On Why I Am Not Buying RubyMotion

Objective-C isn't the hard part about iOS programming, it's fairly simple and can be learned in a day by a programmer.<p>It's the frameworks that are hard, and you have to learn those using RubyMotion anyway.<p>And not only that, but you have to rely on objc framework documentation and do the translation to Ruby in your head. Too many wasted cycles, imho.<p>On the flip side, I like seeing experimental tools like this to promote new ways of thinking and coding and it will inevitably foster new features into the official SDK (ala blocks).

&#62; Whenever I see a third party tool I ask myself: how quickly it will be updated to the last SDK version? ... What will I tell to the client? “Oh look, we have to wait one week for technical reasons”. For every project I have taken on I have never had the guts to run such a risk.<p>Forget the rest of the article, this sums up why it's not for you.

<i>&#62; ps2: How cool would it be to have a REPL console like the one in RubyMotion on the Xcode console?</i><p>You can!<p>Every time it comes up, I'm going to repeat this suggestion: Use Nu[1] as a REPL for iOS[2] and OS X[3].<p>[1] <a href="http://programming.nu" rel="nofollow">http://programming.nu</a><p>[2] <a href="http://groups.google.com/group/programming-nu/browse_thread/thread/e8592ef8128245fd/68e83fa4a5306446?lnk=gst&#38;q=#68e83fa4a5306446" rel="nofollow">http://groups.google.com/group/programming-nu/browse_thread/...</a><p>[3] <a href="https://github.com/timburks/nu/blob/master/nu/console.nu" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/timburks/nu/blob/master/nu/console.nu</a>

The funny thing is; That's not listing any of the major issues I have with RubyMotion. One of them would be that I bought the software and I can't integrate one external library I need, but, one of the greatest thing about RubyMotion is that it has been getting updated every day. So I bet you they'll update it with any new version of the SDK before it gets released.<p>The reason you should be excited about RubyMotion is that it's just easier to read that ObjC since it has a lot less noise, and lot of goodies you just "get" from Ruby's core. And the debugger is fantastic!

Great write up, although not all the points are strictly speaking valid (epecially the one regarding future ios versions; since all the pre-release iOS firmwares are available for developers, there are chances RubyMotion will be updated in a timely fashion).<p>My take on this is the following: using RubyMotion, overhead will be tremedous - while debugging, you will need to make sure and double check that it's you who screwed things up and not RubyMotion's author(s). This alone is a major downside of the whole thing.

Although updates to the last SDK version in a timely manner is a valid concern, but does one really rebuild his application with a new major iOS version after a week of the release?

I'm hoping they bring out a trial version... Ruby is not my main language, and while I'd like to give this a try, I'm not $149 keen on seeing if it is something I'd use.

This looks very promising, but are there any examples of real applications written with RubyMotion and submitted to the AppStore? Everything I see is just stand-alone examples, but can all the pieces be glued together and turn into a functional app?<p>And second, maybe this is a dumb question, but is there any possibility that Apple blocks apps submitted using third party tools like this?

I've got a little rebuttal to this here:<p><a href="http://www.fastchicken.co.nz/2012/05/11/so-many-straw-men-so-little-time/" rel="nofollow">http://www.fastchicken.co.nz/2012/05/11/so-many-straw-men-so...</a><p>You have a good point, but mostly, I think it's a strawman argument.

It's the whole discussion of CoffeeScript vs pure JavaScript imo. Except that RubyMotion doesn't play nice with existing libraries. Or does it?<p>Just make up your own mind. I'm thinking about just learning Objective C just because I would definitely use those nice existing libraries.

OP makes good arguments, but they seem out of place considering he's already dependent on the Apple approval process.

Change. It scares people.

&#62;<i>Whenever I see a third party tool I ask myself: how quickly it will be updated to the last SDK version? Say Apple releases a iOS6 today. Will an aligned version of the tool be ready today? If not, when? One day would be fine, one week would not.</i><p>Really why? I don't even update my original XCode straight from Apple that often.<p>When you sell to customers (for profit), you want to target previous versions of the iOS, not the latest, and surely not within a week.

Light gray text on dark gray background! Great choice.<p><i>&#62; Using a third party tool is like gambling: you might win or loose</i><p>"Loose"? AAAAAGH