Adventures with Amber

Adventures with Amber

This post is called Adventures with Amber because I want to use Amber to interface with Javascript libraries and I have had some difficulties. I plan to make a series of blog posts about my attempts to use Amber, Javascript debugging and the Bug I found in the amber code, which I believe I have a patch for.

Overview:

I discovered amber a few months ago and believe it is a useful implementation of Smalltalk in Javascript development . After running the Class browser and testing a few of examples I believed that it was likely I could do useful work with amber. I proceeded to build a test project - Google Charts API in amber.

Amber Hello Example:

I set a goal of using Google Charts API because there is good example code. I proceeded in the following manner I consturcted an Amber hello world example from the amber Getting Started example. I got this example to work.

Google Chart Pie Example:

Next I constructed a Google Chart Pie Graph from the Pie Chart Example page. I got this example to work.

Merging the two Examples:

I have worked over several months on this project. Often I would find when changing the load order of the chart and amber examples that the script would "hang" or "bug" in an extension that worked with both pieces. As with most open source software their are bugs and the projects are not really ready for prime time.

Learn to Debug - Scratch the itch - Find a Bug.

In the past few days I have been concentrating on the integration of Google Charts into amber. I have learned how to use the Javascript debugger and I believe I have found an error in amber.js which causes all the problems.

My next blog post will describe the error.