[MacRuby-devel] Advice for Total Tyro

[Paul Howson]

On 16/10/2011, at 10:12 AM, Bryan Harrison wrote:
> Objective-C is not without a certain homely charm, but Ruby is obviously the more modern language.  So…
> 
> 	• Does Xcode treat Ruby as family, or is it a stepchild toiling in the ashes?  Are there other tools I'll need?
> 
> 	• What's Apple's attitude toward Ruby applications?
> 
> 	• Can Ruby take advantage of the (finally!) modern memory management features released with iOS 5?
> 
> 	• Will I end up have having learn Objective-C regardless?
> 
> Basically, "If you were me, what would you do, and what order might you do it in?"

Hi Bryan,

Your 5-10 year time frame is a key factor.

I started developing an app for the Mac circa 2003 in RealBasic. A couple of years ago I converted it to MacRuby (wrote a convertor in Ruby to do this then manually tweaked). This was after getting to know Ruby through Rails.

Despite (or perhaps because of) a background in C years ago, I've tried to avoid Objective-C, although I've read the Hillegass book and done some of the examples. I just prefer Ruby for various reasons. I'm using TextMate for editing the code and XCode for running it. I'm not trying to ship a product yet, so I can live with the occasional MacRuby teething problems. They will be fixed in time.

On OSX, MacRuby does do modern memory management, which is a big plus IMHO.

Paul Howson

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Paul Howson
Warwick Qld Australia