How it started
History
Script Debugger version 1.0 was released in 1995 by Mark Alldritt as a third-party alternative to Apple's freeware application, Script Editor. Its competitors at that time included ScriptWizard and Main Event Software's popular Scripter. As of 2024, those two products are defunct, leaving only Satimage's Smile and integrated development environments such as FaceSpan (also from Late Night) and AppleScript Studio as Script Debugger's competitors in the field.
Version 1 contained several notable features, such as: it was "scriptable" (it could be used to create scripts to control itself), recordable (it could create scripts based on user actions), and attachable (scripts could be written to respond to events). More importantly, the program now allowed inspection of running applications to see what events they were emitting. The new utility also contained a full debugger, with support for breakpoints.
The program has since won many awards in the Macintosh scripting community. Version 1 received "5 mice" from MacUser and 4 stars from MacWEEK. Version 2 received the 2000 Macworld Eddy for "Best Development Software", and received "4.5 mice" from both MacUser and Macworld.
On February 9, 2006, version 4 was released. This version was completely rewritten to take advantage of the new Cocoa and Tiger APIs. The new release also included an improved version of the JavaScript OSA scripting component.
Version 5 was released in June 2012.
From Wikipedia’s article on Late Night Software, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.2