/prog/ - Programming

>>1832
>What does /prog/ think of vala?

<opinionated rant>
As far as I can tell, there is nothing Vala can do that C++ can't do faster
(not to mention, C++ can do it without binding your executable to GNU's insanity creative
reinvention of the wheel new bloat object system),
and convenient features like easy GUI building are covered by other frameworks (Qt, for example)
or other languages (like Python, where everything is piss-easy).

Don't forget to also learn Guile (reinvented improved Scheme), bash (reinvented useful
variant of sh), and the GNU coding style (a completely original method of making one's eyes bleed
code more maintainable).
</opinionated rant>

It might be worth learning if you're specifically targeting GNOME, though.

>>1832
Seems like the Gnomes Obj-C, just more advanced as a programming language.
Not sure there has been any work on the compiler recently.

That said, quite a lot applications are written in it now, so it probably won't be dropped.

>>1833
>here is nothing Vala can do that C++ can't do faster
Compiling, probably.

But anon has a point, if you want to do real cross platform dev, Qt might be the better choice, as Vala is GTK/GNOME specific.

Ignore his second paragraph, though, it's shit.

A guy I know loves loves loves it. I personally don't know why, but he's a good programmer as far as I can tell, so there must be something there.

>>1872
>but he's a good programmer as far as I can tell, so there must be something there
You may want to read:
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority#General

Also liking a language does not necessarily mean that language is fit for a particular purpose (or even fit for any purpose).

For example, you should not write a first person shooter in a shell scripting language.
Although now that I've gone and said that, I kind of want to try it. I wonder if it would be possible to interface sh with OpenGL without modification…

>>1879
Do it faggot.

>>1833
C++ segfaults way faster than Vala, and sometimes performance is critical.

I have worked with both Vala an C# and as far as I know, C# is far better (because is "less experimental") and know than microsft give away .NET it can be used in linux with mono, without problems.

>>1927
>C++ segfaults way faster than Vala, and sometimes performance is critical.

Except C++ has wrappers for pretty much every type of memory management, so actually segfaulting takes very special talent.

On the rare occasion you really do have to manually manage memory in C++, there is a wide selection of tools available, any of which will find problems for you.

>>1942
Including generational garbage collection! Or wait…

>>1951
>Including generational garbage collection! Or wait…
Yeah, I guess Vala definitely wins there. Or wait…

>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vala_%28programming_language%29
>For memory management, the GObject system provides reference counting.

Which C++ provides via its standard shared_ptr class:
>http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/memory/shared_ptr/

with additional functionality from weak_ptr:
>http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/memory/weak_ptr/


And, as a point of interest, there actually is a generational garbage collector for C and C++:
http://www.hboehm.info/gc/#details

>>1953
> And, as a point of interest, there actually is a generational garbage collector for C and C++:
No there isn't. Read more carefully.

>>1832
Doesn't Vala exist just for GTK? If so, then it's shit. Use Qt.