Apple may have jumped the shark with the revision to section 3.3.1 of the license agreement for the iPhone 4.0 software development kit. It reads:
Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs.
Not good news for programming language enthusiasts. Presumably the purpose of this measure is to combat Adobe. I have no love for Adobe either these days, but as a software developer I don't want to be a pawn in some corporate feud. Why should Apple care what languages and tools we use? Publish the API spec and we'll follow it.
Annoying developers is no way to promote your platform. There's a certain class of developers that will build for whatever platforms are dominant – in order to reach the most users. There's another class that will primarily target platforms they themselves use and love. Which class produces the most compelling, innovative, game-changing applications? We leave that as an exercise for the reader.
