Linked by David Adams on Sat 5th Jul 2008 05:03 UTC, submitted by Pfeifer
"Vala is, in some sense, a new programming language. Itâs syntax and structure leans heavily towards C#. As Jurg Billeter, the mastermind behind Vala, likes to put it; Vala is an amalgam of different C inspired languages, mostly C++ and C#. An though there is no mercury in this mixture, you'll find many a gold nugget in Vala."
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Member since:
2005-11-18
First hit in Google turns up:
http://www.mail-archive.com/vala-list@gnome.org/msg00242.html
I am the only one to think "yet another language that almost provides the same features"? I understand the practical needs, Vala is ABI-compatible with C, and the GNOME project needs something higher-level than C that provides comparable performance. Additionally, a large contingent of people seems to dislike C++. So, Vala will probably succeed within the scope of the GNOME project.
Still, why not standardize on a widely-used language with higher-level constructs such as C++. All bickering about C++ aside, it works fine for the KDE project. Sure, Qt, allows developers to write a particular flavor of C++, but it's a language that is taught in academic institutions, has industry support, etc.
This is not a criticism on GNOME per se. Microsoft is also cluttering the landscape with variations like C++/CLI and a couple of other languages, and Apple is pretty much an island on its own with Objective-C (it's not particularly popular on other platforms outside the GNUstep project), and its attempts to kill Carbon.
I think this is unproductive in various ways:
- Some twists and turns are needed to bind it all together (what if that one terribly good library you need is written in C#, and you need it in your C program).
- Every relatively unpopular language community seems to aim to build its own Rails, etc. There is a lot of duplicated effort going on.
- Arguably, it degrades the quality of programs, because people will have to switch languages for jobs often. Every language has a subtly (or not so subtle) different paradigm, which takes time and practice to master. E.g. programming C++ in a Java-ish way is not going to get you far, but it happens a lot.
- Frankly, it sucks having to write something in today's fad. Often performance is sucky, IDE support is bad, and debugging tools are subpar.
- It takes time to design a good language. Bumps are usually not gone if a language has given time to mature.
Of course, I can't deny my curiosity, that's why I try to learn at least one or two new languages a year. Not necessarily to use them, but there are often nice concepts or ideas to pick up.
Edited 2008-07-05 11:26 UTC