Well, for us it looks like the long-term plan should be to leave BlitzMax. We're heavily invested in it right now, and it will still be some time before I'm able to make the move.
I have been using BLIde, and it doesn't have any problems with the debugger (as well as being an awesome editor), so there is half my complaints solved. The big remaining problems are that BlitzMax will likely never have multithreading support, and will never be any more well-known in the general programming community than it is now, even though it is a very viable alternative to Java, C#, VB, etc. It's sad because MaxGUI is so good, and so many schools would jump on it if Mark pulled his head out of his ass for a minute. They want something that lets students make something without scaring them off with too much programming before they see any results.
I have been using BLIde, and it doesn't have any problems with the debugger (as well as being an awesome editor), so there is half my complaints solved. The big remaining problems are that BlitzMax will likely never have multithreading support, and will never be any more well-known in the general programming community than it is now, even though it is a very viable alternative to Java, C#, VB, etc. It's sad because MaxGUI is so good, and so many schools would jump on it if Mark pulled his head out of his ass for a minute. They want something that lets students make something without scaring them off with too much programming before they see any results.