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FigueroaR
FigueroaR

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Mobile Apps & Ruby

During my journey studying & learning Ruby, to my surprise, Ruby is a beautiful user-friendly language as many of you have come to realize and love! Like any specific field of study, we come across difficult concepts to master. With programming, be it any programming language, our thought process changes. Currently when I look at projects/objects in life, I no longer take them for granted, I now see the mind that built and engineered the idea. I have an appreciation for the mind and our seemingly endless capabilities.

For this reason, when I looked at website and mobile apps, I see the strenuous work that went behind it to make it come alive. This led me to ask myself more about mobile applications and how they work. I researched how to develop mobile apps and what it takes to create one. From the device OS, native OS programming language, cross platforms programming language (how to build apps for multiple Devices with one language), to how can ruby be implemented to build mobile apps.

I have good and bad news:

The Good

There is a method of developing mobile apps that has come to the forefront compared to other alternatives for Ruby, It is called Ruby Motion. This is a cross-platform native app builder, if you don’t realize how big a deal that is…. let me explain bit further! We can build apps for Android && IOS at the same time with one build. Yes, there are other cross platforms like React (which requires learning JavaScript) & Flutter (which requires learning Dart programming language). Ruby Motion is built specifically for Ruby. Personally I love Ruby for its easy of programing. Ruby Motion has a slack channel to stay up to date with any ongoing.

The Bad

Ruby Motion is for development on OS X (Mac Desktops) only, Windows and Linux developers miss out on the fun. This will hurt Ruby Motion on the long term. Ruby Motion has a real shot at becoming adopted in mass if they include other OS systems. I hope to see them expand, Ruby is a beautiful user-friendly language and future developers will have fun with this cross-platform app builder. Meanwhile Ruby Motion has a slack channel to stay up to date with any ongoing.

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