You're missing something here. I understand Objective-C, I can write Objective-C code. But it doesn't come as naturally to me as Ruby does, there are certain

You're missing something here. I understand Objective-C, I can write Objective-C code. But it doesn't come as naturally to me as Ruby does, there are certain nuances that I stil don't understand intuitively. Ruby is the complete opposite, coding it is almost instinctive for me. RubyMotion doesn't just slap on a Ruby syntax, its objects inherit from both Ruby and Objective-C classes with some mixed in Ruby modules. The RubyMotion development environment is, in my opinion, an improvement over XCode. And of course, there's the REPL. The "awkward hack" you mentioned is nothing. I don't particularly like the way he's implemented pointers to pointers, but that's also minor. The benefits, for me, easily outweigh the negatives.