

IPhone PL lockdown - alrex021
http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/3905

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viraptor
One comment added something I didn't think about before: "Does Apple really
wish to preclude using lex/yacc in iPhone applications?" Oh... but there are
many more generators. Many apps that do networking may be partially built with
some code generator for packet encoding/decoding.

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cpr
I think people here have missed the quiet (but reasonable) explanation for the
"no source languages but ours": that, to do background processing, Apple's
going to have to assume that it completely controls and understands the
runtime behavior of an app at the Obj-C runtime level.

Other runtimes (even those compiled to Obj-C, because they require additional
runtime machinery) would break their assumptions, and thus their chance to do
the low-level magic required to really throttle down apps.

Disappointing, yes. Was looking forward to MacRuby, but that won't happen
until GC reaches the iPhone OS.

~~~
tpz
I have not yet seen any even remotely official information source associating
language/compiler/etc. restrictions with background processing, just a growing
number of comments like yours claiming that there is multi-tasking magic (for
which there is no available evidence or technical reason) and that said magic
would fail in the face of alternate languages, compilers, etc.

Can you cite any references for your claims?

~~~
cpr
I'm afraid I'd better not comment in public (yes, that darned NDA) since I've
read some of the new API docs.

But I freely admit my original comment was pure speculation.

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glhaynes
iPads will never replace PCs. They won't even replace all the other tablets on
the market. There will be even more types of devices in the future to try new
programming language techniques on than there are today. Be pissed about not
being able to do what you want on iPhone OS, but it's pointless to imagine
some future world where that's the only option.

