Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 1st May 2012 21:59 UTC
Wow. "One crazy idea that the team had at that dinner was to translate Android's source code to C#. Android would benefit from C# performance features like structures, P/Invoke, real generics and our more mature runtime. [...] We decided it was crazy enough to try. So we started a small skunkworks project with the goal of doing a machine translation of Android from Java to C#. We called this project XobotOS." Most of Android's layouts and controls are now in C#. The small benchmark is stunning, but as much as I admire the work, I'm wondering that this like going from bad to worse - from Oracle's Java to Microsoft's C#.
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Member since:2006-01-24
Vala is tied to the GObject system and is pretty far from a drop in replacement,
It was quite some time ago I looked at Vala but unless I'm mistaken you could write a Vala program without using GObject and also add bindings to any library you wish (either straight up bindings or 'objectifying' using a VAPI file).
As I recall the biggest difference is that there's no full-blown GC but only reference counting and that Vala compiles to C and then to native code.
The only Vala program I've used is Shotwell and that is indeed great, certainly way more performant than F-spot was (although I can't say for sure if that is a question of Vala vs Mono or a matter of the the skill of the actual programmers).
RE[3]: I'm disappointed
by henderson101 on Wed 2nd May 2012 09:18
in reply to "RE[2]: I'm disappointed"
Member since:2006-05-30
Vala is an object-oriented programming language with a self-hosting compiler that generates C code and uses the GObject system.
That pretty much is what I remember. Vala was also extremely tied to Linux and very hard to build on other platforms. I remember the Windows port being hard to get set up and pretty useless due to the ties to GObjects and GNOME. As this brings in a super large dependency to Android, you must be able to see that using a more platform agnostic compiler makes more sense?
Features
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 11:29 UTC
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:33 UTC
Why does Google get so much credit in the technology industry? Why, despite the company's many obvious failings, do many geeks and enthusiasts still hold a somewhat positive view on the all-knowing technology giant? A specific talk at Google I/O this week provides the answer.
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OSNews is a sponsor of this year's O'Reilly OSCON in Portland, Oregon, USA. A lucky OSNews reader will win a free three-day pass, including two tutorials days. To win the pass, post a comment on this story saying something about Open Source Software or OSCON. We'll pick a winner at random next week. If you don't have an OSNews account, you may email us your entry. Part of the conference is the 9th annual Open Source Awards, and today the 16th is the deadline for nominations. If you'd like to nominate an outstanding open source contributor, do it here. Read on for more information about OSCON. Update: The 20% discount code for OSNews readers is "OSN."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/11/13 21:41 UTC
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/08/13 14:22 UTC
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/02/13 15:28 UTC
Exactly twenty years ago, a document was published that played a huge role in establishing the web as we know it today. Twenty years later, and this simple and straightforward document is proof of an irrefutable fact: while closed technologies can change markets, open technologies can change the world.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/29/13 21:06 UTC
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/24/13 22:24 UTC
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/18/13 11:21 UTC
Nokia has posted its quarterly results for the first quarter of 2013, and just like the quarters that came before, there's not a whole lot of good news in there. The rise in Lumia sales still can't even dream of making up for the sales drop in Symbian phones, and when broken down in versions, the sales figures for Windows Phone 8 Lumias in particular are very disappointing. In North America, Nokia is getting slaughtered.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/16/13 9:29 UTC
The day has finally come: Google has started shipping Google Glass to the lucky few early adopters. Now that it's shipping, Google has also unveiled a lot more about the API and the specifications of the device itself. While the company had already given out substantial details at earlier occasions, there are still a few surprises here.More Features »
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Member since:
2006-05-30
Vala is tied to the GObject system and is pretty far from a drop in replacement, where as C# is an almost direct analogue with many advantages over Java (P/invoke being the most obvious.)