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Objective-C isn't the hard part about iOS programming, it's fairly simple and can be learned in a day by a programmer. It's the frameworks that are hard, and y
by runjake 15y ago
Objective-C isn't the hard part about iOS programming, it's fairly simple and can be learned in a day by a programmer.
It's the frameworks that are hard, and you have to learn those using RubyMotion anyway.
And not only that, but you have to rely on objc framework documentation and do the translation to Ruby in your head. Too many wasted cycles, imho.
On the flip side, I like seeing experimental tools like this to promote new ways of thinking and coding and it will inevitably foster new features into the official SDK (ala blocks).
- eddieplan9 15y agoI think the potential of something like RubyMotion is that it facilitates very high-level abstraction so that building application with very common themes - like an app showing only a list/detail view - could be done in less than 10 lines of code. Think jQuery vs manual DOM manipulation instead of CoffeeScript vs JavaScript. These days I don't really know how to manually manipulate DOM or read document on getElementById. Similar, you could imagine a new group of iOS programmers not reading official Cocoa documentation and instead rely on a higher level abstraction totally built on top of RubyMotion. For that to happen, RubyMotion needs to grow its own ecosystem instead of relying on people from Objective-C wanting to save some keystrokes.
- masklinn 15y agoXcode is also a hard part, for it is a pretty crummy IDE. And of course, while Objective-C is easy to learn it's not necessarily a fun language to express yourself in, much the way M4, ColdFusion or MUMPS aren't usually considered fun languages to use (no offense meant to Objective-C's designers or people who like it, just drawing on the languages least likely to have any fan out there). > On the flip side, I like seeing experimental tools like this to promote new ways of thinking and coding Ruby isn't exactly a "new way of thinking and coding" now is it?
- JackC 15y agoI think the potential of RubyMotion is in the "new ways of thinking and coding" aspect you mention -- the big potential win here is to import a Rubyish way of thinking about iOS programming. I'm not part of either the ObjC or Ruby communities, but the impression I get as an outsider is that Ruby is a language and coding culture obsessed with elegant and minimalist expression, and ObjC doesn't make those things priorities. So what I'm hoping to see come out of RubyMotion is an obsessive drive to wrap the iOS frameworks in libraries that let you do the common things with no code at all, and the uncommon things with the least code possible. For people who have only worked in lower-level languages ... well, the difference over time could be surprising. At least I'm hoping so. To put it in practical terms: I bet if you follow the sample RubyMotion apps over the next six months, you'll see the number of lines of code required to do what they do plummet, replaced by high-level libraries. If I'm right, let's get back together then and high-five. If not, oh well, it was a fun experiment.
- funkyboy 15y agoLike I said in the post, totally open to change my mind.