In #77, I mentioned RubyMotion as an alternative for building iOS (and now OS X and Android) apps. Since it generates native code and uses a dialect of Ruby, it's especially attractive to developers who are already familiar with Ruby.

In a similar way, I'd like to point out React Native which lets you write iOS (and Android) apps in Javascript. I'm not a big fan of Javascript, but React Native (and similarly React for web) opens up a different paradigm for mobile app development which is well worth looking into. Even if you are never going to be using React Native for iOS app development, it's well worth spending an hour running through the official tutorial. You should at least go through these:

• Install React Native (it's just a shell command away)
• Create a React Native project (another command)
• Run the empty app in the simulator
• Hit Cmd+D to bring up the menu, enable Live Reload
• Make a few simple changes in index.ios.js
• Examine how a "screen"/component is defined/created in index.ios.js
• Continue with the tutorial to learn about stuff such as Props, State and Style

This should give you a good introduction to what React Native offers.

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