Ask HN: Would any one pay for a python to objc transpiler, with iOS integration?

3 pointsnoidax9y ago10 comments

I am thinking of bringing the power of python's syntax to objc iOS development. Would people who are interested pay for it with a subscription models of $20 / month.

10 comments

davelnewton9y ago

Of course people that are interested in it would pay, although I suspect a "subscription model" at $20/mo would be off-putting.

Doesn't the actual question revolve around:

(a) how many people are interested

(b) of those, how many would pay a quarter grand a year for the privilege

noidaxOP9y ago

I agree, I need these answers to work on it for full time. So basically I created this interest check thread.

davelnewton9y ago

Well, I don't know the answer, obviously, but I wouldn't quit my day job.

As someone who needs to write an iOS app, I'm going to use Swift, and the tooling built around it. Transpilation would mean you either need to integrate a debugger (hard) or I'll have to debug transpiled code (and have to check the transpilation)--I have enough "fun" doing that with ES6 in the browser. No thanks; I'll stick with the supported tools.

jetti9y ago

This isn't the market for me as I'm not a Python developer nor do I really plan to create software of iOS. But as a compiler/language tool enthusiast I think it would be a cool product. One thing I would suggest is using an intermediate language, similar to CIL or LLVM, so that you can easily add support for multiple languages. When you have support for multiple languages it becomes and even more attractive tool

simon_acca9y ago

> bringing the power of python's syntax to objc iOS development

If that's your goal, it could be less work to embed a python interpreter in ObjC and write nice bindings for the iOs APIs.

rgovind9y ago

There is bigger question here. How many people are still make money from selling compiler/language tools? Like, write a static analyzer, or php optimizer or sell a Swift library for linux application or a language-X to language-Y transpiler. So, far, I have found this industry to be opaque, unlike web industry! And if they make money, how much?

Btw, there was YC company which sold PHP server optimizations. Anyone knows the name? (I think they are closed now but I am not sure)

jetti9y ago

There are a few major players that I can think of that makes money in the compiler/language tools category (JetBrains and Embarcadero are the two that comes to mind but I'm sure there are many more). But I think for a small player it would be hard

mathgenius9y ago

Python transpilers/compilers are such an amazing pain in the ass. For users also. Have you done this before?

noidaxOP9y ago

If you think about it, ObjC has a lot of similarities to a dynamic objected oriented programming language. You can add methods, check if a method exists and a lot more. Imagine something like this =>

if obj.isNumber():

    print "Hello World"

where you can call objc methods from python code.

davelnewton9y ago

That's because ObjC comes from the unholy marriage of C and Smalltalk. It kind of ruined both, but coming from a Smalltalk background, I quite liked it, and was sad when C++ won the day.

We understand what you're talking about; I don't think you need to explain the concept.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

10 comments

davelnewton9y ago

Of course people that are interested in it would pay, although I suspect a "subscription model" at $20/mo would be off-putting.

Doesn't the actual question revolve around:

(a) how many people are interested

(b) of those, how many would pay a quarter grand a year for the privilege

noidaxOP9y ago

I agree, I need these answers to work on it for full time. So basically I created this interest check thread.

davelnewton9y ago

Well, I don't know the answer, obviously, but I wouldn't quit my day job.

jetti9y ago

simon_acca9y ago

> bringing the power of python's syntax to objc iOS development

If that's your goal, it could be less work to embed a python interpreter in ObjC and write nice bindings for the iOs APIs.

rgovind9y ago

Btw, there was YC company which sold PHP server optimizations. Anyone knows the name? (I think they are closed now but I am not sure)

jetti9y ago

mathgenius9y ago

Python transpilers/compilers are such an amazing pain in the ass. For users also. Have you done this before?

noidaxOP9y ago

If you think about it, ObjC has a lot of similarities to a dynamic objected oriented programming language. You can add methods, check if a method exists and a lot more. Imagine something like this =>

if obj.isNumber():

    print "Hello World"

where you can call objc methods from python code.

davelnewton9y ago

That's because ObjC comes from the unholy marriage of C and Smalltalk. It kind of ruined both, but coming from a Smalltalk background, I quite liked it, and was sad when C++ won the day.

We understand what you're talking about; I don't think you need to explain the concept.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse