iphone development?

On Feb 5, 2009, at 10:01 PM, Raoul Duke wrote:

> i am hoping to some day get set up so i can try doing java -> objc
> iphone development, with an eye (of course) to really using scala ->
> java -> objc. some things i'm experimenting with:

As an iPhone developer, I'm skeptical; I'll believe in these things
when I see real non-toy apps running in them. The iPhone is a rather
memory-constrained device, which is why Apple didn't include Objective-
C garbage collection; translating Java apps must involve some sort of
custom GC library, plus implementations of a lot of the standard Java
classes, plus glue to bridge to the Cocoa frameworks. That's going to
make apps built with these technologies rather large and memory-
hungry; and that's before you even think about adding the Scala
runtime libraries too.

(This is getting off-topic, unless there's something Scala-specific;
send any replies directly to me/Raoul, not to the list please.)

—Jens

I'm with Jens here. The likelihood of this working out is small, and the pain and frustration along the way are pretty much guaranteed.

On a related note, I know several people have successfully developed Android apps with Scala. That may be a more fruitful route.

--j

On Fri, Feb 6, 2009 at 8:29 AM, Jens Alfke <jens@mooseyard.com> wrote:

On Feb 5, 2009, at 10:01 PM, Raoul Duke wrote:

i am hoping to some day get set up so i can try doing java -> objc
iphone development, with an eye (of course) to really using scala ->
java -> objc. some things i'm experimenting with:

As an iPhone developer, I'm skeptical; I'll believe in these things when I see real non-toy apps running in them. The iPhone is a rather memory-constrained device, which is why Apple didn't include Objective-C garbage collection; translating Java apps must involve some sort of custom GC library, plus implementations of a lot of the standard Java classes, plus glue to bridge to the Cocoa frameworks. That's going to make apps built with these technologies rather large and memory-hungry; and that's before you even think about adding the Scala runtime libraries too.

(This is getting off-topic, unless there's something Scala-specific; send any replies directly to me/Raoul, not to the list please.)

—Jens

fre, 06 02 2009 kl. 08:29 -0800, skrev Jens Alfke:
> On Feb 5, 2009, at 10:01 PM, Raoul Duke wrote:
>
> > i am hoping to some day get set up so i can try doing java -> objc
> > iphone development, with an eye (of course) to really using scala ->
> > java -> objc. some things i'm experimenting with:
>
> As an iPhone developer, I'm skeptical; I'll believe in these things
> when I see real non-toy apps running in them. The iPhone is a rather
> memory-constrained device, which is why Apple didn't include Objective-
> C garbage collection; translating Java apps must involve some sort of
> custom GC library, plus implementations of a lot of the standard Java
> classes, plus glue to bridge to the Cocoa frameworks. That's going to
> make apps built with these technologies rather large and memory-
> hungry; and that's before you even think about adding the Scala
> runtime libraries too.

Well, mono is already on the IPhone[1], so certainly it is possible. Now
we only need the .NET/mono port of Scala brought up-to-date. Martin
mentioned some time ago that there was actually happening something on
that front, so we'll see.

[1] http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2009/Jan-07.html

Simon Holm Thøgersen

On Feb 6, 2009, at 2:14 PM, Simon Holm Thøgersen wrote:

> Well, mono is already on the IPhone[1], so certainly it is possible.
> Now
> we only need the .NET/mono port of Scala brought up-to-date.

Interesting! I hadn't heard about this before. Here's the best article
I could find:

http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/01/open-source-mono-framewo...

Mono supports static compilation of .NET CLR into ARM machine code,
which should be fairly efficient. I still wonder how big the runtime
libraries are, but there are actual shipping iPhone games (based on
Unity) that use this.

Apps other than games, that want to use the iPhone's UIKit framework,
will need to play nicely with Objective-C, though. That could be
challenging for Scala, as the object models are quite different.
(Objective-C is more dynamic, similar to Ruby or Smalltalk.)

—Jens

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8nMpi5-P-I&eurl=http://developerlife.com...

arno is doing a direct translation on java byte code to the objective c
equivalent. he's also wrapping some of the iphone libs to make them
accessible. his conversion technique does have a slight performance hit
over hand crafted native code. it's a pretty interesting talk.

Jorge Ortiz-3 wrote:
>
> I'm with Jens here. The likelihood of this working out is small, and the
> pain and frustration along the way are pretty much guaranteed.
>
> On a related note, I know several people have successfully developed
> Android
> apps with Scala. That may be a more fruitful route.
>
> --j
>
> On Fri, Feb 6, 2009 at 8:29 AM, Jens Alfke wrote:
>
>>
>> On Feb 5, 2009, at 10:01 PM, Raoul Duke wrote:
>>
>> i am hoping to some day get set up so i can try doing java -> objc
>>> iphone development, with an eye (of course) to really using scala ->
>>> java -> objc. some things i'm experimenting with:
>>>
>>
>> As an iPhone developer, I'm skeptical; I'll believe in these things when
>> I
>> see real non-toy apps running in them. The iPhone is a rather
>> memory-constrained device, which is why Apple didn't include Objective-C
>> garbage collection; translating Java apps must involve some sort of
>> custom
>> GC library, plus implementations of a lot of the standard Java classes,
>> plus
>> glue to bridge to the Cocoa frameworks. That's going to make apps built
>> with
>> these technologies rather large and memory-hungry; and that's before you
>> even think about adding the Scala runtime libraries too.
>>
>> (This is getting off-topic, unless there's something Scala-specific; send
>> any replies directly to me/Raoul, not to the list please.)
>>
>> —Jens
>
>