

Introducing ProMotion, a Full-Featured RubyMotion Application Framework - markrickert
http://blog.rubymotion.com/post/50523137515/introducing-promotion-a-full-featured-rubymotion

======
colinta
I've never seen a better tool for rapid prototyping a working iOS app... and
it plays nice with teacup, pixate, all the friends!

Reminds me somehow of Sinatra - e.g. Promotion : Cocoa :: Sinatra : Rails

~~~
evilduck
Don't be modest...Motion-Xray[1] is a pretty awesome prototyping tool as well.

[1] <https://github.com/colinta/motion-xray>

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drpancake
I'm on the fence about this and RubyMotion in general. By far the most time
consuming part of app development is getting the visuals and animations
looking right, and I don't see how this helps. The basic scaffolding (setting
up view controllers, transitions and talking to the backend) is the easy bit.

On the other hand, I'm a Python guy and I've never fallen for Objective-C
(although recent sugary additions have made it far more pleasant).

Can anyone who has made the jump enlighten me?

~~~
jballanc
Visuals and animations are infinitely easier to get "looking right" when you
can modify parameters directly in a running app via REPL. That's possible with
RubyMotion. In particular, check out
[https://github.com/rubymotion/sugarcube#repl-view-
adjustment...](https://github.com/rubymotion/sugarcube#repl-view-adjustments)
.

~~~
cnp
I second this. I demoed the Sugarcube repl for our mobile team (I'm primarily
a JavaScript dev who has fallen in love with RM) and everyone was universally
blown away. It's the most useful thing ever -- well that, combined with
Teacup.

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intropic
This looks like it could be the thing that tips me over into buying
RubyMotion. Well done guys.

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stcredzero
I hope this isn't Metrowerks CodeWarrior all over again. Hopefully, there
won't develop a significant "underclass" of developers who simply won't
venture away from the parts of iOS that haven't been given a "Ruby-like"
facade. Right now, Apple has a wonderful situation where over 90% of the devs
and users adopt the newest versions of the OS. They should hate to lose that.

(I am all for choice, though. I wish Apple had a way of "blessing" frameworks
and languages that have automated and/or inherent ways of absorbing additions
to iOS, and was specific about this.)

~~~
jamon51
There's pretty much nothing you can do in Objective-C that you can't in
RubyMotion.

RubyMotion exposes 100% of the Objective-C runtime with virtually no
performance penalty. They are very on top of new iOS releases (released full
iOS 6 support within a week).

In fact, I think that the RubyMotion community adopts new iOS technologies
faster since it's new and doesn't have a lot of legacy code.

~~~
stcredzero
There is a significant difference between APIs that are named/structured in a
Ruby-like way, and APIs that are named according to Objective-C/Smalltalk
conventions. This can be a cause of significant pain. (For example, while
refactoring, you have to search for all the ways a method could be called.)

RubyMotion is doing the right things. Much of the result also depends on
community. It's a bad sign when supposedly smart programmers disdain a
technology or a set of tech conventions simply because it's different.
Especially when that tech has a great track record. It's really weird when
they disdain the very thing they're building on. I've met some RubyMotion
programmers like this, however. I hope they're just an aberration.

------
drivingmenuts
So, where I'm getting a bit confused is the difference between RubyMotion and
MacRuby. I gather it's a superset of MacRuby functionality? Having a "stupid
day".

I'm wanting (aiming toward needing) to learn Ruby but trying to justify the
cost without actually knowing the language is a bit tough.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
MacRuby is an implementation of Ruby 1.9 built on top of Cocoa. It's also OS
X-only. See <http://macruby.org>

RubyMotion is fully compiled, and built on top of LLVM. See
<http://www.rubymotion.com/features/>

~~~
chc
They are both compiled and built on top of LLVM. RubyMotion is a fork of
MacRuby, not a different design.

~~~
cnp
And as of last week, with the 2.0 release, you can now build desktop apps
using RubyMotion as well. I kind of think that was the nail in the MacRuby
coffin, for better or for worse.

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auston
This is really awesome, so awesome that I'd like to pay for it!

~~~
markrickert
<https://www.gittip.com/jamonholmgren/>

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mark_l_watson
I know it is early days for RubyMotion's OSX development support, but I will
ask anyway: anything like ProMotion for the OSX side of the house?

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CallRed
Trying it out now and it seems pretty awesome. Does anyone know of a great
tutorial about connecting a new RubyMotion app to an existing ruby app?

------
kcbanner
Unfortunate choice of name: <http://www.cosmigo.com/promotion/index.php>

~~~
evilduck
Different industries, full featured desktop application vs. a software
library. Windows software sold as a package versus a free development library
for iOS that only runs on Macs.

I don't see there being much trademark confusion here.

