Greetings,
Hell, I spend most of my time in Java, and I find the objc verbosity to
be...uhhh...pretty familiar. ;)
Joking aside, I'll often take common ObjC patterns and 're-do' them the Ruby
way so they're more efficient to the way my brain works.
As an example from a recent bit of code, you have:
NSArray *dropTypes = [NSArray*
*arrayWithObjects:"BookmarkDictionaryListPboardType", "MozURLType",
NSFilenamesPboardType, NSURLPboardType,
NSStringPboardType, nil];
versus
dropTypes = ["BookmarkDictionaryListPboardType", "MozURLType",
NSFilenamesPboardType, NSURLPboardType, NSStringPboardType]
The first is remarkably flexible in rare cases, but exceptionally annoying
for the common case.
To try and answer the questions, though...
- What are the advantages of MacRuby over Objective-C?
- An easy to learn, concise syntax in a language designed for the
pleasure of programming but with enough power for all but the toughest
problems
- Being interpreted means you can try things very quickly, and not
have to go through a compile cycle for each time you just want to see how
something works.
- A ton of 'gem' libraries that do very cool things in natural way
- What are the advantage of O-C over Ruby?
- Compiled, so marginally faster (although MacRuby's compilation is
getting better)
- All the examples of doing MacOS X programming out there are in
Objective C, so you have to translate
- A decent number of native libraries which, while you can use them in
MacRuby, are easier to use in Objective C
- *iOS programming*
- Is Xcode's support for O-C significantly better than it's handling of
Ruby? Do I care?
- Yes, it is better. No, I don't find it better enough that I care very
much. Symbol completion doesn't work great in MacRuby, but it doesn't
bother me much.
- At this point I'm primarily interested in OS X development, but iOS
clearly needs to run a close second. What's the current status of Ruby
development for iOS and is it likely to go anywhere in the nearish future?
- The garbage-collection requirement makes this a non-starter right now.
It might get better, *it might not.* I do iOS programming in
Objective C, and Mac OS X programming in MacRuby. It helps me
keep my hand
in Objective C development, so I'm always able to translate between
Objective C and MacRuby, while letting me build a desktop app in
my favorite
language of all time, so far. :)
- Any thoughts on the longer-term prospects of either language?
- Ruby itself is likely to remain a strong contender for many years.
MacRuby has just started being shipped, albiet as a private
framework, by
Apple. This bodes well, but as the Java OS X developers can
tell you with a
touch of sadness...things change.
Hope that helps some!
-- Morgan
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