Mark Derricutt's Disturbing Thoughts

Ambrai Smalltalk for OS/X

« H E technology :: email
posted Thursday, 29 April 2004
Just spotted this on comp.lang.smalltalk:
Ambrai Smalltalk Beta Release Ottawa, Canada - April 28, 2004 Ambrai Inc. is pleased to announce the beta release of Ambrai Smalltalk, a new Smalltalk development environment for Mac OS X. Ambrai Smalltalk features a complete suite of native development tools that tightly integrate with the Mac OS Desktop. Currently these tools include package, class, category browsers, debugger, inspectors, and workspaces. Ambrai Smalltalk can be used to deploy Mac OS standard or console applications. "We aim to deliver a rapid application development platform suitable to create new or script existing Mac OS applications. Whether you are a seasoned programmer or have never written a single line of Smalltalk code, we hope you will consider Ambrai Smalltalk for your next project." - Ambrai Smalltalk Development Team. Founded in 2003, Ambrai Inc. is a privately held company based in Ottawa, Canada. Please visit http://www.ambrai.com to find more details and to download Ambrai Smalltalk.
There's no screenshots available yet, but it sounds interesting. If only I had an OS/X machine. I wonder if these guys will be at Smalltalk Solutions this year, I found a reference from Avi Bryant asking where they'd dissapeared to, well, they're back. Update: Screenshots are available here.

links: digg this    del.icio.us    technorati    reddit


comments (2)


1. a reader left...
Friday, 30 April 2004 3:21 am

Looks way cool. I can't see if it integrates with Interface Builder though - their example builds the UI in code, which is so 1990's.

If it could do the IB thing, It would be the perfect alternative to writing OS X apps in Objective C, and I would finally have a good excuse to learn Smalltalk. (Well, except that I suspect I wouldn't be able to afford it after it leaves beta)

Charles Miller [cmiller@pastiche.org]


2. Mark Derricutt left...
Friday, 30 April 2004 8:11 am

It may be so 1990's, but it's also the way most Java GUI's are developed. Only they often have a designer that builds up the code. One could always write a code-gen tool that used Interface Builder. As for learning Smalltalk, you could always use Visual Works Non-Commercial from Cincom.

Visit me @ http://www.talios.com