Third party programming languages/tools on ARM Macs

[johncaling40]

Will third party programming languages/tools be affected because of the transition?

 

[leman]

Partially. Some toolchains will need more testing. C/C++ and all the web stuff won’t be affected at all (Node has an ARM version). I believe Oracle has a Java for ARM as well, they’ll just need to bring it to Mac. Everything that builds on LLVM (e.g. Rust) should catch up quickly. Python and friends just work, unsure about all the packages though.

 

[Erehy Dobon]

Don't most of the major programming languages already have a presence on ARM architecture?

I have a Raspberry Pi 4. Raspbian (a Debian Linux derivative) -- which I try to run as infrequently as possible -- seems to have a sh!tload of programming tools that they are happy to push to the end user, a.k.a. "Recommended Software" [sic].

Your smart doorbell, automobile infotainment center, ATM, gas station fuel pump POS terminal are probably all running Linux on ARM. I know the mini Super NES Classic revival console is basically a Linux-ARM box running an SNES emulator.

*nix-like operating systems on ARM isn't new because ARM isn't new. Hell, they might have been there 20-30 years ago.

 

[Nermal]

*nix-like operating systems on ARM isn't new because ARM isn't new. Hell, they might have been there 20-30 years ago.

I think RISC iX was the first Arm Unix... from 1988

 

[leman]

Don't most of the major programming languages already have a presence on ARM architecture?

True, but since the focus was more on energy savings, some toolchains might not be 100% ready for high-performance desktop application. This will be less of a case for C and C++, that have very mature implementations in both LLVM and GCC, but for example some newer languages like Rust still have some work to do.

 

[tonyunreal]

Two of my most interested developing environment, Android SDK (with Android Studio) and Flutter SDK, don't seem to have arm64 versions available on any arm-based os, nor did Google announce any plan to release such versions.

 

[Bug-Creator]

Android SDK (with Android Studio) and Flutter SDK,

Both seem to be opensource, so that should be a no issue. Only problematic bit might be integrated emulators to run Android(ARM) apps on x86. These would need some rewriting but could end up with a massive performance boost from using virtualisation instead of full emulation.