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
But these higher level languages result in applications that use too much memory, take long to start up and are generally slow when compared to those written in C.
Most virtual machines that do JIT have a very acceptable performance. Sure, there can be some overhead, but in my own experience well-written computation-intensive Java programs on modern JVMs can be nearly as fast as C++ code, or at the very least be performant enough to justify a bit of performance for comfort (I don't know about C#/.NET, I have never used it outside some tinkering with Mono).
It is true that there is VM memory overhead, but it's not that bad when multiple applications can use the same runtime, e.g. like .NET application domains.
VM languages provide good speed, safety, and arguably more productivity. It's a bit premature to dismiss them with arguments that primarily apply to past revisions (e.g. pre-JIT JDKs).
Member since:2005-11-21
Member since:
2006-04-28
Yes, it's interesting. I think it was designed specifically to allow application development in GNOME using a "modern" syntax that generates native code. GNOME has always had this problem that using C to build applications on it is difficult, so they've always been looking for alternatives like C# (mono) and Python. But these higher level languages result in applications that use too much memory, take long to start up and are generally slow when compared to those written in C. So is Vala the answer to this problem? I hope it is and that it saves GNOME from having to rely on Mono and Python while making it easier for programmers to develop on it. Probably a Vala written application will never be as optimized as one written directly in C, but it still sounds like a good compromise to me.