In the first part, I loved the fact that Xojo's online book explained caching. So simple yet so important and often overlooked by instructors. It made me think that the people behind Xojo really thought things through in the development process.
The other reason Xojo(fka RealBasic, Real Studio) is so lovable is that it makes difficult things simple.
While I have a thing for C#, creating GUIs in Windows Forms is a major pain. With Xojo, you drag and drop. Seriously, that's it. Drag and drop and go to the Inspector to set values for the properties. Then you can actually work on your code instead of spending a ton of time coding for the GUI. Listbox? No problem! Labels? No biggie!
Then there is the real reason for Xojo's existence in the first place - multiplatform. Do I love Apple? Not really. Am I planning to learn Objective-C? No. I'm a Windows kind of girl. But now I want to create an app for a friend who happens to use a Mac. What's the answer? Xojo. Write it in Xojo and it can be used on Windows, Linux or Mac. (If I ever find time to finish said app, I'll write about that.)
Last, but not least, the database. It's a mistake to think you can become a real programmer without loving the database life. SQLite is part of Xojo and you can actually create the database in Xojo using the insert menu. Feel free to do it programmatically, too.
I think Xojo is a great business solution for companies/individuals who have limited resources in terms of being able to write code for multiple operating systems and maintain that code. You do have to pay for the license to deploy your app, but you can build it for free to see how you like Xojo. The license is not unreasonably priced either. Check it out here.
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