Comment by sudhirj | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sudhirj | Hacker News Reader

Looks like a huge step forward for RM - it shows that the team is ready to drop everything to address pressing issues and reassure everyone.

Not too happy about the way the change came about, though: when the blocks bug was first reported, the HipByte team all but dismissed it saying it was a well known and understood problem with a clear workaround. It's only after the public caused a ruckus that they stopped developing new features and got around to fixing it.

This may have been the right choice - delay fixing things until there was an explosion of public pressure - but it also worries me. Why wait so long to fix something that was so fundamental? Not properly supporting blocks broke a fundamental contract; that you could write Ruby and it would Just Work(TM). The lack of support was undocumented and ignored until HN got all riled up and swore to boycott RubyMotion because of it. Then HipByte put their hero helmets on and got to work.

What happened to fixing bugs before you develop new features?

Just to be clear, I think RubyMotion is awesome. I use a license at work and I'm about buy a personal one (here in India it's a very significant cost - I'm decently paid and I make only USD 1100 a month). But I do dislike the way they've handled issues with the platform.

Save your money, checkout phonegap, IMO. I think RubyMotion still has stability issues.

There is no comparison to the two though. RubyMotion is about writing native apps where PhoneGap is not.

There is absolutely a comparison here. Both allow you to build mobile applications for IOS.

A single feature like native or not native does not dictate the quality of an application.

Also, I was trying to help some guy who only makes 1100/mo.

I'm just responding with my thoughts on this... I don't think native vs. a browser based is a 'single feature'. It's huge. Without access to the SDK's real power you lose a LOT of functionality and performance. I would never deliver a PG app to anyone other than an in-house enterprise app that just gets the job done. Sorry, it's just the way I feel about it. I loath those applications. I won't take shortcuts that save me a little time but at the cost of all my customers being pissed off at a sub-standard application. Again, this is my opinion but I do have empirical evidence in my career that supports my assertions.

Performance we can debate till the end of days. As for functionality cordova/phonegap has a great plugin framework.

Sure you don't get native ui components, but I look at that as an advantage, because if you use web views you can create a uniform approach.

The onus of performance is always on the developer, and most likely not the tools.

Out of interest, why did you (or your work) decide to use RubyMotion (vs Objective-C)? Were you all using Ruby already / familiar with the language, or was it something else?

It was a mistake to leave that bug unfixed for so long. I'm glad they came around to fixing it. Hopefully this is a sign of a team and project maturing.

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