Steve Jobs, personal email replier he is these days, responded to a concerned developer’s email regarding this week’s SDK kerfuffle. His (characteristically brief) take: “intermediate layers between the platform and the developer ultimately produces sub-standard apps.”

The exchange started with TaoEffect CEO Greg Slepak emailing Jobs to express his grievances about the newly restricted SDK agreement. Jobs responded:

We think John Gruber’s post is very insightful and not negative:

http://daringfireball.net/2010/04/why_apple_changed_section_331

Steve

Slepak wrote back to Jobs refuting Gruber’s post and explaining that “from a developer’s point of view, you’re limiting creativity itself.” A few minutes later, Jobs replied again, elaborating—or what goes for elaboration, anyway, in an email from Steve Jobs—his company’s motivation for requiring apps to be originally written in Objective-C:

We’ve been there before, and intermediate layers between the platform and the developer ultimately produces sub-standard apps and hinders the progress of the platform.

It’s not the most substantial defense, but it’s at least interesting that Jobs himself has entered the passionate debate that’s been playing out over the last few days. You can read the full exchange over at Slepak’s blog. [TechCrunch]