Pop on over to Thom McGrath’s blog post about the ongoing saga of a 12 year old bug in the Xojo compiler. It’s an interesting, long, and complex issue that could affect your code if you use unsigned integers in your code. Admittedly, this bug may only affect a very small percentage of applications but it’s still a bug.
I think this saga exposes several things about Xojo. First, the way they use Feedback is fundamentally broken. For this particular bug they say it doesn’t affect many people because it has no points but because they’ve closed it the item won’t accumulate points. Voila! Nothing done about it in 12 years. Circular logic at its best.
Secondly, I truly believe that since they do not have a compiler engineer this bug won’t get fixed. Heck, most likely can’t get fixed because of lack of experienced personnel. Compilers are not simple things. I don’t buy for a second that Xojo has enough developers for the product they have.
The thread on the Xojo forums was long and contentious, and I don’t think Xojo did themselves any favors by arguing. While I appreciate Geoff talking to us in the forum it does kind of amplify the perception (reality?) that’s he’s not really listening.
I think I can say this with near 100% surety: We want Xojo to succeed. Many of us need Xojo to succeed for our careers and business.
Anyway, happy coding everyone!