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."
Thread beginning with comment 321451
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2005-11-21
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.
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.
Seeing as ObjC is a superset of C there isn't worry about ABI compatible with C in the ObjC world. It's modern syntax options and garbage collection satsify the most anally retentive C++ bigot and Java bigot.
I've got nothing against C++ or Java. They are both great languages. There just seems to be a lot of people stinkin' up the collective communities.
I use KDE every day and I'd love to see GNOME leapfrog it and have native ObjC bindings within it's community.
It's clear KDE is doing it's best to avoid WebKit and those glorious KHTML/KJS developers must still be feeling the cold shoulder as the very mention of WebKit brings out such professional responses.
Member since:2005-10-13
It's clear KDE is doing it's best to avoid WebKit
I disagree, WebKit is being directly used in the most visible KDE project of all, Plasma. Others are working on making it into a KPart for Konqueror to use, and I think there was a summer of code project to allow you to swap the web engine it uses at runtime with a click of a button.
It is true that some of the KHTML developers don't particularly like it, but they aren't the whole KDE project. And if they want to keep working on their own code, I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
Edited 2008-07-05 23:30 UTC
Recent Original Stories
Recent Comments
Headlines
Random Comments
Random Stories
Random OS Link
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