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Ask HN: How Many Programming Languages Can iOS Apps Be Written In?

by tronium on 6/12/14, 3:36 AM with 5 comments

I know about Swift, O-C, C, C , and maybe even C# utilizing Unity for iOS, however, is it possible to write native iOS apps in even more languages? For instance, would there be a way to run Python or Ruby-based apps?

  • by dottrap on 6/12/14, 5:36 AM

    Yes. Lua, JavaScript, Ruby (http://www.rubymotion.com), Java, C#, and pretty much any language that can talk to C (that's almost all of them) and embed and disable JIT (harder for some).

    It doesn't mean it's easy to write an app though because you need to make a bridge to C and Obj-C. The languages above, people have already done so through varying techniques.

  • by zimpenfish on 6/12/14, 11:23 AM

    I believe Kivy ( http://kivy.org/docs/gettingstarted/intro.html ) is Python and can deploy to iOS (although it looks like a horrible faff - http://kivy.org/docs/guide/packaging-ios.html )

  • by adamredwoods on 6/12/14, 4:33 AM

    although a small user base, Monkey-x is quite fun (and compiles to native iOS!):

    http://www.monkey-x.com

  • by Xangis on 6/12/14, 4:50 AM

    Xamarin gives partial Visual Basic support along with full support for C#.

  • by deanfranks on 6/12/14, 3:39 AM

    C++ or Delphi (pascal) via Embarcadero