Goodbye, Vala

Towards the end of last year, I started to learn Vala, the next generation programming language of the Linux desktop, and I wasn’t overawed by what I found.

While, yes, the language is still in it’s infancy, I found the use of C# syntax to be rather silly. As a programming language, sure, it might be suitable for what developers want, but I don’t like it.

Let me say it clearly: I don’t like C#.

Vala takes too many cues from it, and the baroque and evil integration with GObject makes it an interesting curiousity, but as a practical programming language? To give some hint of perspective, I’m switching development of Hellvetica, my DTP tool, to Python, a language that I notoriously hate, simply because I want a tool that lets me prototype code in a friendly way, and Vala simply isn’t that.

I’d like to finish The Vala Guide, but, quite simply, I’m not interested in the language any more. It’s too painful to write any quantity of code in it.