I can't really see Apple doing this, if for no other reason than Objective-C is something they can control, and Ruby isn't. If the core Ruby developers decide they want to add more features, change the language's underpinnings, etc. Apple's left to play catch-up. If Apple wants to add features, then they basically have to fork the language and hope their changes get merged in. Apple's shown (and been shown) how much…
So? Apple didn't control GCC, either, when they built OS X on top of it.
Yet Apple is doing everything they can to make themselves independent of GCC.
I dont see any concrete evidence that suggests Apples shift from Objective C in the linked article. Can you point to specific information that points to such a move. fyi pypy has a LLVM backend, as does haskell, I believe python is supported in Xcode too. Hence a similar article could have been written about Apple moving to python.
Apple is sponsoring the development of MacRuby. It's not sponsoring pypy or Haskell LLVM backends.
Just because they "sponsor" MacRuby doesn't mean they favor ruby as a replacement for Objective-C. Until ruby is as fast as Objective-C, I see no reason they would make such a change. Low performance languages have never gained serious adoption on embedded platforms, which includes everything that has made Apple, Inc (not Computer) successful.
Maybe I'm a non-believer, but I also don't see any benefit to Apple supporting ruby specifically. If they were to have a higher-than-objc level API, I expect it to be an LLVM API which would be compatible with languages with an LLVM backend.
Answer: No. MacRuby is awesome, but it'll likely eventually suffer the same fate as the Java Bridge.
No, that's probably wrong. With MacRuby, bridging is toll-free, and, as others have noted already, there is a much lower impedance mismatch between ruby and objective c than there was between java and objective c. Apple has improved the support for scripting languages over the years with the introduction of the scriptingbridge framework. These days, you can easily write an app on the mac in either ruby or python, the only constraint is that things become a mess if ever raw c structs are exposed by the cocoa api (and yes, there are still a few places where this is the case), or worse still when there is no cocoa api for a particular framework. Still, even in these cases there us some support in the scripting bridge framework, although my personal preference for this type of problem is just to wrap the c code in an objective c wrapper class before using the wrapper class from within MacRuby. Works like a charm!
The only languages Apple has ever expressed a preference for are Pascal, C, Objective-C, C++, and JavaScript. Why would they add ruby when they already have JavaScript?
This would be all kinds of awesome, but I think it's probably a dream. To leap from ObjC to Ruby would be a absolutely massive undertaking for them. That said, they've pulled off crazier shit before.
"That said, they've pulled off crazier shit before."
Java/Cocoa? Java/WebObjects? Heck, we still have the "NS" prefix…
While I think that MacRuby will definitely gain some traction, I don't think they'll completely replace it any time soon.
Yes! This is so obvious to me. Why would they even bother with MacRuby if this wasn't the future of iOS development? What would bring more developers to iOS than a rapidly growing language that you can learn and apply to multiple platforms, and also to arguably the best web development environment out there? Objective C's message-passing is extremely compatible with Ruby. A high-performance, pre-installed, officially-supported Ruby implementation would be a huge edge over the drudgery of Java on the Android platform!
Yes, I am aware of Ruboto, but there is going to have to be some serious wrapping of the very extensive Android APIs to make them palatable to Ruby developers.
I've heard people suggest this before, but Apple doesn't seem to feel the same way. Ruby (even MacRuby) is banned on the iPhone along with every other language that isn't C or Javascript. Apple plays things close to the chest, but banning a language that you intend to base the whole platform around just doesn't make sense. Syracusa isn't wrong that Objective-C is getting long in the tooth, but Apple has shown more in…
Yeah,
Also, it seems a bit ironic for whoever is developing MacRuby. You're donating labor to a company that gives nothing away for free or even cheap. Then they ban you. Makes you think ... perhaps you should target Ubuntu next time...
I can't really see Apple doing this, if for no other reason than Objective-C is something they can control, and Ruby isn't. If the core Ruby developers decide they want to add more features, change the language's underpinnings, etc. Apple's left to play catch-up. If Apple wants to add features, then they basically have to fork the language and hope their changes get merged in. Apple's shown (and been shown) how much…
MacRuby is a fork of the language, albeit a friendly one. Just as Rubinius, JRuby, IronRuby, and others are all forks.
I can see Apple replacing Applescript with Ruby, but just based on the fact that MacRuby uses the ObjectiveC runtime, I doubt it's really going anywhere.
I've heard people suggest this before, but Apple doesn't seem to feel the same way. Ruby (even MacRuby) is banned on the iPhone along with every other language that isn't C or Javascript. Apple plays things close to the chest, but banning a language that you intend to base the whole platform around just doesn't make sense. Syracusa isn't wrong that Objective-C is getting long in the tooth, but Apple has shown more in…
Yeah, Also, it seems a bit ironic for whoever is developing MacRuby. You're donating labor to a company that gives nothing away for free or even cheap. Then they ban you. Makes you think ... perhaps you should target Ubuntu next time...
I believe MacRuby is developed primarily by Apple employees.
Yeah, Also, it seems a bit ironic for whoever is developing MacRuby. You're donating labor to a company that gives nothing away for free or even cheap. Then they ban you. Makes you think ... perhaps you should target Ubuntu next time...
I believe MacRuby is developed primarily by Apple employees.