>> - Objective-C Is Tedious
>
> Matter of opinion. One person's tedium is another being explicit and reaping the
> benefits during refactoring, code completion and compilation speed.
Objective-C:
NSDictionary *d = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys:[NSNumber numberWithInteger:1], @"foo", [NSNumber numberWithBool:YES], @"bar", nil];
Ruby:
d = {foo: 1, bar: true}
Objective-C's "explicitness" provides no advantage to the programmer here whatsoever.
I write code all day every day in Objective-C. It is an extremely tedious language that requires large amounts of boilerplate to perform even simple tasks. (Yes, I know about the new literal syntax available in Mountain Lion, but that doesn't change the broader point.)
Your programming language is the most powerful tool in your toolbox. Ruby is clearly more powerful than Objective-C in terms of how much code one has to write to accomplish a given task.
If RubyMotion offered a truly higher level abstraction over Cocoa Touch or offered cross-platform portability I might be interested but an arguably better syntax over the same API just isn't enough of a win.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm normally of the opinion that anything that whiffs of manual memory management is for chumps. But by day I write apps that target workstations that have enough RAM that I can get away with pretending that memory is an unlimited resource.
On a memory-constrained platform like iOS, though, being able to tightly control how much memory you're using becomes much more valuable. If not critical. And the one place where garbage collection simply can't beat manual memory management is total memory consumed. All those dead objects that are waiting around to be scooped up by the collector do take up space. Sometimes a whole lot of it.
- RubyMotion is Ruby
That's great. Ruby is a great, easy to use and powerful language. I love Ruby. However given all the other things you sacrifice to get Ruby it's really not worth it.
- No syntax/error checking as you type
- No static analyzer
- No code completion (perhaps you could find a 3rd party module to do this eventually)
- No refactoring support (very important in larger projects)
- Probably longer compilations (in Xcode/ObjC the compiler will know which files are modified by looking at the included headers and only recompile what is needed, in Ruby I would expect it's gotta do them all but could be wrong).
It has a much steeper learning curve than Ruby for sure, but once you're proficient it's no harder to use. Indeed there's benefits to both languages.
- Xcode is Unstable
It's gone through periods of instability. But in the current version you may encounter the odd crash (perhaps once a week in full time use for me). Really not an issue given it's a cutting edge tool that's rapidly evolving.
- Xcode Hides Important Information
It has a learning curve. Some things take time to learn but once you do you're more productive.
- Objective-C Is Tedious
Matter of opinion. One person's tedium is another being explicit and reaping the benefits during refactoring, code completion and compilation speed.
- RubyMotion is Easy to Use
For sure easier than Objective-C. But so what? Can it build complex apps more quickly than Objective-C when someone becomes proficient? Probably not.
- RubyMotion is Ruby
That's great. Ruby is a great, easy to use and powerful language. I love Ruby. However given all the other things you sacrifice to get Ruby it's really not worth it.
- RubyMotion Makes Debugging Easy
Really? It sure doesn't look like it does. Xcode and LLVM save me a hell of a lot of time writing my apps because I don't need to actually run them and see the exceptions. And what about the static analyzer?
- RubyMotion Isn’t Perfect
Indeed.
- Better Than Objective-C
For trivial apps yes. For apps you'll be paid to write, in my opinion probably not.