraries around whose functions you can use directly from your code … and in these cases you’re covered too!

Xojo Provides SDKs (Software Development Kits) both for Desktop and Web applications; so you just need to start digging in the provided documentation and example projects in order to create your own Xojo Plug-Ins. These will be loaded from the IDE and you’ll be able to use their exposed features with the same simplicity you do when using the rest of the internal Xojo Framework.

10. Xojo Ecosystem

Don’t be afraid if you don’t have the time, resources or knowledge needed to develop your own plug-ins.

You can resort to the broad offer of excellent third-parties plug-ins, add-ons, libraries and classes you can choose from. These range from commercial software to Open-Source projects, or just plain free classes, modules or libraries ready to download and use in your own Xojo projects.

We are here to help!

All in all it’s time to give Xojo a try, isn’t? It’s just a click ahead right now, so download Xojo and rediscover the pleasure of coding!

Just as people have varying levels of skill and interest in video games, the same is true of app development. There are those that are happy to devote enormous amounts of time to learning everything they possibly can. They don’t care how long it takes. They want to have control over everything and are willing to do whatever is necessary to make that happen. I’m so glad those people exist because there’s a lot of great software that might not otherwise have been created without them. I’m not one of those people. I really want to focus mostly on what makes my application unique, abstracted from the nitty-gritty of app development.

That’s why I have always been attracted to tools like Xojo. I am a citizen developer. Of all the job titles I have had over the years, all of them in tech,  none have ever included words like programmer or engineer. I do some software development but it’s just a part of my job. It’s something I do to help me in my work or to help my co-workers.

When I founded Xojo, Inc., tools like Xojo were called RAD (Rapid Application Development) tools. Now the term du jour is Low-Code. Put simply, it means that a development tool provides a lot of built-in functionality so you don’t have to write too much code compared to more traditional languages and tools. That’s Xojo. You can build your user interface visually via drag and drop.

The set of built-in commands (the framework) provides you with everything you’ll likely need to handle the things that do require some coding. Xojo is a cross-platform tool making it easy to create apps for different platforms such as MacOS, Windows, Linux, the web, iOS and even Raspberry Pi, without having to learn all the details of each one. Unlike some cross-platform solutions, Xojo builds complete native apps which means your apps have the look, feel and performance of those written in the more complicated tools that require so much more code.

It’s not all upside. There are sometimes very specific features for which Xojo has no built-in support. An example of this is notifications. The good news is that should you find yourself needing functions like this, there’s a vibrant Xojo community of users who have likely already created that functionality and you can just add it to your project. And Xojo is updated multiple times per year so new functionality is always appearing.

If you’re like me and you want to be able to quickly and easily build applications that make life easier for you and perhaps your co-workers, Xojo is something you should seriously consider. Xojo is also free to use and learn. You only need buy a license if you decide you want to deploy your application. We provide lots of free resources including a video library with over 250 videos, tutorials, and documentation as well as a textbook designed to help you learn app development.

It’s tremendously empowering to be able to build even a simple app that helps you accomplish tasks more quickly and efficiently. A low-code development tool like Xojo is a great place to start.

These are some of my favorite technology, software and programming books:

The Pragmatic Programmer (Andrew Hunt, David Thomas)

One of my favorite programming books of all-time. The topics in it are obvious, perhaps even simple, but the advice is value and, well, practical. The book is short, fun-to-read and always worth revisiting and is the inspiration for a video I did: The Pragmatic Programmer.

Eric Sink on the Business of Software (Eric Sink)

Eric is the founder of SourceGear, the makers of Vault version control software. This an excellent collection of Eric’s writings from his blog and MSDN, which is mostly business-focused.

Code Complete (Steve McConnell)

A good book on coding standards, techniques and other things. I’ve had a few things to say about coding standards from time to time.

Programmer’s at Work (Susan Lammers)

This book is an oldie from the 1980’s and has some interesting tales from early pioneers in the software industry.

Joel on Software (Joel Spolsky)

A collection of great articles from Joel Spolsky’s Joel on Software web site. These articles are getting a bit dated, but Joel is a great writer so they are always fun to read.

Getting Real, Rework and Remote: Office Not Required (Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson)

These three books are great short reads and offer useful advice on how to work in the modern software development world. Getting Real is also available for free online.

What are your favorite software-related books?

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!

One Thing to Learn

Xojo is a fully integrated development environment (IDE) – that means your code editor, build tools and debugger are all in Xojo. Learning to code can be challenging enough, you don’t need to also learn how to install and configure a bunch of tools before you even get started. In fact, customers have told us they were able to create their first Xojo app before the other development tools they were testing finished installing!

Free Introduction to Programming Book

Xojo has a free book, Introduction to Programming with Xojo, and it is a great way to start learning. The book walks you through programming and general concepts in a way that is easy to understand. You can download it in PDF or for iBooks. Plus there’s an iOS Addendum, a Raspberry Pi Book and a Teacher’s Guide.

Apply Your New Skills to Other Languages

The Xojo programming language is similar to other languages, such as Visual Basic or Java. Because Xojo is object-oriented, the skills you learn with Xojo are directly applicable to other languages, including Visual Basic, Java, C# and more.

Videos and Webinars

For those that learn visually, attend the Xojo webinars, hosted by Xojo Developer Evangelist Paul Lefebvre. The webinars cover a wide variety of topics, from beginner to advanced. Plus all the webinars are recorded for on-demand viewing anytime.

Be sure to check out the Getting Started playlist on the Xojo YouTube channel with videos such as:

• An Introduction to Developing with Xojo
• Introduction to Xojo and Xojo Cloud
• Creating a Desktop App Tutorial
• Creating a Web App Tutorial
• Creating a Desktop App using Xojo
• Creating a Web App using Xojo
• Introduction to Programming 101
• Introduction to Programming 201

Comprehensive Documentation

In addition to Xojo’s books, webinars and video library, we’ve got QuickStart Guides, Tutorials and a User Guide totalling over 900 pages. Divided into four parts to help simplify the learning process, the Xojo User Guide is a great resource for learning.

Still not sure where to start? Our How to Get Started with Xojo page can point you in the right direction.

Wonderful Community

Xojo is known for its friendly and approachable user community. The Xojo Forum is vibrant and active, and includes a Getting Started channel with lots of fellow Xojo Developers available to help answer questions along the way – though we recommend you take a moment to search to see if your question has already been answered first!

Free to Develop

Xojo is free for learning and development. Just create an account, download Xojo and use the resources listed above to start developing your app.

You can develop, run, test and debug all for free. When you are ready to compile your app, you can buy the right Xojo license for you.

The book includes 8 step-by-step projects for creating a variety of Xojo apps for the Raspberry Pi, including: a text adventure, a music player, a game, Internet access, a web app, plus hardware projects.

Raspberry Pi + Xojo is a great way for anyone to learn about computers and how to be a programmer. Check out the table of contents:

1. About Raspberry Pi
2. Setting Up Your Raspberry Pi
3. Xojo Overview
4. Remote Debugging
5. Xojo Programming
6. Program Structure
7. OOP with Classes
8. Project: Find Seltzer Text Adventure
9. Files
10. Graphical User Interfaces
11. Project: Music Player
12. Internet Access
13. Project: Cat Pictures
14. Project: Catch Xojo Game
15. Web Project: Family Notes
16. Interfacing Hardware with GPIO
17. GPIO Project: Blinking LED
18. GPIO Project: Digital Clock
19. What’s Next

Read the book online at the Xojo Dev Center or download a PDF.

• Programming the Raspberry Pi with Xojo (Dev Center)
• Programming the Raspberry Pi with Xojo (PDF)

I think the same thing can be said about coding. In fact, there is research that found students with computer programming skills scored higher on cognitive ability tests than students without any programming skills. Coding teaches you skills that are valuable even if you don’t plan on being a professional software developer. Being able to code means utilizing incredible attention to detail and thinking about problems abstractly, useful skills for anyone – student or professional.

Remember, Summertime isn’t just an opportunity for the kids to learn new things. You’ve still got a month of Summer left, plenty of time to expand your own skill set. While the kids are at band camp or swim camp send yourself to programming camp from the comfort of your air-conditioned home.

Why not end your Summer with Xojo?

It can be pretty empowering to create your own apps and tools that help you be more productive. In fact, many people who use Xojo do exactly that. These people are referred to as “citizen developers” and they are a growing part of the workforce.

I know many of you are probably thinking: “I don’t have time to learn to code.” Well, here’s the thing. Learning Java is definitely lots of work, and not much fun, at least in my opinion. But learning Xojo? Now that is fun and you really can do it before this Summer is gone!

If you don’t have coding experience or are still a beginner, the best way to learn to code is to start with the free Introduction to Programming with Xojo book. This book teaches you how to code as you work through creating many small, fun example apps.

This book is also available in the iTunes Book Store, if that fits how you read better.

If you spend an hour a night on the book, you’ll finish it before this month is over. And the best part about learning to code? Once you learn how to code in one language, you can more easily learn other languages because the concepts behind most programming languages are incredibly similar. So whether you are a student or a professional, improve your skill set and learn to code before this Summer is gone!