Thanks a lot Andrew for the feedback. I think you have some really great points in there. I'm letting others weigh-in to gage the interest and then we can start getting organized.
- Matt On Fri, Apr 6, 2012 at 9:49 AM, Andrew Havens <andrew.hav...@evanta.com>wrote: > I've been a lurker in this mailing list for a while now. Sad to hear > we've lost a project lead but glad to hear Matt has identified many of the > issues I've been feeling myself. > > I'm a self-taught web developer. I never had any interest in learning > native app development until I heard about MacRuby. Now I've written a few > sample apps and one "production" app. I think MacRuby is a great resource > to the Ruby community and I think web developers are MacRuby's target > audience. All of my MacRuby apps are GUIs for other Ruby libraries or gems. > > The biggest thing that I feel is lacking at this point (which Matt > mentioned) are adequate "getting started" and reference guides. I had a > heck of a time trying to create my first app. I had to scrounge together > blog posts, StackOverflow questions, and Objective-C docs. I think some > good guides (like Rails guides) would go a long way towards increasing > adoption. Also moving this mailing list to Google Groups and splitting it > into MacRuby-core and MacRuby-help would provide a place for newbies to get > help. In fact I started a Google group for just that purpose since I was > frustrated that there was no mailing list for people starting out (but > never told anyone so I'm the only one who ever used it). But I would love > to see an official one. All the open source projects I know of have a > Google group since they are easy to use and subscribe to. > > I also feel like XCode is a major hurdle. If you're already familiar > with XCode, that's great, but as a web developer, I spend most of my day in > TextMate (or command line). I would love to see some code samples of a REAL > app created from scratch (not using XCode, multiple files/object oriented) > because that's how I would like to work with MacRuby (from the text editor > of my choice, rather than be forced into using Apple's IDE, regardless of > whether or not it's better). I installed MacRuby from the command line via > RVM so I want to generate a .app from the command line too. > > I think Ruby on Rails is seen as a productive programming environment. I > think a big part of that is due to its many command line generators. A lot > of people learned how to use Rails by looking at the code generated by the > scaffolding created. If there was more emphasis towards using MacRuby from > the command line, I could see more people writing MacRuby app scaffolding > generators. > > I also think that there's a big movement towards writing native apps > using web technologies (write once, run everywhere mobile apps using > JavaScript, i.e. Titanium Mobile, PhoneGap). I think this is huge since > nobody wants to learn a language that's proprietary to a single > device/company. However, I don't want to write JavaScript unless it looks > more like Ruby (thanks CoffeeScript). If I could write an iOS app in > MacRuby I would. I'm not sure how this would work though. I included > MacRuby in my Snow Leopard app and it increased the app file size > tremendously. File size is important when it comes to mobile. > > Those are my thoughts. Again, I think MacRuby is great and mostly > complete. More code samples and documentation are a high priority at this > point in my opinion. > > --Andrew Havens > > P.S. If you're interested, I'm working on an open source version of > HipChat that I call Mad Chatter. I used MacRuby to create the native Mac > client. https://github.com/andrewhavens/mad_chatter > Contributors more than welcome! > > _______________________________________________ > MacRuby-devel mailing list > MacRuby-devel@lists.macosforge.org > http://lists.macosforge.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/macruby-devel > >
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