Much is being said about Apple's newly launched attempt to stop programmers from writing in a language they don't approve. Lambda the Ultimate is a good place to find lots of links.
This is a large grab. Apply is trying to control not only the technology used in the distributed software for an application, but also the methods used to make it. The requirements on those methods are not even that they be good methods; restricting the programming language does little to enforce good programming by itself. And the languages allowed aren't especially great for good programming.
Jobs claims--in the few terse comments Apple has made about this move--that he wants to prevent the iPhone from being commodotized. This is a standard lock-in kind of approach to doing well in business, but it's slightly odd given Apple's reputation for distributing quality software. One thing we can be sure of: if programmers aren't allowed to use good tools, they aren't going to make good software.
It's unclear whether this will be enforceable. Among other reasons, practically all software makes some use of its non-primary language, but presumably Apple doesn't want to ban all software from their market. Any configuration language is a programming language. The expression language of a spreadsheet is a programming language. If you do a web search for "cell phones -iphone", you're writing the query in a programming language. Heck, if the developers use use ant or make or Maven to build the program, they're writing their build rules in a programming language.
Little languages are just part of how software is written.
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