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RubyMotion - Ruby for iOS

rubymotion.com

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Re: RubyMotion - Ruby for iOS

#51

Post by RandallBrown »

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #22
hlidotbe wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having been part of the private beta I can tell you that it's a huge time saver. Objective-C is nice be ruby is much more expressive, you can use the same API with much less code, you can skip XCode altogether and use your favorite editor, ... I can't express properly how awesome it is, really.

In the Ars article, I noticed the author mentions you can't use XCode's layout tools. In practice, how big a problem is that?

Some people hate interface builder and don't use it at all. I really like it and would have a really hard time getting rid of it. The amount of code you would need to write to make all of your views would be terrible.

I would liken it to not using HTML when you're making a web app and you can only use javascript to generate (by hand) all of the UI.

Re: RubyMotion - Ruby for iOS

#52

Post by thibaut_barrere »

sjtgraham wrote: post #32

I don't see the point of this. Objective-C is not hard to learn, and with ARC, blocks, the new literals for NSArray and NSDictionary, etc, Objective-C has actually become pleasant to write IMO. The example RubyMotion code also doesn't look very nice either. The problem with Rubyists (being one for the past 6 years I feel qualified to say this) is in general they want to use Ruby for everything. It's not always the be…

I use Ruby since 2004 (but not exclusively).

I've been using Ruby to create pleasant to use APIs around more complicated (native) APIs in both Java and .Net and it has always been a very big win in my situations.

I just bought a RubyMotion license and can see it going very far :)

Re: RubyMotion - Ruby for iOS

#53

Post by phillmv »

sjtgraham wrote: post #32

I don't see the point of this. Objective-C is not hard to learn, and with ARC, blocks, the new literals for NSArray and NSDictionary, etc, Objective-C has actually become pleasant to write IMO. The example RubyMotion code also doesn't look very nice either. The problem with Rubyists (being one for the past 6 years I feel qualified to say this) is in general they want to use Ruby for everything. It's not always the be…

> Rubyists in general want to use Ruby for everything.

Well… why not?

This is a relatively objective statement; the problem with ruby tends to be the crappy interpreter we're forced to suffer through - not the language itself. The Ruby language, in my biased opinion, as far as OO-functional languages go is pure awesome.

My initial reaction was: "A Ruby to Obj-C ABI compiler? Fuck no, what is wrong with you."

Upon learning it was the MacRuby dude: "Holy shit fuck yes".

I really don't want to ditch my entire development workflow to pick up Xcode, and Objective C, and miss out on all of the development libraries and vibrant community that I already have access to.

The problem with company led development environments is that they're tailored to the vendor's, and not the community's, needs. Development is rigid and low on innovation.

If this framework is half as good as it seems to be, within a month we'll see a dozen libraries that abstract all sorts of pain away from iOS development. Abstracting the pain away is something the Ruby community tends to do well.

I've gone from being totally uninterested in iOS development to being excited in what I can do inside UIWebviews. Naive, maybe, but it's probably significantly lowered the amount of investment I have to make into creating an iOS app.

Re: RubyMotion - Ruby for iOS

#54

Post by bherms »

Just a note, not sure if this is intentional, but the audio on the video is in stereo, but with no right channel.

edit: also, please stop the heavy breathing into the mic. Driving me crazy!! :)

Re: RubyMotion - Ruby for iOS

#55

Post by thibaut_barrere »

sant0sk1 wrote: post #4

This is really awesome, but I found some bad news in the FAQ: > Because RubyMotion implements a dialect of Ruby that is statically compiled, regular Ruby gems will not work in RubyMotion. We provide documentation which describes how to architect gems to work with RubyMotion.

I personally don't care, as I will mostly use a mixture of well-tested, iOS specific ruby libraries I will write and share, together with ObjC libraries.

Re: RubyMotion - Ruby for iOS

#56

Post by noinput »

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #22
hlidotbe wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having been part of the private beta I can tell you that it's a huge time saver. Objective-C is nice be ruby is much more expressive, you can use the same API with much less code, you can skip XCode altogether and use your favorite editor, ... I can't express properly how awesome it is, really.

In the Ars article, I noticed the author mentions you can't use XCode's layout tools. In practice, how big a problem is that?

In relation to working with Appcelerator or a similar system that allows you to load in images/views/visuals & position programmatically, I wouldn't say it's a problem, more a shift in practice.

Re: RubyMotion - Ruby for iOS

#57

Post by octopus »

A suggestion for Laurent Sansonetti will be to release this similarly with the way Xamarin has released Mono for iOS. Basically you should be able to download and use the library for free in the iPhone/iPad simulator and you will need to buy a license if you want to be able to export the app to the actual device. This licensing model has the advantage that is similar with what Apple does for developing apps for iOS.

This will let you, as a developer, try and learn to use RubyMotion before you actually buy a license.

Re: RubyMotion - Ruby for iOS

#58

Post by bphogan »

sjtgraham wrote: post #32

I don't see the point of this. Objective-C is not hard to learn, and with ARC, blocks, the new literals for NSArray and NSDictionary, etc, Objective-C has actually become pleasant to write IMO. The example RubyMotion code also doesn't look very nice either. The problem with Rubyists (being one for the past 6 years I feel qualified to say this) is in general they want to use Ruby for everything. It's not always the be…

In much the same way as JavaScript developers want to do everything in JavaScript, including write mobile apps (PhoneGap/Titanium) and server-side apps (Node.js).

Learning is hard, and doubly so when you're in your comfort zone. You can deride that and make it about a person's "toughness" as a programmer, or you can think about exactly how much time it takes to learn a language and its idioms, highlights, lowlights, problems, and features.

A person who's really good at C# or Java is not going to be really good at Obj-C without losing a significant amount of time. That's why these kinds of projects appear. There's only so much time in the day to learn a new language well. :)

Re: RubyMotion - Ruby for iOS

#59

Post by jamesgeck0 »

sant0sk1 wrote: post #4

This is really awesome, but I found some bad news in the FAQ: > Because RubyMotion implements a dialect of Ruby that is statically compiled, regular Ruby gems will not work in RubyMotion. We provide documentation which describes how to architect gems to work with RubyMotion.

I didn't see any documentation describing the ins and outs of statically compiled Ruby. Anyone know how it differs from normal Ruby?
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