

MacRuby 0.6 Released - twobar
http://lists.macosforge.org/pipermail/macruby-devel/2010-April/004722.html

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crazydiamond
> In MacRuby, all Ruby classes and objects are actually Objective-C classes
> and objects. There is no need to create costly proxies, convert objects, and
> cache instances. A Ruby object can be cast (toll-free) at the C level as an
> Objective-C object. The Ruby VM can also handle incoming Objective-C objects
> without conversion.

> In MacRuby, the primitive Ruby classes (e.g., String, Array, and Hash) have
> been re-implemented on top of their Cocoa equivalents (respectively,
> NSString, NSArray, and NSDictionary). As an example, all strings in MacRuby
> are Cocoa strings, so they can be passed directly to underlying C or
> Objective-C APIs. It is also possible to call any method of the String
> interface on any Cocoa string, subclass Objective-C methods, etc.

Interesting. Anyone used macruby, and would like to share experiences.

1\. How is the learning curve for a ruby programmer ?

2\. Are using the String and other core classes just the same as ruby, or more
difficult / cumbersome.

3\. Can you reuse code from pure ruby apps, or does this re-implementation
cause issues/problems.

~~~
Zev
_1\. How is the learning curve for a ruby programmer ?_

None. MacRuby is an implementation of Ruby 1.9. A very fast Ruby
implementation, but, not a completely new language thats only similar.
HotCocoa is a gem. A very useful gem that should be the first thing you
install, but, a gem.

 _2\. Are using the String and other core classes just the same as ruby, or
more difficult / cumbersome._

Just as easily.

 _3\. Can you reuse code from pure ruby apps, or does this re-implementation
cause issues/problems._

Sure. Go for it. It is Ruby, after all. Just with an optional gem to access
another framework, in this case, Cocoa.

------
crazydiamond
Could someone tell me what I would do using macruby. I am a ruby programmer on
a Mac. What kind of apps could i write ?

Are these essentially GUI apps which otherwise i would write using Objective C
or Cocoa (i assume its a standalone language) or QT, GTK etc.

So does this allow me to write apps that have the Mac L&F ?

~~~
stuntmouse
You can write native Cocoa apps with MacRuby that have Mac Look and Feel, with
better than acceptable performance.

There are clean, high-level Ruby wrappings of UIKit classes, see HotCocoa:
<http://macruby.com/hotcocoa.html>, although it's not clear to me how
extensive this part of MacRuby is.

~~~
Zev
Just to nitpick, its AppKit, not UIKit. UIKit is on the iPhone, where, sadly,
MacRuby isn't available.

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stuntmouse
I'm excited by MacRuby's architecture and performance, but can anyone comment
on how extensive and usable the HotCocoa bindings are?

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twobar
Ehm, sorry. I didn't notice the "upcoming". So it's not yet released but soon
to be. (Is there any way to modify the title?)

------
steve19
Nice to see it progressing, but sad that we will probably never see it
compiling iPhone apps.

~~~
lurch_mojoff
Why do you think we'll never see it compiling iPhone apps? Neither the
technical reasons - i.e. garbage collection in the iPhone Objective-C runtime,
not the political reasons - the infamous 3.1.1, I presume, it doesn't do so
already seem to me insurmountable. Especially since it is an Apple run project
and one of its main goals is to be a first class Obj-C equivalent.

~~~
philwelch
It's important to remember that when NeXTStep and Objective-C were first
invented, they were invented explicitly from the inspiration of Smalltalk.
Apple today is a descendant of NeXT. I'd speculate that not only that they've
taken notice of Ruby, but have decided that since Ruby is the spiritual
descendant of Smalltalk, it's worth trying to make Ruby _the_ first-class
applications programming language for OS X platforms.

