Taking APL for a RIDE

The Remote Integrated Development Environment (RIDE) is the name of a new front end for Dyalog APL and for APL#. The RIDE can be used to debug any APL system from Dyalog – no matter where the APL system itself is running (Windows, Linux and UNIX – including Dyalog APL under Windows Mobile – 32 or 64 bit). The user interface will run on any platform where Microsoft Silverlight, or the open-source version known as Moonlight, is available. As a Silverlight/Moonlight application, the RIDE will not need to be installed before use – it can be entirely web-based if desired – but it will still come with complete support for APL fonts and keyboards.

The goal of the RIDE is to provide a unified, graphical "user experience" for developers of Dyalog APL and APL# applications, no matter where the interpreters are running. The portability of the RIDE, and the fact that future APL system will not need to include their own native development environment, will make it significantly easier for Dyalog to put APL interpreters on new platforms.

The RIDE also makes it easier to maintain server applications, which are increasingly running in locations which are inaccessible, either because they are physically locked away, or unable to interact with the server desktop due to security policies. The RIDE will communicate with APL sessions using secure, encrypted TCP sockets and will be fully integrated with the security systems where the debugged applications are running.

Early versions of the RIDE will start to appear over the summer of 2011. You can watch John Daintree introduce the RIDE at APL2010 – and a number of other interesting presentations which we recorded at that conference here.