[MacRuby-devel] RubyMotion: Ruby for iOS

[Richard Kilmer]

This argument can truly be made about any commercial tool you use to build with or build upon.  Any company of any size can discontinue a product or service at any time.  You have to realize that.

The RubyMotion you use today you can continue to use whether you pay for ongoing support or not.  From the FAQ you will get updates to the toolchain for the next year.  This is no different than Corona or MonoTouch or any of the other commercial frameworks you use to build apps with.  The question becomes, does the toolchain provide you something that creates an advantage over the tools you have today.  If the answer is yes, then the question becomes what is the risk vs. that advantage.  I feel the advantage of using Ruby for iOS development is substantial and far outweighs the risk.  Its not about learning Objective C vs. Ruby.  To me the advantage hinges on using the syntactic flexibility of Ruby to create performant and maintainable applications in significantly less lines of code.

RubyMotion is made by HipByte (Laurent's company).  Laurent is bootstrapping it.  I am confident it will grow as a company both in terms of people and products.  I think HipByte is off to a fantastic start!

-rich


On May 3, 2012, at 10:32 PM, Perry E. Metzger wrote:

> On Thu, 03 May 2012 16:29:52 -0600 Colin Thomas-Arnold
> <colinta at gmail.com> wrote:
>> What happens to your skills, though, now that they have been finely
>> honed for a particular *flavor* of MacRuby (iOS development).
>> 
>> BUT, my thinking is this: the more people use it, the more
>> successful it will be.  The more successful it is, the less likely
>> that Laurent will drop support for it!  :-)
> 
> Laurent could be hit by a bus. I'm not keen on having
> my ability to do work going forward depend on code in the hands of one
> individual without recourse. (Sorry, Laurent, and again, I don't mean
> to be a drag. You've done something very cool and should be proud of
> it, and I want you to make money so you can keep doing it.)
> 
> Perry
> -- 
> Perry E. Metzger		perry at piermont.com
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