

Scheme is also dead on the iPhone - jlongster
http://jlongster.com/blog/2010/04/09/scheme-dead-iphone/

======
mark_l_watson
A few things: first, I have been enjoying the author's blog posts on using
Gambit-C Scheme, so this is personally annoying.

Wider issues: what a bad decision on Apple's part. I used to be a huge Apple
fan (I wrote the free chess program that Apple gave away when they released
the Apple II, did a Mac commercial app in '84, and used to treat the 6 volumes
of Inside Mac developer's guides as ancient and precious religious texts). The
issues with the appstore crap-shoot are irritating, even just reading about
other people's experiences.

Apple is now a very valuable company and their behavior seems to be changing.

~~~
stcredzero
In this, Apple is analogous to a totalitarian state. Most corporations fit
this model with regards to their properties. They arbitrarily had closed off
their harbors and borders (no native 3rd party iPhone apps) but then saw the
opportunity to make a lot of money and opened the doors. (iPhone SDK and App
Store.)

We should not be surprised when a totalitarian state employs arbitrary
coercive actions in its own interest, and this is not the first such maneuver
by a closed source company. We should be in the mindset of people doing
business in a totalitarian state. We should be aware that there is an iron
hand under that velvet glove and that equitable treatment under that regime is
motivated by that regime's self interest, not by a principle like the rule of
law.

Open Source = The Rule of Law? I never made that comparison before.

(I will continue to prepare to do business in the totalitarian state, but I
will be a good little merchant and try my best to avoid notice, and I won't be
surprised if I find the police closing up my shop sometime.)

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abstractbill
_I had access to a Gambit Scheme REPL from my running application, either on
the simulator or the device itself. This means that, in combination with
Emacs, I was able to develop my game in real-time. Literally. I was able to
write code and immediately send it to my running 3d game._

I'm currently working on the justin.tv iphone app, in Objectionable-C using
XCode. I've gotten into a pattern of changing a few lines of code, pressing
the build-and-run button, _switching to Chrome and reading Hacker News for a
minute or so_ , and finally checking the debug log output in XCode. As much as
I enjoy reading HN, a REPL on the iphone would be so so awesome.

------
jlongster
I just tried to call Apple at several numbers and ended up at their PR
department. I left a message on some mysterious answering machine as a
journalist inquiring comments about this issue. We'll see if I get a call
back.

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swernli
Perhaps a nitpick, but

>So, firstly, the quality of games won't change at all, and secondly, it's
relatively easy to port a game from the iPhone to a different platform. The
only thing they are restricting is using better, more productive tools to
create games.

He kind of contradicts himself there. He points out that cross-compiling makes
it relatively easy to port the iPhone game to a different platform, and then
says all Apple is doing is preventing people from using more powerful tools.
But they are also preventing people from doing the aforementioned porting. It
seems to me that when people shout, "Hey, now we won't be able to easily port
our apps and games to another platform!" Apple will just say, "Exactly."

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cpr
Actually, I think an Obj-C REPL may be one of the things that Apple unveils at
WWDC.

At least that's the direction they're heading with LLVM, and the head (now
gone) of their whole development tools group told me (privately at WWDC a few
years back) that a REPL was their ultimate goal.

After all, Obj-C/Cocoa is just Smalltalk with C control structures...

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timtadh
From my perspective, if you are a developer for Apple's iPhone/iPad platform
and are disturbed by this new clause in the contract, let Apple know. Let them
know by voting with you feet, and moving to a different platform. There are
other touchscreen devices out there, give them your support. The reason Apple
has been successful isn't just that they have nice hardware, its because of
you. If they are going to disrespect you in this manner, you should feel no
obligation to continue to create application for their platform. Vote with
your feet: don't create iPhone/iPad apps.

~~~
rimantas
What would be your estimate, how many out of 185 000 apps in App Store were
developed using Scheme, Closure, etc.? Also it would be interesting how many
are built using Unity3d and likes.

    
    
      The reason Apple has been successful isn't just that they
      have nice hardware, its because of you.
    

True, but let's not forget: there were no "you" when iPhone was released, but
there were the reasons why it was a success. That success brought users, and
users made platform interesting for developers when SDK came out. Users are
here to stay, and most of the devs too. Heck, iPhone OS 4 and iPad will bring
them in droves. Then we have another opportunity opening up: development of
HTML5 ads for iAd.

My (maybe incorrect) assumption is, that all this noise on HN is not really
representative of the thinking among iPhone developers—I will even go as far
as assume that the most vocal ones never did anything for iPhone and were not
going to–and will have a little if any effect on general public and their
opinion about iPhone/iPad and Apple.

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zephyrfalcon
I was planning to get a developer account and an iPad, and then try to write
apps using Scheme (or maybe other tools that use languages that are, shall we
say, more flexible than Objective-C)... I am now glad that I didn't do that
yet; these recent developments make iPhone/iPad development a lot less
attractive to me.

------
jcromartie
We don't need to list every single language that (at least by the letter of
the agreement) can't target iPhone OS 4.0...

~~~
bad_user
Why? Many people think this is only about CS5.

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expeditious
Instead of leaving Apple for a more open platform, the author says, "lets pray
they start doing a better job."

Hm... I think this is exactly the kind of customer Apple wants.

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Luyt
Farmageddon makes me think of that scene in Monty Python's "Holy Grail" movie
where the French invaders catapult lifestock on King Arthur's party ;-)

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aphyr
Guys, you're all missing the point. _Clearly_ what Apple wants is a virtual
machine, implemented in Javascript, capable of running Scheme bytecodes. ;-)

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axod
Please think before upvoting.

10 out of the top 22 stories are about this one story. We get it. Some
developers are throwing a hissy fit.

~~~
tumult
People are mad because it's clear Apple has something good going here with
their mobile platforms, but they're blowing it for all of us now, including
themselves.

~~~
khelloworld
I'm not really sure if they are hurting themselves.

~~~
tumult
The elves will leave Middle Earth, and they will truly be left with nothing
but fart apps. They need to fix this clause, fast.

~~~
khelloworld
As much as I'd like to agree with you, that is simply not going to happen. Do
you seriously think companies/developers like EA, Cultured Code, Omni Group
etc are going to leave the app store just because apps written in Scheme or
Actionscript or .Net are not welcome on the app store?

Again, as much as I'd like to agree with you, none of the prominent app
developers are going to be leaving anytime soon. And, as for people who make
Farting apps, they probably wont care anyways because use Objective-C or
Actionscript, the apps are rather simple anyways. The efficiency of writing
code probably wont matter to them.

~~~
daeken
EA's games are in violation of this rule, due to using Lua. Think again.

~~~
axod
Then either EA will rewrite it, or they'll pay Apple a shedload of money to
forget about it.

They certainly won't start whining about it.

~~~
tumult
No, Apply will just selectively turn a blind eye when it's convenient for
them, and arbitrarily apply the restriction in other cases. Evil.

~~~
colinplamondon
Expected. There's a three tier system- Tier A partners like EA, Tier B
developers that are preferred by Apple, like Cultured Code, Omni, and
TapTapTap, and Tier C developers, who Apple doesn't do anything special for.
Kick ass for a sustained period of time and you can get into Tier B, be a
multi-billion dollar company and you're Tier A.

Awesome thing is, though, that you can reasonably compete as a Tier C
developer with Tier B and Tier A developers, it's just that they get a head
start with being featured. That's surmountable, so it's not a big deal.

~~~
tumult
How am I supposed to catch up with them if they already are allowed to use
features and languages and thought processes that I'm not? It makes no sense.

~~~
sketerpot
Compete with them on Android, perhaps? </modest-proposal>

------
sigzero
I am a huge Apple fan. This sucks. I am seriously considering moving off the
platform because of it.

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bdotdub
So, if it compiles to C in the end, how is Apple going to be able to tell how
it was compiled?

~~~
jlongster
Compilers usually leave some kind of footprint, usually in the form of some
kind of runtime. Running `nm <myapp>` makes it pretty clear there is a Lisp
system there.

Still, I doubt hey would enforce it. But you can't build a business around it
anymore, it's just too risky.

~~~
lispm
I guess there are some Lisp to C compilers that don't need much of a runtime.
Candidates for that are Stalin, the 'Lisp to C' compiler, ThinLisp, CLICC and
some others. The 'Lisp to C' compiler was developed to create readable and
maintainable C code.

~~~
jlongster
You are right. There's really no way they can reliably detect where the code
came from. In fact, it should be pretty difficult to generally, but
unfortunately, this clause will scare off business built around this.

There's also PreScheme, which is one of my favorites. It's subset of Scheme
which simply generates a few C functions that use a bunch of stack variables
and gotos without any runtime.

~~~
wtn
Why do you think it's unfortunate? Won't that mean less competition for anyone
who can reliably pass Apple's scheme-to-C "Turing test"?

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cturner
jlongster - your tooling is impressive and inspiring. What a thing to be able
to develop like this. I hope you can find another platform that inspires you
and that you have success with that.

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signa11
well so is COBOL...

