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RubyMotion Moving Forward Under New Leadership

75 points by artellectual 9y ago

Apocryphon 9y ago
Have to wonder how these iOS bridges are doing in the wake of Swift: http://blog.motioninmotion.tv/why-swift-will-never-replace-rubymotion/ http://blog.motioninmotion.tv/why-swift-will-never-replace-r... https://katanacode.com/blog/posts/12-a-review-of-rubymotion-in-2015 https://katanacode.com/blog/posts/12-a-review-of-rubymotion-... I remember a few years back when Hypercritical revisited Copland 2010. RubyMotion looked like potential future, but Siracusa didn't believe in bridges.
mark_l_watson 9y ago
I bought a one year license earlier this year. It is nice being able to code in Ruby and using helper gems much the same code runs on macOS and iOS which is nice. Swift looks like a nice language from the few hours I have spent playing with it, but I hope that RubyMotion as a company stays viable because for someone like me, who just dabbles in iOS and macOS development, RubyMotion is easier.
Cyph0n 9y ago
How large is the RubyMotion team? Or is development moving from a single dev to another?
- weaksauce 9y ago
  The way they worded it it would seem that they are moving to a single developer still or a very small team.
dpeck 9y ago
I like rubymotion and looked very seriously at it for doing some prototyping/mvp work a few years back before we hired in house ios dev. I think react-native has largely filled the niche that was there for rubymotion to fill and with the momentum of facebook and javascript behind it the days of new people coming to rubymotion are largely behind it. It was a great idea and a great product/tool in its time, but it was outflanked by additional resources and circumstances.
- rajangdavis 9y ago
  Do you know of any good resources to play around with RubyMotion? I went through the quickstart for an Android app, seems pretty simple, but I am not too sure how I would structure an app or change views. Ionic 1 seemed pretty straight forward to me and I haven't tried React Native.
  - stephenhuey 9y ago
    I recommend looking into tools like RedPotion which brings together multiple tools such as RMQ, ProMotion, CDQ, AFMotion, MotionPrint, etc. redpotion.org https://github.com/infinitered/redpotion https://github.com/infinitered/redpotion
  - silkodyssey 9y ago
    You write Android apps the same way you'd write them in Java and the Android SDK but with the Ruby language. The quickstart gives you an idea of how to translate some of the Java to Ruby but you'll still need to learn how to build Android apps with Java.
    - rajangdavis 9y ago
      I had the wrong understanding of how it worked (I come from a Rails/Javascript/Ruby background), so thank you for the explanation, it illuminates a lot.
  - dpeck 9y ago
    redpotion seems to be the way to go, but that project seems to be in maintenance mode. There are a few other libraries/frameworks from the rubymotion project itself, called motionflow iirc, that seemed like they were the way of the future when I checked out status a few months ago. However they were not finished at the time.
jmcharnes 9y ago
I did a prototype app with RubyMotion a couple of years back. The iOS gems made getting an app out the door easy if you were already a Ruby developer. Android, not so much. The support for Android was still fresh. The APIs to interact with Android were there, but not very many gems for Android + RubyMotion at the time. However, there hasn't seemed to be much progress with RubyMotion + Android since then. React Native was a good alternative and appeared to pick up more steam. Likely because of the rise of React. Since this targeted iOS and Android better, it was more exciting to put effort there. As a Ruby developer, I'm excited to see what's to come! I'd love to give RubyMotion another chance.
- stephenhuey 9y ago
  BluePotion is the Android version of RedPotion and these projects have a company backing them: https://github.com/infinitered/bluepotion https://github.com/infinitered/bluepotion
burntrelish1273 9y ago
Tried RubyMotion early, it was okay but required knowing both Ruby and Objective-C. With Swift, there's a similar pathology but it's a typed language, it's basically well-integrated and official.

75 points by artellectual 9y ago

Have to wonder how these iOS bridges are doing in the wake of Swift: http://blog.motioninmotion.tv/why-swift-will-never-replace-rubymotion/ http://blog.motioninmotion.tv/why-swift-will-never-replace-r... https://katanacode.com/blog/posts/12-a-review-of-rubymotion-in-2015 https://katanacode.com/blog/posts/12-a-review-of-rubymotion-... I remember a few years back when Hypercritical revisited Copland 2010. RubyMotion looked like potential future, but Siracusa didn't believe in bridges.

mark_l_watson 9y ago

I bought a one year license earlier this year. It is nice being able to code in Ruby and using helper gems much the same code runs on macOS and iOS which is nice. Swift looks like a nice language from the few hours I have spent playing with it, but I hope that RubyMotion as a company stays viable because for someone like me, who just dabbles in iOS and macOS development, RubyMotion is easier.

Cyph0n 9y ago

How large is the RubyMotion team? Or is development moving from a single dev to another?

weaksauce 9y ago
The way they worded it it would seem that they are moving to a single developer still or a very small team.

dpeck 9y ago

I like rubymotion and looked very seriously at it for doing some prototyping/mvp work a few years back before we hired in house ios dev. I think react-native has largely filled the niche that was there for rubymotion to fill and with the momentum of facebook and javascript behind it the days of new people coming to rubymotion are largely behind it. It was a great idea and a great product/tool in its time, but it was outflanked by additional resources and circumstances.

rajangdavis 9y ago
Do you know of any good resources to play around with RubyMotion? I went through the quickstart for an Android app, seems pretty simple, but I am not too sure how I would structure an app or change views. Ionic 1 seemed pretty straight forward to me and I haven't tried React Native.
- stephenhuey 9y ago
  I recommend looking into tools like RedPotion which brings together multiple tools such as RMQ, ProMotion, CDQ, AFMotion, MotionPrint, etc. redpotion.org https://github.com/infinitered/redpotion https://github.com/infinitered/redpotion
- silkodyssey 9y ago
  You write Android apps the same way you'd write them in Java and the Android SDK but with the Ruby language. The quickstart gives you an idea of how to translate some of the Java to Ruby but you'll still need to learn how to build Android apps with Java.
  - rajangdavis 9y ago
    I had the wrong understanding of how it worked (I come from a Rails/Javascript/Ruby background), so thank you for the explanation, it illuminates a lot.
- dpeck 9y ago
  redpotion seems to be the way to go, but that project seems to be in maintenance mode. There are a few other libraries/frameworks from the rubymotion project itself, called motionflow iirc, that seemed like they were the way of the future when I checked out status a few months ago. However they were not finished at the time.

jmcharnes 9y ago

I did a prototype app with RubyMotion a couple of years back. The iOS gems made getting an app out the door easy if you were already a Ruby developer. Android, not so much. The support for Android was still fresh. The APIs to interact with Android were there, but not very many gems for Android + RubyMotion at the time. However, there hasn't seemed to be much progress with RubyMotion + Android since then. React Native was a good alternative and appeared to pick up more steam. Likely because of the rise of React. Since this targeted iOS and Android better, it was more exciting to put effort there. As a Ruby developer, I'm excited to see what's to come! I'd love to give RubyMotion another chance.

stephenhuey 9y ago
BluePotion is the Android version of RedPotion and these projects have a company backing them: https://github.com/infinitered/bluepotion https://github.com/infinitered/bluepotion

burntrelish1273 9y ago

Tried RubyMotion early, it was okay but required knowing both Ruby and Objective-C. With Swift, there's a similar pathology but it's a typed language, it's basically well-integrated and official.