Could you introduce yourself and briefly describe what you do? Which Amigas do you use? Could you describe circumstances that made you interested in Amiga and AmigaOS 4.0?

My name is Simon Archer, and I'm an Alcoholic....erm, wrong forum :)

I have been involved with the Amiga for a lot of years now. My first Amiga experience was at a friends house. He had a wildly expanded A500 (around 1987 or so anyway) which he used for raytracing and animation etc. This intrigued me, as my current computer at the time was a C64. Needless to say it wasn't long after that I found a second hand A500 which came home with me. After that, spending money on Amiga stuff was like water down the river:- neverending. A natural progression from the A500, to an A2000, and then A4000 (with many others in there too) followed. I still have my A2000, A4000 and a highly modified A600. Over the years I have run just about every version of the operating system that has been released, and it has always been my OS of choice, even though these days a Windows XP box does get a lot of use too. AmigaOS4 was just the natural progression for me, and I run the very latest 4.1 version available, which is part of my duties as a beta-tester.

Could you generally describe what CodeBench is?

It is a Development Management Environment specifically aimed at AmigaOS 4.1, and designed from scratch to work with the AmigaOS 4 SDK, amongst others. It basically offers the functionality of compiling and editing code all in one interface. There are other features too, more on that later.

What made you decide to work on this project?

Because there is nothing else out there designed purely for AmigaOS 4.1. Cubic is a great piece of established software, and I certainly don't want to take any business away from Deitmar, but it's time for a native application that works in a similar fashion to the operating system, which was my main drive for basing it on Reaction.

What is special about this program that will make it shine amongst other similar programs known from other platforms?

As it has been written from scratch, it already has an advantage of not being laden down by bloat from ported systems. I have specifically made sure I don't look at any other development environments purely so that I don't pick up any bad ideas :)

CodeBench is going to be the first such program for AmigaOS 4.1, and because all previous attempts to create something similar have failed so far, aren`t you afraid that "curse" will make this project fail as well?

Interesting. Firstly, this project started from a need for software of its type. I needed something easy to code in, so to me, this project will never fail. Secondly, as there is a functionally limited version being given away for free licence, I find it hard to say it will fail. While I need this software, I will continue to update it for myself, and if there are sufficient users, I shall pass those updates on to them. There will be a commercial version, which will offer more features, and the ability to be able to use different types of projects (HTML/PHP, Perl, Arexx etc. are all planned), and whether that sells well remains to be seen. It's extremely unlikely that it will ever cover the costs of its development, but then how many actually create software in the Amiga market these days for financial gain?

CodeBench will be a commercial program. What is the expected price of it? It is a tool for rather narrow group of users, what was the reason to make it commercial? What does "commercialization" mean in this case ? How the program will be distributed? As a program sold in internet shop through your web site or as shareware with its functions activated after registering activation key?

Yes, as I explained above, the commercial version will offer a wider scope of the types of languages that can be used with it. Currently, the SDK version only allows C/C++ projects to be worked on. The functionality that is supplied can also equally be applied to other languages, and this is what the commercial version will offer. You will be able to select a PHP/HTML type project, and the editor will highlight the syntax for that language type, the project will change to allow the various filetypes to be loaded/saved/handled, and the Build button will allow the code to be pushed straight to a web browser, for example. An AmigaDOS type project will allow the running of scripts directly in a console, with a possible "step and trace" type debugger. All these things are currently under construction, but I felt it was time to give the users a chance to try out what we currently have. Once that is finalised, the commercial version will most likely be available from an online resource, at a cost yet to be established. There will be no activation system, it will be a binary upgrade system.

Will developers, not related with beta-tests of AmigaOS 4.x, get new version of SDK?

Obviously I am not in a postition to answer that, but see no reason why future updates to the SDK will not be available to the general Amiga user, just as they are now.

Are You working on any other projects?

Yes :)

What do you think about whole situation related to AmigaOS 4.0 and Hyperion and Amiga Inc.?

I think while AmigaOS still keeps working on my machines, I'm happy.

What are those machines you are happy with that let you enjoy AmigaOS 4.x?

I have a 1.2 Ghz 7447 A1-XE, MicroA1 and SAM..

Are there any chances for AmigaOS 3.X, MorphOS or AROS versions of Your programs?

Currently no. The simple fact is that CodeBench relies on the very latest versions of the BOOPSI classes, some of which are not even yet publicly available. The chances of getting these ported to other Amiga-like systems is close to none, so that rules them out.

In your opinion, does support for Pegasos 2 was a good move of Hyperion?

Anything that widens the userbase is a good idea in my opinion.

Thank you for answering all the questions and I wish you good luck with your projects.