Switching to Vala

That’s it. I had already considered this idea before and ditched it because of reasons such as «Vala is too young of a programming language yet» -it is, still- but in the end python’s memory use -7,6 megs for a window that doesn’t do anything remotely useful- and finding a Vala autotools project ready for start fooling around weighted as important enough for convincing me (thank you, Tadeboro).

Why not Java or C#? I just don’t trust Oracle or Microsoft. I know there has been Mono for quite a while, but, leaving an interpreted language to embrace yet another one?

Why not C or C++, if you are going to bite the bullet? Just because I wouldn’t stand having to keep header files updated and even if I could still use modern programming constructions like interfaces and foreach loops, it would involve yet more extra work.

Work. That’s the key word here. Among other errors I commited in the previous Sprite Hut era, the worst one I think it was to take it way too seriously and trying to get everything perfect from the very beginning. I tried so hard that I hardly had any progress at all.

Now I’m going to have fun with Vala, with no stress or hurry because of taking part in a contest.

Anyway, I hope this change is for the better and before I forget it, the project has been hosted by launchpad from quite a while ago and the main development branch is already in place -it was a pain to set up thanks to a launchpad bug. I don’t know if I will update Rediris’ SVN repository anymore, to be frank, so if your curiosity has been aroused, you can get the little Vala code there is now using a simple

bzr branch lp:spritehut

There will be more.

Back to work

For one reason or another, I have had to leave the project for a while, but here I am again.

I only wanted to say that both the project and me are still alive.

That said, there are going to be changes in my way of managing this project. Namely:

• Less and shorter posts. I love to write, but any time I invest in writing posts it’s time I’m not doing more important things for Sprite Hut and myself.
• More languages. I want to practice my English. And Japanese. The more languages the information of this blog is in, the more people will be able to read it. However, It’s not like I speak every language in the world or would have the time to write in them all, so two or three will do for me.
• Less design, more coding. I think this project is suffering a little analysis paralysis. One thing is to rush to the coding phase without having in mind the least bit of an idea about the application architecture and another very different wanting to have the thing perfectly finished on paper before doing any real work. So I’ll comment on the design for future collaboration and get to fight Python again, because it’s about time (the GUI prototype was an exception).

That’s all for now. Over and out.