As programming is not my profession I like tools that work because I don't have the time to fiddle around with the shortcomings of a programming language or compiler!
After all these years coding in other programming languages I seem to have forgotten all the pain I had with vala.
Now the memories are back!
It's really a pain when the vala compiler reports no erros but the c compiler stumbles and reports errors.
(valac takes a vala file and generates a c file that is handled by gcc)
Mix on top of that the syntax change of gtk (from gtk2 to gtk3... and from early gtk3 to the newest gtk3).
It's a major pain because parts of the gtk documentation is not up-todate (especially the examples).
The strange thing is that while converting a gtk2 program to gtk3 i had to change all vbox and hbox to box.
When vala is used in oop mode (classes) the syntax is:
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var vbox = new Gtk.Box();
vbox.set_orientation(Orientation.VERTICAL);
Then Murphy's Law kicked in:
all Gtk.Box compile correctly except the last one.
Not the vala compiler sends me an error message but gcc:
two few arguments to function 'gtk_box_new'.
If I change the above code to:
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var vbox = new Gtk.Box(Orientation.VERTICAL, 0);
the vala compiler sends me an error message:
2 extra arguments to function 'gtk_box_new'.
Talk about catch-22.
On December 22, 2013 a new version of the vala compiler was released (0.23.1) maybe this will solve it...
Let's hope for the best.