5 ms·

Get Started Writing iOS Apps With RubyMotion

41 points by jballanc 14y ago

brennenHN 14y ago
I don't know ruby and have learned Objective-C so this makes me unfairly unhappy. It's actually pretty cool.
- cnp 14y ago
  Just wait till you start using it :)
axx 14y ago
I also like to mention http://rubymotion-tutorials.com/ http://rubymotion-tutorials.com/ on this topic. :)
- jballanc 14y ago
  Another really great resource. It's really encouraging to see the nascent community that's grown up around RubyMotion!
  - evilduck 14y ago
    Shameless self-plug but I'm working on a repo that's attempting to documents 1:1 how to use the iOS SDK from RubyMotion without trying to abstract it away into a library. Libraries will change and evolve or worse, be leaky abstractions, but the SDK is a slower moving target you can always fall back to: http://iconoclastlabs.github.com/rubymotion_cookbook/ http://iconoclastlabs.github.com/rubymotion_cookbook/ We'd love to have more eyes on it, it's just something we do in our spare time, so it's a bit slow going. We've also hit a few rough spots where our obvious lack of iOS knowledge has slowed us down (CoreData, I'm looking at you). We've uncovered some RubyMotion bugs in the process, so I feel it's a valuable project that reaches into all the seldom used dark corners of the SDK and verifies that they work.
    - axx 14y ago
      Awesome! I added it to Rubymotion-Tutorials.com http://rubymotion-tutorials.com/links/24 http://rubymotion-tutorials.com/links/24
borgopants 14y ago
Biggest issue with this is the lag time between iOS SDK releases and whenever they update their SDK. Overall interesting, but not something I'd seriously consider writing an app with, knowing Objective-C already. This is more for Rubyists who'd like to dip their toes into the iOS ecosphere, but go in knowing that it's always better to just learn ObjC eventually.
- 10char 14y ago
  RubyMotion's updated very often (at least weekly) and supported the first iOS6 beta within a day of its release. That expedience could change in the future, but I don't see it being something to worry about.
kenrikm 14y ago
I think it's cool that they are trying to make things easier for webdev engineers to pick up iOS programming. However there is one thing that I don't understand with this, Phonegap, etc.. Objective C is not that hard to learn. The syntax is very close to C (superset of C) which in turn a bunch of other languages are very close to so it's reasonable to assume that most engineers are familiar with the basic syntax. Aside from the day or two? it would take to get comfortable with the Objective C syntax everything else is learning to deal with Apple's frameworks which you are still going to have to come to grips with even if you're using Ruby. If someone just starting runs into an issue there is a 99% chance it has been answered on Stack Overflow or a tutorial out on the interweb, that's a vast timesaver that you won't be able to tap into with Ruby Motion. In recent years Apple has made great strides in making Objective C even more easy to pick up/write with ARC, better auto completion, documentation, samples etc.. Modern iOS/Objective C is orders of magnitude easier to work with then it was in the dark ages of the App Store when I first started. Disclaimer: I'm a iOS engineer, so I may be a bit biased, however I do love Ruby/Rails.
mrinterweb 14y ago
I doubt RubyMotion is going to gain any ground until they have a free development/evaluation version. $200 up-front for a license is too spendy for many people just curious to try something out. If there was a free dev/eval version, I'm sure many more licenses of RubyMotion would be sold.
- leetreveil 14y ago
  Agree, i'm dying to have a play with this but I begrudge paying 200 bucks before I even know if I like it! Maybe they should allow you to develop your entire app for free but put some sort of kill switch inside which makes it fail to pass app store validation or w/e.
  - axx 14y ago
    I think you should see it as an early adopter fee. I bet if more people use RubyMotion, Laurent is going to drop the price. I bought RubyMotion short after the release and i can say it's really worth the price. If you love Ruby and you love iOS, buy a licence.
flatline3 14y ago
This reads exactly like the Objective-C tutorial would, with an analogue syntax, manual instantiation of views (as compared to IB), and a different set of command-line-only tools.
tvon 14y ago
OT: It really confuses me what it takes for someone to have all their new comments marked as 'dead', kenrikm seems to have a perfectly reasonable submission and comment history with the exception of the last submission which was marked as 'dead'...
wildmXranat 14y ago
What's the catch or is there anything that is obviously not possible to do in rubymotion ?
dennyabraham 14y ago
What I'm personally interested in is how well can you write pure ObjC apps while using RubyMotion's build and test infrastructure. I've spent some time searching, but I haven't been able to find many people talking about or doing it, at odds with the real-world interest I've seen so far. Has anyone spent time using RubyMotion to simplify writing ObjC apps?

41 points by jballanc 14y ago

brennenHN 14y ago

I don't know ruby and have learned Objective-C so this makes me unfairly unhappy. It's actually pretty cool.

cnp 14y ago
Just wait till you start using it :)

axx 14y ago

I also like to mention http://rubymotion-tutorials.com/ http://rubymotion-tutorials.com/ on this topic. :)

jballanc 14y ago
Another really great resource. It's really encouraging to see the nascent community that's grown up around RubyMotion!
- evilduck 14y ago
  Shameless self-plug but I'm working on a repo that's attempting to documents 1:1 how to use the iOS SDK from RubyMotion without trying to abstract it away into a library. Libraries will change and evolve or worse, be leaky abstractions, but the SDK is a slower moving target you can always fall back to: http://iconoclastlabs.github.com/rubymotion_cookbook/ http://iconoclastlabs.github.com/rubymotion_cookbook/ We'd love to have more eyes on it, it's just something we do in our spare time, so it's a bit slow going. We've also hit a few rough spots where our obvious lack of iOS knowledge has slowed us down (CoreData, I'm looking at you). We've uncovered some RubyMotion bugs in the process, so I feel it's a valuable project that reaches into all the seldom used dark corners of the SDK and verifies that they work.
  - axx 14y ago
    Awesome! I added it to Rubymotion-Tutorials.com http://rubymotion-tutorials.com/links/24 http://rubymotion-tutorials.com/links/24

borgopants 14y ago

Biggest issue with this is the lag time between iOS SDK releases and whenever they update their SDK. Overall interesting, but not something I'd seriously consider writing an app with, knowing Objective-C already. This is more for Rubyists who'd like to dip their toes into the iOS ecosphere, but go in knowing that it's always better to just learn ObjC eventually.

10char 14y ago
RubyMotion's updated very often (at least weekly) and supported the first iOS6 beta within a day of its release. That expedience could change in the future, but I don't see it being something to worry about.

kenrikm 14y ago

I think it's cool that they are trying to make things easier for webdev engineers to pick up iOS programming. However there is one thing that I don't understand with this, Phonegap, etc.. Objective C is not that hard to learn. The syntax is very close to C (superset of C) which in turn a bunch of other languages are very close to so it's reasonable to assume that most engineers are familiar with the basic syntax. Aside from the day or two? it would take to get comfortable with the Objective C syntax everything else is learning to deal with Apple's frameworks which you are still going to have to come to grips with even if you're using Ruby. If someone just starting runs into an issue there is a 99% chance it has been answered on Stack Overflow or a tutorial out on the interweb, that's a vast timesaver that you won't be able to tap into with Ruby Motion. In recent years Apple has made great strides in making Objective C even more easy to pick up/write with ARC, better auto completion, documentation, samples etc.. Modern iOS/Objective C is orders of magnitude easier to work with then it was in the dark ages of the App Store when I first started. Disclaimer: I'm a iOS engineer, so I may be a bit biased, however I do love Ruby/Rails.

mrinterweb 14y ago

I doubt RubyMotion is going to gain any ground until they have a free development/evaluation version. $200 up-front for a license is too spendy for many people just curious to try something out. If there was a free dev/eval version, I'm sure many more licenses of RubyMotion would be sold.

leetreveil 14y ago
Agree, i'm dying to have a play with this but I begrudge paying 200 bucks before I even know if I like it! Maybe they should allow you to develop your entire app for free but put some sort of kill switch inside which makes it fail to pass app store validation or w/e.
- axx 14y ago
  I think you should see it as an early adopter fee. I bet if more people use RubyMotion, Laurent is going to drop the price. I bought RubyMotion short after the release and i can say it's really worth the price. If you love Ruby and you love iOS, buy a licence.

flatline3 14y ago

This reads exactly like the Objective-C tutorial would, with an analogue syntax, manual instantiation of views (as compared to IB), and a different set of command-line-only tools.

tvon 14y ago

OT: It really confuses me what it takes for someone to have all their new comments marked as 'dead', kenrikm seems to have a perfectly reasonable submission and comment history with the exception of the last submission which was marked as 'dead'...

wildmXranat 14y ago

What's the catch or is there anything that is obviously not possible to do in rubymotion ?

dennyabraham 14y ago

What I'm personally interested in is how well can you write pure ObjC apps while using RubyMotion's build and test infrastructure. I've spent some time searching, but I haven't been able to find many people talking about or doing it, at odds with the real-world interest I've seen so far. Has anyone spent time using RubyMotion to simplify writing ObjC apps?