Programmers new to the Mac platform, as well as newbie Mac coders often ask (or complain) about available development tools.Most often, Apple’s Xcode is recommended since it is free, and a pretty slick package. For cross-platform work, Metrowerks CodeWarrior series has been with us since the early PowerPC days, and is very flexible in its support for multi-platforms. But with if you want to work in a language other than Objective-C,C, C++ or Java? Or learn an entirely new language? How does the Macintosh fare? iDevGames, a site devoted to Mac game developers, has put together a list of “alternative” development tools for Mac OS X. A good number of the tools listed are either free, or low-cost. So, if you’re interested in playing around with Lua, Ruby, something similar to HyperCard, or one of the many BASICs, check out “Alternative Development Systems for the Mac.”
Alternative Development Systems for the Mac
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Some alternative development tools and platforms for the Mac and OS X. I personally use mainly Perl and Java (with some C sprinkled in there for good measure!) on my Mac, Linux and FreeBSD boxes, but I’m sure there are other folks out there that like some of the BASIC or Pascal flavors. I even saw a promising looking tool based on Python, Pygame I think it was called.
Excellent! Keep up the good work.
My vote goes for CodeWarrior. Costly, but worth it, especially if you’re writing commercial software. CW is faster at compiling and creates faster code. It’s UI is by far less confusing than XCode. The built-in editor is also much faster at dealing with larger source code files than XCode.
I moved to java for OSX after trying out Codewarrior’s PowerPlantX.
Apple has done quite a nice job of implementing Swing. I would indeed like to see better integration between Carbon and Swing, allowing Carbon and Swing to get along better in the threading arena. But, overall, I think Java on OSX is the way to go.
3H
emacs
how about emacs and vi?
I use VIM for Perl and C, and mainly Eclipse for Java. I tend to write “cross-platform” Java, so I don’t use the Xcode integration.
Eclipse runs pretty well on OS X, and supports languages such as Perl etc. with EPIC plugins.
Certainly an option if you are the kind of programmer who flounders helplessly without an IDE
OpenMCL seems very good.
I love Netbeans on OS X. Just be sure you get the development builds (not the 4.0 beta) and enable screen menubars. Looks native, feels native, tastes sweet :-).
Netbeans has come a long way.
I like SubEthaEdit for small files…which is predominantly what I deal with…I am, by no means, the hacker some of you guys are.
But it has syntax support for any language worth using: C, C++, C#, Java, Perl, Python, Ruby, Fortran 77/90/95, XML, HTML, bash shell, applescript, etc.
…kind of like visual SlickEdit.
What is cool is you can collaberate with others over the internet on the same document in real time.
It also has a command line tool built into the Editor as well.
IT’s nice, it works.
I might have to check out Netbeans…Codewarrior I don’t like so much…but that’s probably because I really am not much of a codewarrior myself.
I use JEdit and the command line for Java, Perl and Prolog. SWI-Prolog’s great, they even have a nice, easy to install package so I don’t need to have the dev tools and fink installed just to have Prolog
Free Beta Download
http://www.ambrai.com/smalltalk/
“The only people that are floundering around helplessly are those unproductive people that still insist on using VI for java development when modern tools like Eclipse or IDEA are out there.”
… hum, care to elaborate why people who use an editor+compiler+debugger sans funny looking buttons are unproductive compared to those people who use an editor+compiler+debugger with funny looking buttons? Or did you just pulled that statement out of your rectal orifice?
vi doesn’t have code folding or intellisense(or whatever they call it in Eclipse and Netbeans), keyword lookup, GUI designers. The rest are IMHO just fluff and don’t really help.
The power of VI comes in it’s keyboard binding, not really as a development environment. But it does have code-folding and a limited java intellisense (only on windows and pretty static from what I’ve seen).
Eclipse and IDEA both have vi keybindings, but the real power of these development environments are that they actually understand the java language unlike something like ctags. You don’t have to build your code in the traditional sense of hitting a button or a command line. Your source code is continually parsed for proper java syntax, so any syntax errors, warnings, or even refactoring advice shows up realtime. Then you have stuff like intellisense (method, member popup lists) and associated pop-up docs. I’d rather let the IDE do that stuff than alt-tabbing to browsers or books for API lookups. And then you have all of the refactoring abilities of these environments that only a real-time parser can give you.
I love vim and never underestimate the power of printf() debugging, but I also recognize that these development environments afford me the opportunity to concentrate on my implementation while the machine does some of the druge word.
In any case, here’s a link to an article about future programming paradigms and how text-oriented programming is outdated. http://www.onboard.jetbrains.com/articles/04/10/lop/
I am using gnustep make package and vim to build my Cocoa apps
on OSX and happily doing the code the way I like it. The best part
is I don’t have to rewrite the build script to compile on other GNUstep platforms.
Games programmers should watch http://www.blitzbasic.com over the next month or so… Blitz Max is coming!
http://www.blitzbasic.com/
Strange that Qt wasn’t mentioned. Is no one using it?
http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/mac.html
i use intellij idea. there’s a nice vim plugin for it so i get the best of both worlds — good keybindings, and ide features like intellisense, refactoring, ant integration, cvs integration, etc.
I was using NEdit plus Apple’s X11, but since installing FC3 on my x86 desktop last week, haven’t touched OS X in a few days…
“The only people that are floundering around helplessly are those unproductive people that still insist on using VI for java development when modern tools like Eclipse or IDEA are out there.”
It’s funny how some people think that an IDE is counter productive while others thing using a text editor, debugger, and compiler is counter productive.
The fact of the matter is it all depends on the programmer. I personally prefer using IDEs since it integrates all the tools I need into one program. Everything is there for me to use without having to switch to another utility.
A couple of my friends swear by vi or emacs, a seperate compiler, and a seperate debugger. In the end we can all get similar programs down in roughly the same amount of time. It just depends on what your are comfortable with. But if you know how to properly use the tools that you have you can be just as productive as the next guy.
If somebody knows how to use vi for writing code, and enjoys doing it that way, they are certainly not floundering around.
Strange that Qt wasn’t mentioned. Is no one using it?
You don’t want to use Qt for the Mac, your user’s won’t like it. While TrollTech claims that Qt is highly HIG-compliant, my experience with Qt apps on OS X is that they clearly look and feel non-Mac. For example, I have Lyx running: The toolbar consists of square gumdrop buttons (as opposed to a non-gumdrop button toolbar like in Mail.app), the file dialog is not the system dialog but a custom one, text in popup widgets is too far left, and the toolbar looks and behaves (esp in terms of customization) more like IE on Win than Safari.
Add to that list the fact that even the standard QPushButtons don’t look right. The vertical alignment of the text in a QPushButton is off by a few pixels. Normally, the text looks a little too high, and Trolltech has taken forever to fix this problem.
For the US$1500 they charge for a commercial license, Qt is quite a disappointment to developers who care about making their apps look and feel native.
The free wxWidgets does a much better job of looking native on OS X.
Yeah I know I’m gonna thread shat on but has anyone tried out RealBASIC for Mac? Great for RAD projects.
http://www.realsoftware.com/