It's always just after you write

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 09:00:44 +0100

Well Laurent did tell me that several people were working on Javascript/Cocoa bridges. I got word this morning about JSCocoa which looks pretty interesting. If I'd come across this before speaking to Laurent about MacRuby I might well have tried it.

It looks interesting although I am puzzled by the ugly instance initialization syntax when using GC. And here is a clear advantage to JSCocoa. If you are not using Leopard GC you can't use MacRuby (because MacRuby replaces the Ruby GC with the Leopard GC) and a lot of Cocoa developers are not using GC for various good reasons (like wanting to support Tiger).

On the other hand if you are using Leopard GC then using JSCocoa you end up with two GC's running at the same time (since JSCore has it's own GC).

Right now, despite the rough edges, I am pretty happy with how MacRuby is working out. I have to see how well it will perform, Ruby is not the fastest language out there. MacRuby should probably perform as fast as the current JSCore. We'll have to see what things look like when SquirrelFish becomes the official JSCore (probably in 10.6).

Curiouser and Curiouser! on macruby

It's always just after you write