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Ask HN: How Many Programming Languages Can iOS Apps Be Written In?

3 pointsby troniumalmost 11 years ago
I know about Swift, O-C, C, C , and maybe even C# utilizing Unity for iOS, however, is it possible to write native iOS apps in even more languages? For instance, would there be a way to run Python or Ruby-based apps?

5 comments

dottrapalmost 11 years ago
Yes. Lua, JavaScript, Ruby (<a href="http://www.rubymotion.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rubymotion.com</a>), Java, C#, and pretty much any language that can talk to C (that&#x27;s almost all of them) and embed and disable JIT (harder for some).<p>It doesn&#x27;t mean it&#x27;s easy to write an app though because you need to make a bridge to C and Obj-C. The languages above, people have already done so through varying techniques.
zimpenfishalmost 11 years ago
I believe Kivy ( <a href="http://kivy.org/docs/gettingstarted/intro.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;kivy.org&#x2F;docs&#x2F;gettingstarted&#x2F;intro.html</a> ) is Python and can deploy to iOS (although it looks like a horrible faff - <a href="http://kivy.org/docs/guide/packaging-ios.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;kivy.org&#x2F;docs&#x2F;guide&#x2F;packaging-ios.html</a> )
adamredwoodsalmost 11 years ago
although a small user base, Monkey-x is quite fun (and compiles to native iOS!):<p><a href="http://www.monkey-x.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.monkey-x.com</a>
Xangisalmost 11 years ago
Xamarin gives partial Visual Basic support along with full support for C#.
deanfranksalmost 11 years ago
C++ or Delphi (pascal) via Embarcadero