I'm wanting (aiming toward needing) to learn Ruby but trying to justify the cost without actually knowing the language is a bit tough.
RubyMotion is fully compiled, and built on top of LLVM. See http://www.rubymotion.com/features/
You can learn Ruby for free; you don't need RubyMotion or any other paid software for that.
(I am all for choice, though. I wish Apple had a way of "blessing" frameworks and languages that have automated and/or inherent ways of absorbing additions to iOS, and was specific about this.)
RubyMotion exposes 100% of the Objective-C runtime with virtually no performance penalty. They are very on top of new iOS releases (released full iOS 6 support within a week).
In fact, I think that the RubyMotion community adopts new iOS technologies faster since it's new and doesn't have a lot of legacy code.
RubyMotion is doing the right things. Much of the result also depends on community. It's a bad sign when supposedly smart programmers disdain a technology or a set of tech conventions simply because it's different. Especially when that tech has a great track record. It's really weird when they disdain the very thing they're building on. I've met some RubyMotion programmers like this, however. I hope they're just an aberration.
I'm only a few days into using RubyMotion so I haven't formed a complete opinion yet, but my current concern is that I will end up becoming skilled at using a set of gems instead of becoming skilled at using the platform.
Reminds me somehow of Sinatra - e.g. Promotion : Cocoa :: Sinatra : Rails
On the other hand, I'm a Python guy and I've never fallen for Objective-C (although recent sugary additions have made it far more pleasant).
Can anyone who has made the jump enlighten me?
I don't see there being much trademark confusion here.
