
Ask HN: Would any one pay for a python to objc transpiler, with iOS integration? - noidax
I am thinking of bringing the power of python&#x27;s syntax to objc iOS development. Would people who are interested pay for it with a subscription models of $20 &#x2F; month.
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davelnewton
Of course people that are interested in it would pay, although I suspect a
"subscription model" at $20/mo would be off-putting.

Doesn't the actual question revolve around:

(a) how _many_ people are interested

(b) of those, how many would pay a quarter grand a year for the privilege

(c) how many people would think that the added level of complexity would
outweigh the benefits of just using Swift?

~~~
noidax
I agree, I need these answers to work on it for full time. So basically I
created this interest check thread.

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davelnewton
Well, I don't know the answer, obviously, but I wouldn't quit my day job.

As someone who needs to write an iOS app, I'm going to use Swift, and the
tooling built around it. Transpilation would mean you either need to integrate
a debugger (hard) or I'll have to debug transpiled code (and have to check the
transpilation)--I have enough "fun" doing that with ES6 in the browser. No
thanks; I'll stick with the supported tools.

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jetti
This isn't the market for me as I'm not a Python developer nor do I really
plan to create software of iOS. But as a compiler/language tool enthusiast I
think it would be a cool product. One thing I would suggest is using an
intermediate language, similar to CIL or LLVM, so that you can easily add
support for multiple languages. When you have support for multiple languages
it becomes and even more attractive tool

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simon_acca
> bringing the power of python's syntax to objc iOS development

If that's your goal, it could be less work to embed a python interpreter in
ObjC and write nice bindings for the iOs APIs.

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rgovind
There is bigger question here. How many people are still make money from
selling compiler/language tools? Like, write a static analyzer, or php
optimizer or sell a Swift library for linux application or a language-X to
language-Y transpiler. So, far, I have found this industry to be opaque,
unlike web industry! And if they make money, how much?

Btw, there was YC company which sold PHP server optimizations. Anyone knows
the name? (I think they are closed now but I am not sure)

~~~
jetti
There are a few major players that I can think of that makes money in the
compiler/language tools category (JetBrains and Embarcadero are the two that
comes to mind but I'm sure there are many more). But I think for a small
player it would be hard

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mathgenius
Python transpilers/compilers are such an amazing pain in the ass. For users
also. Have you done this before?

~~~
noidax
If you think about it, ObjC has a lot of similarities to a dynamic objected
oriented programming language. You can add methods, check if a method exists
and a lot more. Imagine something like this =>

if obj.isNumber():

    
    
        print "Hello World"
    

where you can call objc methods from python code.

~~~
davelnewton
That's because ObjC comes from the unholy marriage of C and Smalltalk. It kind
of ruined both, but coming from a Smalltalk background, I quite liked it, and
was sad when C++ won the day.

We understand what you're talking about; I don't think you need to explain the
concept.

