Apple releases Xcode 4

Today Apple released XCode 4, their latest development environment for MacOS and iOS.

Having worked with XCode for a while and skimming through the list of improvements and new features in Xcode 4 it seems like this new version is another big step forward and makes development an even much nicer experience than before. I wish some of the Smalltalk IDEs around would gather some inspiration from Xcode.

The nice thing about Xcode and Objective-C is that it feels very familiar to Smalltalk developers and ships with a lot of nicely crafted tools. Apple’s Interface Builder is one of my favorite GUI Builders together with VA Smalltalk‘s Composition Editor and Google’s WindowBuilder for Eclipse/Java. This combination doesn’t come by accident, all three tools share a common heritage, just like Xcode has adopted many things that Smalltalk IDEs offered 15 or 20 years ago and help boost programmer productivity.

It’s a funny thing to see how new generations of IDEs adopt more and more of the feel of Smalltalk environments. Some people call this the “feels like dynamic” trend, and Xcode 4 together with the latest additions to Objective-C (I am talking of Garbage Collection and Blocks) is a clear step towards feeling like Smalltalk.

There are now two ways of getting Xcode: registered Apple developers can download it for free, if you’re not registered, you can purchase XCode in the Mac App Store for 4.99 USD or 3.99 EUR.

ESUG is preparing for Google Summer Of Code 2011

The European Smalltalk Users Group (ESUG) will be applying for Google’s sponsorship of Smalltalk-based open source projects in this year’s Summer Of Code.

Janko is volunteering again to set up the organization and make things happen. They’re looking for mentors and project ideas:

Dear Smalltalkers,

I’d like to inform you that we are preparing an application to this year
Smalltalk Google Summer of Code under ESUG umbrella, as last year.

If accepted, Google will pay few stipendiums to students on our
Smalltalk projects. Please start thinking about ideas what projects
would be nice to have. Also start looking around for students. How to
approach the universitites near by you, do you know who to contact
there, etc. To see last year ideas and accepted/done projects, visit
last year http://gsoc2010.esug.org.

More on our already open special Smalltalk GSoC 2011 website:

http://gsoc2011.esug.org

So if you have an idea for an open source project that would help make the Smalltalk world a better place or would like to mentor a student who works on one of the proposed projects, visit the ESUG GSoC page and jump in.

If you are a student who’d like to work on a Smalltalk project and get a little extra pay for that as well as some honey for your CV, do so as well.