I suppose I'm part of the target market for the RubyCocoa and PyObjC bridges: a have a full-time job non-programming job, but like to program in my (family-limited) spare time as a hobby.
What RubyCocoa and PyObjC do is make that spare time more productive and fun. Who wants to fool around with header files and pointers and verbosity?
I have used Obj-C to make an app or two, and it's OK, and I understand that it will be getting some cool new features in 2.0, but I would much, much rather program in Ruby or Python. Not only it is more fun, it's a lot easier, for me at least, to jump back into a project after a week's absence and get back into the flow when I'm working with Ruby or Python.
(Speed has not been an issue except when intensive computation is needed. Of course, you can always call an Obj-C class from Ruby/Python to handle that sort of thing. Not ideal, but it works.)
I find Ruby to be particularly well-suited as a bridge language to Cocoa. It's messaging syntax is elegantly translated to Obj-C's. The only problem with Ruby is lack of code obfuscation. Open the app package and the source is sitting there in plain text. Hopefully, Ruby 2.0 (with YARV) will help in that regard.
I'm very excited about Leopard. Laurent has been doing some outstanding work Leopard's RubyCocoa 1.0. I haven't seen this discussed (maybe it's an NDA subject), but I am hoping that Xcode will gain some Ruby/Python enhancements as well.
by Jim Getzen — Feb 20
What RubyCocoa and PyObjC do is make that spare time more productive and fun. Who wants to fool around with header files and pointers and verbosity?
I have used Obj-C to make an app or two, and it's OK, and I understand that it will be getting some cool new features in 2.0, but I would much, much rather program in Ruby or Python. Not only it is more fun, it's a lot easier, for me at least, to jump back into a project after a week's absence and get back into the flow when I'm working with Ruby or Python.
(Speed has not been an issue except when intensive computation is needed. Of course, you can always call an Obj-C class from Ruby/Python to handle that sort of thing. Not ideal, but it works.)
I find Ruby to be particularly well-suited as a bridge language to Cocoa. It's messaging syntax is elegantly translated to Obj-C's. The only problem with Ruby is lack of code obfuscation. Open the app package and the source is sitting there in plain text. Hopefully, Ruby 2.0 (with YARV) will help in that regard.
I'm very excited about Leopard. Laurent has been doing some outstanding work Leopard's RubyCocoa 1.0. I haven't seen this discussed (maybe it's an NDA subject), but I am hoping that Xcode will gain some Ruby/Python enhancements as well.