[randomdata]

Especially since I know Ruby (and C) but I don't know any Obj-C.

Interestingly, from my point of view, Obj-C made perfect sense to me when I realized that it was basically Ruby with C syntax. Given the heritage of Ruby and Obj-C, they come out as very similar languages, so I found it a breeze to pick up the other.

The hard part was learning the Cocoa (Touch) frameworks, but I'm not sure a Ruby API would have made that any easier. It's simply a massive amount of information to take in all at once.

[jballanc]

I think you'll find the difference between working with Cocoa APIs in Obj-C vs Ruby is that it's much easier in Ruby to turn what you've learned into a simple, boiled-down, easier to digest set of helper methods/objects/modules.

For example, in using the RubyMotion beta, after I understood the UIView animation flow, I created a helper method using "yield" to do the actual animation. If I were working in Obj-C, it would've been a lot more work to do the equivalent (and I probably would've just copy-pasted existing code around instead).

[randomdata]

Isn't that really the difference between something like:

    def animate
      UIView.begin_animation  
      yield  
      UIView.commit_animation
    end

    animate do
      # Do something
    end

and:

    void animate(void (^block)(void))
    {
        [UIView beginAnimation];
        block();
        [UIView commitAnimation];
    }

    animate(^ {
        // Do something
    });

Which to my eye are pretty much exactly the same. In fact, UIView already provides a similar method built into the API.

Anyway, I don't want to diminish what you've accomplished. It's an awesome achievement regardless of the language you choose.

[jballanc]

In RubyMotion, you can do something like:

    def animate(*args)
      UIView.begin_animation
      yield(*args)
      UIView.commit_animation
    end

    animate(myButton, &buttonAnimateBlockFromSomewhereElse)
    animate(myView, myOtherView, &genericAnimateBlockFromSomewhereElseWithTwoArgs)
    animate do
      # Do something locally ignoring args
    end

And, yes, you can do the same thing with Obj-C and some creative casts...but it's nicer in RubyMotion! (ymmv)

[jawngee]

You do it this way:

    [UIView animateWithDuration:1.0f
                         animations:^{
                             self.view.alpha=0.0f; 
                         }];

Not so hard.

[jballanc]

But what if I want to have my animations in one object, and my elements to animate in another? Yes, you can have an Obj-C method return a block, but you're going to have to do some nasty casting if you want to be able to call those blocks with an arbitrary number of arguments. (That, or box everything up in an NSArray, which kinda sucks.)

I think I'll try and write up a demo app to explain what I mean...

[jawngee]

Yes please do because you are making absolutely no sense whatsoever.

I think you are over thinking things.

[petercooper]

One of the weirdest, but oft repeated, "criticisms" I hear of Ruby is how much "weird punctuation" it uses. A groundless claim compared to most other languages, though, as this snippet illustrates.

[conradev]

> UIView already provides a similar method built into the API.

Yeah, it's actually much, much simpler to do it in Objective-C in this case.

    [UIView animateWithDuration:0.5f animations:^{
        // Do something
    }];

[malyk]

Its

UIView.animateWithDuration(0.5, animations:lambda { //do something })

in RubyMotion. Basically the same.