What Is AppeX, and How Can It Help Web Programmers?

Over the past few months, we’ve been promoting a Cincom-led talk for the monthly UK Smalltalk User Group Meetup. This meetup takes place once a month and has seen steady increases in attendance over the summer months as the event coordinators re-opened it in a virtual setting. 

During the meetup, Cincom engineers Niall Ross and Vlad Degen gave a presentation on the subject of “AppeX: Writing JavaScript in the Cincom Smalltalk IDE.” It was an opportunity for attendees to:

• Learn about AppeX, the lightweight, flexible web app framework for Cincom Smalltalk that allows developers to utilize and integrate current web frameworks like HTML5 and JavaScript
• See AppeX examples
• Understand:
  • How AppeX works in the Cincom Smalltalk IDE
  • How to run and debug AppeX with Chrome

As you can see in the video below, Niall talked about using AppeX in the Cincom Smalltalk IDE to learn, code, build and deploy JavaScript, while Vlad, the veteran JavaScript expert on our team, demonstrated using AppeX with Chrome to inspect and debug.

The meetup had nearly 80 attendees and was a good mix of Cincom Smalltalk personnel, customers and partners, along with seasoned Cincom Smalltalk and Smalltalk developers and other curious onlookers. Niall and Vlad’s talk was scheduled to last two hours, but the topic was interesting to the group, prompting the Q&A portion to run well past the allotted timeslot. Not only were there plenty of questions asked at the end, the positive dialog and networking that took place throughout the meetup was also encouraging.

If you were not able to be in attendance, here’s a great opportunity to go back and witness it for yourself in its entirety. Watch the meetup below or click here.

Niall Ross, Vlad Degen – AppeX, 30 September 2020 from UK Smalltalk User Group on Vimeo.