It's less absurd than rejecting apps because of the language they were "originally written in," less absurd than rejecting minor updates to an app you've already approved — less absurd than most of Apple's rejections, actually, because at least then Apple's rationale would make sense without assuming Apple is simply evil.
What? How is rejecting apps/updates for technical infractions (cross-compiled code) absurd? Undesirable for the developer perhaps, but nothing compared to the worry that someone's general opinion of your individual app could kill the whole project. The rationale is also pretty much irrelevant if the rule is already published (eg. no cross-compiled code) - you don't need to second-guess it, you just need to follow it
If you sketch out pseudocode on a napkin or use an algorithm you learned about in Python, you are technically using something that wasn't originally written in Objective-C and are back to hoping the App Store reviewers exercise the rules with sanity. Compilation is just transforming data from a less useful form into a more useful one. That's why it's absurd.
But why pretend that this would actually happen? Compilation is transforming programming language into machine code; writing in this case is the act of typing out your program in programming language. 'Originally written in Obj-C' means the code was formed by you in Objective-C before being transformed by a compiler. It is now machine-code, it was 'originally,' ie. before compilation, Obj-C.
They care not a jot whether your adopting code from a Python project. Technically it's not the same program then anyway. Everyone knows this! C'mon
