REALbasic Turns 5.0

REAL Software has released version 5.0 of REALbasic, its flagship programming environment for making Classic, Mac OS X, and Windows applications. This promises to be an significant revision – more so, perhaps, than any since version 2 (see "REALbasic Gets Real" in TidBITS 493). The compiler has been rewritten from the ground up, allowing some much-needed rationalization of the language itself, along with improvements such as far more convenient, natural syntax, and some elegant new object-oriented constructs (such as operator overloading and custom coercion functions). Sockets, too, have been completely rewritten, including a long-desired ServerSocket class that implements listeners through a pool-and-dispatcher architecture. Other major improvements include support for brushed-metal windows, drawers, toolbars, and dynamic menus. REALbasic runs natively on System 8.1 or later and Mac OS X; a version that runs natively on Windows is currently in development. REALbasic is $100, or $300 for the Pro version, which includes ServerSockets, database access, and compilation for Windows; upgrades from pre-4.5 versions are half those prices.