Objo Studio for Mac

Objo Studio's niche is the ability to target MacOS, Windows and Linux from a single code base, with other targets (including web) on the roadmap. It's built on top of .NET and Avalonia, with its own custom VM running compiled bytecode. Performance is very good, and also on the roadmap is interop with .NET languages and C, so performance critical bits can be handled. I also expect a vibrant ecosystem of add-on libraries and tools will develop -- the tires are already being kicked by vendors. I can only describe the feel of this product as lovingly built by a real craftsman and competent architect who is incredibly responsive to both bug reports and feature suggestions. That is paramount to me. In fact that responsiveness and pride of workmanship in today's world of products diluted and enshittified by soulless corporations, is actually inspiring. It has already earned a core of enthusiastic developers. And the price is right: free until you want to compile distributable executables (or use the premium Profiler). The language will be comfortable to anyone who has developed in C# or VB.NET (or Xojo, a commercial product formerly known as RealBasic, which Objo (the language) is broadly compatible with, while not being enslaved to Xojo's sometimes idiosyncratic architecture). Nothing important is lacking in the language: async / await, closures, reflection (which Objo refers to as introspection), generics, etc. The main weakness from my point of view is the small type system (64 bit integer, floating point and decimal types; strings, DateTime, boolean -- although there is no problem building classes, modules, enumerations, etc. of arbitrary complexity). I particularly miss a dedicated char type, although there's a comprehensive API for converting strings to and from code points in the form of integer arrays. There is also a MemoryBlock type, which is essentially a fixed size byte array, with robust support for reading and writing binary data between MemoryBlocks, disk files and more. While some might be tempted to see Objo as a beginner's language, it is in no way limiting in that regard. In fact a self-described beginning programmer requested a fairly advanced feature recently (conditional compilation) and the vendor response was typical: "implemented for the next release". As for pros -- I requested a profilng tool and that was "in the next release" as well. The debugger is excellent and includes the ability to trigger breakpoints based on expressions, as well as remote debugging. Beginners and long time professionals like myself will all be quickly spoiled by this product. I have been slinging C# code for 20 years and other languages for two decades before that, and I do not feel deprived by Objo the language. There are of course things I don't love. Objo Studio has an opinionated approach to building class definitions and filling them out with code. Everything is form-based; you don't write a class definition in a file organized as you wish, you use Studio's UI (forms, tree controls, etc) to navigate around your project. However, it is well constructed and stable, so it grows on you, and the solution / project formats are open, documented, and Git-friendly. I expect 3rd parties to make more traditional drafting of code a reality down the line, for those who want it on occasion. I find the solution / project metaphor in Objo Studio to be ... different. It is in a sense the inverse of Visual Studio or Ryder: a solution contains your library code, off of which hang your projects, which are the apps you're building. Since you quickly accumulate general purpose components that you would use in all your apps, you end up with one solution and many projects under it. As it currently stands, I can't think of a use case for multiple solutions as you would have to resort to copy-paste to get your support libraries in all of them. I expect however that this will change when interop and 3rd party support arrives, such that you can buy a library and import it into any Solution -- and build your own importable libs in the same way. So I regard this as an "early days" issue and not a practical long term problem. So far, I have been focusing on language and performance matters, but folks who are already building complex GUI apps have no complaints here, even when porting complex existing apps from other platforms. In summary: if you are looking for a cross platform development tool that lets you focus on implementing your GUI and business logic while capably managing the platform differences -- or if you just want a pleasant environment to work on your idea for a great product -- I can confidently commend Objo Studio to you.

I’ve been looking for a tool like Objo Studio with straightforward and affordable licensing ever since the tool I used for most of my programming career was sold to a huge corporation, which changed the licensing model for publishing standalone applications from a developer to an end-user yearly subscription. Even though it is still relatively new, Objo Studio already delivers many of the features and capabilities I’ve come to expect from a multiplatform development tool. And all of that comes at a lower price. In addition to publishing applications for Windows and macOS, I can also publish my applications for Linux users. Everything included is well thought out, and missing features are added very quickly. For example, a few users asked for a WebView control, and it was included in the very next release, just days after the request. I wanted my publishing process to be fully automated, so one of the first things I explored was how to create a GitHub Actions workflow to automate application publishing. I managed to do it in just a few days—not because I’m particularly skilled at GitHub Actions, but because the author of Objo Studio designed its publishing features and command-line tools with CI/CD pipelines in mind. The same is true for application signing and installer creation. Objo Studio can generate DMG files on macOS and MSIX installer packages on Windows without requiring external tools. It also includes built-in support for AI-assisted coding and localization. And if something isn’t there yet and users ask for it, there’s a good chance it will be implemented very quickly.

A new and easy-to-use desktop apps development system that is really mighty. It has the ability to compile apps for Windows, MacOS and Linux. The language is really easy to learn, it's a bit like good old BASIC and when the compiled app is running, it's on steroids. You can easily build GUIs, that look the same on every platform, for that you compile your code. The controls look very nice and modern. I did a little calendar app to track some appointments in a few days. There are so many components, there is not much missing. And the best part: If you suggest a feature to the programmer, in most cases he'll integrate it into Objo Studio. Same is with bugs...report it, he fixes it as quickly as possible.

I’ve been using Objo Studio for several weeks and find it both fun and addictive (or maybe I’m just obsessive?). I’ve already ported two of my Swift/SwiftUI apps to Objo just to see what it was capable of doing. One app, although very graphics-oriented and requiring dozens of controls, took only a couple of days. Objo Studio is a very capable IDE, with an integrated GUI builder that has all of the controls that you expect to create a modern GUI. Likewise, although Objo has a simple syntax like BASIC, it is far from standard BASIC and more like a modern programming language. It has more advanced language features like interfaces, generics, asynchronous code, exceptions, introspection, and concurrency. It comes with a large library of classes for collections, regular expressions, cryptography, database access, and networking. The developer is extremely helpful, is active on the user forum, and fixes reported bugs incredibly fast. While it’s not as capable as Swift/SwiftUI, I’m impressed with what Objo Studio can do and how simple and fast it is to get it done. It’s been a pleasure using it.