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I'm genuinely curious: why would I use this over something like Crystal, which is pretty much Ruby, but native? https://crystal-lang.org/ https://crystal-lang.

by netule 5y ago

I'm genuinely curious: why would I use this over something like Crystal, which is pretty much Ruby, but native? https://crystal-lang.org/ https://crystal-lang.org/

vidarh 5y ago
Crystal is superficially similar but it pretty much ends there, and many off the differences feels pretty arbitrary.
pjmlp 5y ago
Ideally, access to the existing Ruby ecosystem. Crystal makes sense in the context of writing stuff from scratch or wanting to contribute to the ecosystem.
- 999900000999 5y ago
  I sincerely doubt a tool like this will give you access to the full Ruby ecosystem. I definitely love the idea though, I struggle with lower level languages, although I consider myself fairly decent with both Python and JavaScript.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    This one in particular probably not, since it is in early stages. RubyMotion on the contrary is quite advanced and an AOT compiler to go to, when one wants to use Ruby for mobile development. http://www.rubymotion.com/ http://www.rubymotion.com/
    - _3u10 5y ago
      RubyMotion is probably as good as it gets for AOT. Ruby depends on dynamic dispatch and thankfully objc is very similar the needs of a Ruby-like language. Truffle might work even better as it’s able to recompile. Any C++ port will likely need to reimplement half of the objc runtime to support all of Ruby. Not sure if clangs/gcc objc support includes the runtime, but I’m imagining it would… so maybe it’s reusable that way.
      - cmer 5y ago
        Is RubyMotion something we can actually use to build non-toy apps in 2021? I thought it was dead, but perhaps it is not!
        wndxlori 5y ago
        It is not dead. There are regular releases, a helpful community at slack.RubyMotion.com and training available at https://wndx.school https://wndx.school (that last is mine)
chrisseaton 5y ago
> which is pretty much Ruby Crystal looks similar, but really has very different semantics, and so can't run existing Ruby.
- ksec 5y ago
  I was going to suggest adding Natalie to Ruby Compiler List [1], turns out Natalie is already on the list and started in 2019! [1]https://ruby-compilers.com https://ruby-compilers.com
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    Yeah I need to do the deep dive on it!
rubyfan 5y ago
Crystal is not “pretty much Ruby” unfortunately. Use it for more than 30 seconds and you realize “oh this isn’t ruby”

by netule 5y ago

I'm genuinely curious: why would I use this over something like Crystal, which is pretty much Ruby, but native? https://crystal-lang.org/ https://crystal-lang.org/

vidarh 5y ago

Crystal is superficially similar but it pretty much ends there, and many off the differences feels pretty arbitrary.

pjmlp 5y ago

Ideally, access to the existing Ruby ecosystem. Crystal makes sense in the context of writing stuff from scratch or wanting to contribute to the ecosystem.

999900000999 5y ago
I sincerely doubt a tool like this will give you access to the full Ruby ecosystem. I definitely love the idea though, I struggle with lower level languages, although I consider myself fairly decent with both Python and JavaScript.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  This one in particular probably not, since it is in early stages. RubyMotion on the contrary is quite advanced and an AOT compiler to go to, when one wants to use Ruby for mobile development. http://www.rubymotion.com/ http://www.rubymotion.com/
  - _3u10 5y ago
    RubyMotion is probably as good as it gets for AOT. Ruby depends on dynamic dispatch and thankfully objc is very similar the needs of a Ruby-like language. Truffle might work even better as it’s able to recompile. Any C++ port will likely need to reimplement half of the objc runtime to support all of Ruby. Not sure if clangs/gcc objc support includes the runtime, but I’m imagining it would… so maybe it’s reusable that way.
    - cmer 5y ago
      Is RubyMotion something we can actually use to build non-toy apps in 2021? I thought it was dead, but perhaps it is not!
      - wndxlori 5y ago
        It is not dead. There are regular releases, a helpful community at slack.RubyMotion.com and training available at https://wndx.school https://wndx.school (that last is mine)

chrisseaton 5y ago

> which is pretty much Ruby Crystal looks similar, but really has very different semantics, and so can't run existing Ruby.

ksec 5y ago
I was going to suggest adding Natalie to Ruby Compiler List [1], turns out Natalie is already on the list and started in 2019! [1]https://ruby-compilers.com https://ruby-compilers.com
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  Yeah I need to do the deep dive on it!

rubyfan 5y ago

Crystal is not “pretty much Ruby” unfortunately. Use it for more than 30 seconds and you realize “oh this isn’t ruby”