Lone Star Ruby Conf 2008: Creating Desktop Applications with Ruby on Mac OS X
As of Leopard, Apple has made Ruby a first class citizen for developing desktop applications. At some point everyone has an idea for a great desktop application. With a good number of Rubyists using OS X these days I want to give an introduction to what is possible with RubyCocoa so that when that great idea shows up, they know their options.
This talk introduces Ruby Cocoa, listing the major frameworks. Examples of apps using RubyCocoa are given (the most popular right now being GitNub). An example application is also be created showing the power of Cocoa plus the power of being able to write in Ruby and having access to gems.
I also cover recent developments related to Cocoa and bridges: MacRuby, nu, RubyObjC and talk about pros and cons.