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Build iOS Apps In Ruby - Available Summer '12

mobiruby.org

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Re: Build iOS Apps In Ruby - Available Summer '12

#2

Post by cageface »

It's things like this and Corona (Lua) that make me thing that the people that are proclaiming that the emergence of mobile is going to lead to a native code "renaissance" are indulging in some wishful thinking.

Sure, there will always be some apps that will need to be coded close to the metal in C/C++ for maximum performance. But now we're seeing more and more that even on mobile devices we have enough power that we can afford to write most apps primarily or even entirely in "managed" languages like Lua, Java, and (apparently) Ruby.

Re: Build iOS Apps In Ruby - Available Summer '12

#5

Post by [deleted] »

cageface wrote: post #2

It's things like this and Corona (Lua) that make me thing that the people that are proclaiming that the emergence of mobile is going to lead to a native code "renaissance" are indulging in some wishful thinking. Sure, there will always be some apps that will need to be coded close to the metal in C/C++ for maximum performance. But now we're seeing more and more that even on mobile devices we have enough power that we…

[deleted]

Re: Build iOS Apps In Ruby - Available Summer '12

#7

Post by pjmlp »

cageface wrote: post #2

It's things like this and Corona (Lua) that make me thing that the people that are proclaiming that the emergence of mobile is going to lead to a native code "renaissance" are indulging in some wishful thinking. Sure, there will always be some apps that will need to be coded close to the metal in C/C++ for maximum performance. But now we're seeing more and more that even on mobile devices we have enough power that we…

In which languages are you then coding the VM/JIT?

At some level you need native code.

For me, I want something like Ruby that generates native code.

Re: Build iOS Apps In Ruby - Available Summer '12

#10

Post by kennywinker »

holyjaw wrote: post #6

So, you type out the same obj-c code, but with different syntax. Doesnt seem to save any time at all.

Well any way you slice it you're still going to have to interface with the Cocoa frameworks that make up the OS. Anything that masks the interface too much just causes friction. e.g. you can't look stuff up in the docs anymore.

MacRuby does a bit better job at first glance than this does, but you can't get past the way the framework you're using works.

In Objective-C:

    Person *person = [Person new];
    [person name];
    [person setName:name];
    [person setFirstName:first lastName:last];
and in MacRuby

    person = Person.new
    person.name
    person.setName(name) 
    person.setFirstName(first, lastName:last)
As far as I can tell in MobiRuby that'd look something like this:

    person = Person._alloc._init
    person._name
    person._setName _S(name)
    person._setFirstName _S(first), :lastName, _S(last)
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