Re: Why vala? Was - Re: ffalarms 0.2.3 Vala/libeflvala/Elementary rewrite
I actually work in C with all the crazy function pointers and what-not every day. So, that's sort of how my brain works these days. I looked at some Vala samples and was like "Wait a minute, are these classes or something? I haven't seen stuff like this since college!". ;-) -Steven On Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 1:22 PM, Michael 'Mickey' Lauer wrote: > Anf if you're still not convinced, read some C/GLib/Gobject source code and > then some Vala source code. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Why vala? Was - Re: ffalarms 0.2.3 Vala/libeflvala/Elementary rewrite
"Steven **" writes: > I've seen several developers talking about porting things to vala. > I'm not really familiar with this language. What is the point? Why > would you spend the effort rewriting an app that already works into > another language when the result is identical to the original? Is > vala really that much easier to program in that C? Łukasz, was it > worth all that time to rewrite ffalarms (which is a great app)? > > Just wondering if I should be paying more attention to this vala > stuff... For sure Vala is worth looking at... I started ffalarms with (excelant language) Python which is my language of choice mostly for small scripts and numerical calculations with numpy and my own lib. Found Vala on the way, which is a high level language -- I have not needed Python dynamic nature in ffalarms, apart from simple convienience (no variable declarations and monkey typing). Vala adds speed and smaller memory footprint and easier interfacing with C libraries which I hope to use soon (though it is also convenient in Python when using Pyrex/Cython). I decided it is good to learn Vala and there is no better way to do that than write some real program, and here comes the rewrite. Such a rewrite is also good to check how much you miss constructs from the previous language in the new one. It takes some time to get used to it (like with any language). I am not a great fan of verbose names so I defined Emacs abbrevs for some common names such as prn -> stdout.printf getenv -> Environment.get_variable > > -Steven > > 2009/6/28 Łukasz Pankowski : >> Hi >> >> I have just released ffalarms 0.2.3. Features: >> >> - rewritten using Vala/libeflvala/Elementary (same features as 0.2.2) >> [...] >> >> Rewrite in Vala took much of my available time. I hope to add recursive >> alarms, but you know well my time limited, slow rate of development :). ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Why vala? Was - Re: ffalarms 0.2.3 Vala/libeflvala/Elementary rewrite
>Just wondering if I should be paying more attention to this vala stuff... Yes, you should, because Vala is a groundbreaking new programming language that combines the abstraction of high level languages with the performance of low level languages. See also: http://blogs.gnome.org/lharris/2009/02/23/why-vala-is-the-answer-to-life-the- universe-and-everything/ http://zee-nix.blogspot.com/2008/05/why-vala.html http://www.vanille-media.de/site/index.php/2007/12/30/first-encounter-with- vala/ http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2007/09/vala-high-level-programming- with-less-fat.ars Anf if you're still not convinced, read some C/GLib/Gobject source code and then some Vala source code. Cheers, :M: ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Why vala? Was - Re: ffalarms 0.2.3 Vala/libeflvala/Elementary rewrite
I've seen several developers talking about porting things to vala. I'm not really familiar with this language. What is the point? Why would you spend the effort rewriting an app that already works into another language when the result is identical to the original? Is vala really that much easier to program in that C? Łukasz, was it worth all that time to rewrite ffalarms (which is a great app)? Just wondering if I should be paying more attention to this vala stuff... -Steven 2009/6/28 Łukasz Pankowski : > Hi > > I have just released ffalarms 0.2.3. Features: > > - rewritten using Vala/libeflvala/Elementary (same features as 0.2.2) > [...] > > Rewrite in Vala took much of my available time. I hope to add recursive > alarms, but you know well my time limited, slow rate of development :). ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
