Apple Tutorial: Developing with MacRuby

From the article:

RubyCocoa is implemented as a bridge between the Objective-C runtime and the official Ruby interpreter. Because of this, the bridge must be crossed every time you talk to an Objective-C object from Ruby, and vice-versa. All objects must be converted from one typing system to another and messages must be forwarded, the cost for which can be prohibitive if done too often.

The goal of the MacRuby project is to address these and a number of other challenges by providing an implementation of the Ruby language on top of core Mac OS X technologies such as Objective-C runtime, the generational garbage collector, and CoreFoundation.

In MacRuby, all classes are Objective-C classes, all methods are Objective-C methods and all objects are Objective-C objects. In essence, the bridge disappears. Ruby is implemented directly on top of the Objective-C runtime.

Delphi isn't a patch on actual Cocoa/Objective-C. I know Delphi programmers who swear by it, but Cocoa permits things Delphi programmers only dream about, thanks to its late binding.

What I can't understand is why people think Obj-C is hard; it isn't. The syntax takes a little getting used to (say, about five minutes) and the API is admittedly huge, but the power it has is well worth the effort. I don't think I could go back to any other language that is statically bound.

I'm not clear what the point of things like MacRuby is - good as Ruby is, why not just cut to the chase and learn Obj-C. It's really not hard!

Yes, let's put the slowest interpreted language for the platform on a low power device. :P

Oops! Fixed.