[MacRuby-devel] MacRuby-devel Digest, Vol 37, Issue 51

[Eloy Durán]

Well put, sir. Well put.

Met vriendelijke groet,
Eloy Durán

On Mar 31, 2011, at 10:26 AM, Jean-Denis Muys wrote:

> 
> I will be blunt: stay away from MacRuby and go with Objective-C.
> 
> Before I get burned at the stake on this list, let me explain why. This stems from an assumption I made from you question about your goal:
> 
> Assumption: your goal is to become proficient in Cocoa [touch] programming as fast as possible, starting from basically zero.
> 
> If that assumption is wrong, then the conclusion might be too.
> 
> MacRuby is very good already, but it's a far less treaded route. As a result, you will have to load your brain with additional burden, always a difficult proposition when learning:
> 
> - Less applicable resources for learning: less examples, less books, less blog posts, less people to help you out.
> - So you will need to translate every example and snippet from Objective-C to Ruby. This means you will effectively need to learn two languages instead of one at the same time, together with Cocoa.
> - You will need to translate every one of your question from Ruby to Objective-C when posting to stackoverflow or Apple's forum, or risk getting no answer. Sure you can stay in this list, but that's one less resource.
> - Every time you face a difficult roadblock, you will necessarily have to wonder "Is this me? Or is this MacRuby?". To answer that question for certain, you will then port your code to Objective-C to make sure.
> - You will face less understanding development tools. When you have an issue with them, the official answer will be "MacRuby development is not supported". With Xcode 4 being immature by itself, you probably don't want to add an immature MacRuby to the mix.
> 
> Now the MacRuby journey might taste a lot better, depending on you. And if for you "the reward is the _journey_", you might consider it.
> 
> On the practical details, what has been said still applies, with two small corrections:
> 
> - You also have ahead of time compilation with MacRuby. But arguably, you don't care about that when learning.
> - The job market for iOS programming is thriving, and for Mac programming is getting a lot better. Sure, Ruby programmers are also in demand, but it's not clear to me which market is actually better. One thing is for sure: demand for iOS Ruby programmers is zero.
> 
> Jean-Denis
> 
> 
> 
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