GNOME's Vala 0.36 Released

[ldo17]

However there is Visual Studio Code...

Yes, there is (sigh) ...

[uid313]

Yes, there is (sigh) ...

Yeah, like all software it has some bugs. This will eventually be fixed. Also it seems to be a bug in the library it uses, so it will probably be solved once they update Electron or Chromium or whatever they use.

[uid313]

No support for shareable libraries?

Oops, I meant to write statically typed not statically linked. So all types are known at compile time so the code can be optimized better than in dynamically typed and interpreted languages.
It does support shared libraries.

[uid313]

It is faster than those languages, but nobody uses those languages for performance critical code. You use them for rapid development of scripts. The problem is that people think that C# is basically as fast as C++ when it isn't.
I used to work at an embedded electrionics company where the software department decided to write everything in C#, "because it's practically native speed and so much faster to write". To cut a very long story short, the software they produced needed an i5 level processor to run properly, when we had a prototype in C doing most of the same stuff running on a crappy ARM at a few hundred MHz. All the time they saved implementing functionality was wasted again trying to optimise and fix random performance and latency issues.
Allocating practically everything on the heap and garbage collection are both big fundamental performance problems with C#, and they only bite you when you've already written a big program in it, not so much on little benchmarks. There are other fundamental design problems, like garbage collection causing indeterminate object lifetime, which means that all resources need to be IDisposable and be explicitly closed. It has also gone very quickly from brand new language to heap of legacy stuff cobbled together that wasn't really planned for with the addition of generics, linq, async etc.
Having said all that there is some good in it. I wish C++ had reflection. And it is a reasonable choice for writing windows only GUI applications. It's just stuck in a bit of a no mans land between C/C++/Rust on the one hand and Python/Ruby/etc on the performance/fast to write spectrum.

Part of GNOME is written using JavaScript and Python and .NET is faster than that, so yeah it could be used in scenarios where those languages are used.
Python and JavaScript isn't only used for scripts, they are used for entire applications such as gnome-tweak-tool, clocks, meld, orca, etc.
For a desktop application nobody notices the difference in performance between a C# and a C++ application.

As you say, C# is a reasonable choice for writing Windows-only GUI applications, but with .NET Core and GObject Introspection it is also a reasonable choice for writing GUI applications for the Linux desktop.

[ldo17]

Oops, I meant to write statically typed not statically linked.

No RTTI, even?

[uid313]

No RTTI, even?

Yes, both at compile time and at runtime with powerful features such as object.GetType() and typeof(object) and the 'dynamic' type.

[ldo17]

... and at runtime ...

I thought you said “all types are known at compile time”.

[uid313]

I thought you said “all types are known at compile time”.

My bad. Types are known at compile type, however you can use the 'dynamic' type, as well as do reflection. If a type is declared as 'object' you can pass anything, then look it up using the .GetType() method.

[foodmonkey]

gee - thats depressing - i've been on the microsoft (and further back the IBM) side of the fence and i've just started to have a look at vala

it's an elegant implementation of the OO precepts and seems to have a reasonable set of tools to support it

using vscode, valac and gdb - youd be hard pushed to think you weren't back over the fence

vs code seems to integrate vala into it's guts quite well and if i can code, compile, make and debug from one screen then
i'm a happy camper

just a thought

what alternatives are there to a non-C/C# compiled OO language for gnome is there?

[foodmonkey]

and yes - i really do think gnome is a nice place to be at the moment - i know that's going to raise hackles of those that are fiercely defensive of their own particular distro

it's almost like a ford vs holden scenario

i made a measued choice before selecting gnome as my distro/desktop

the clincher for me was their very well documented interface guidelines that "gnome" apps should follow in style and usability

their guidelines are well thought out - consistent - although at first look somewhat simplistic
a ui should be simple in it's basis form.
the complexity comes from the way those simple elements are combined resulting in rich complex behaviour

which in a roundabout way leads me back to vala

its a robust high level language that's compiled to c

a ui is the exact place where you want the OO black box reuseability/testability/development in isolation as part of a
larger whole

for sure let's keep c going for the kernel - OO no good for that and let's face it - we've been crippled for OS development
ever since IBM selected the 8086 chip for their "desktop computer" and allowed a shyster to write an OS for it

the IBM 360 systems were at the time a joy to work with and if you've ever had the chance to work with 360 assembly language
well - count yourself lucky

i digress - what sort of support does the valac need? i have some experience with compilers/assemblers and assembly language
not so much c - but hey it's just another tool right?