Vala Programming Language

Many of my followers know that I have been developing an IDE and as my development language I have chosen D for the IDE and I am using GTK as GUI library. (There is also a Qt binding for D named QtD, which is also good.) Some days ago I have stumbled upon a new programming language named [Vala](http://live.gnome.org/Vala). Actually it is not new as it has been in the scene since 2006. So why Vala exists? Why another programing language? > Many developers want to write GNOME applications and libraries in high-level programming languages but can't or don't want to use C# or Java for various reasons, > so they are stuck with C without syntax support for the GObject type system. > The Vala compiler allows developers to write complex object-oriented code rapidly while > maintaining a standard C API and ABI and keeping the memory requirements low. > C# and Java libraries can't be used the same way as native GObject libraries from C > and other languages and can't be accepted as part of the GNOME Platform. Managed > applications also suffer from usually higher memory requirements which is not > acceptable in some situations. > valac produces C source and header files from Vala source files as if you've written > your library or application directly in C. Using a Vala library from a C application > won't look different than using any other GObject-based library. There won't be a > vala runtime library and applications can distribute the generated C code with their > tarballs, so there are no additional run- or build-time dependencies for users. Vala makes developing GTK/Gnome applications ridiculously easy. Here you can see a simple hello world for Vala: int main(string[] args) { stdout.printf("Hello World\n"); return 0; } Save this example as helloworld.vala and after compiling it with "valac helloworld.vala", you can run the example "./helloworld". Of course you need [vala compiler installed on your system](http://live.gnome.org/Vala#Download) first. Here is a quick GTK application for Vala: using Gtk; int main(string[] args) { // initialize Gtk Gtk.init(ref args); // create window var window = new Window(WindowType.TOPLEVEL); // set window size window.set_size_request(300, 200); // add an alignment var alignment = new Alignment(0, 0, 0, 0); // create an exit button var exit_button = new Button.with_label("Quit!"); // add a signal to the button. exit_button.clicked.connect(exit_button_clicked); // add exit button to the alignment alignment.add(exit_button); // add alignment to the window window.add(alignment); // add destroy event to the window window.destroy.connect(Gtk.main_quit); // show all widgets window.show_all(); // run the app. Gtk.main(); return 0; } void exit_button_clicked(Button button) { stdout.printf("Clicked exit button, closing the app.\n"); Gtk.main_quit(); } You can compile the files as "valac helloworld.vala --pkg gtk+-2.0" and then run the program. This is the result:  If you are C# developer, you can read [Vala for C# developers](http://live.gnome.org/Vala/QuickIntroForCSharpProgrammers) and if you are a Java developer you can read [Vala for Java developers](http://live.gnome.org/Vala/ValaForJavaProgrammers). For a complete Vala tutorial you can visit [http://live.gnome.org/Vala/Tutorial](http://live.gnome.org/Vala/Tutorial). Also [sample codes](http://live.gnome.org/Vala#Sample_Code) are really helping much. Why I have told all these? Because for the desktop applications that target GTK/Gnome platform, I think Vala is simply the best choice. As it's the best choice, I will definitely go and use it for my future GTK/Gnome applications. So, start using Vala and spread the word.