Abstract
In the sense of the tradition founded by Kernighan and Ritchie, we start with the obligatory “Hello World” program—a minimal example that not only provides a first look at the syntax but also discusses the Vala way from the source code to the executable binary. We also take a glance behind the curtain to see how Vala operates in the background and translates your program into C.
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Notes
- 1.
Brian W. Kernighan, Dennis M. Ritchi: C Programming Language. Prentice Hall, 1978. ISBN 978-0131101630.
- 2.
Vala does not come bundled with a dedicated integrated development environment; however it will work with a generic one, like Eclipse or Anjuta. In addition, there is a small choice of Vala-specific IDEs, like Valama.
- 3.
I recommend to look into the generated C code from time to time. It can help not only for debugging some cases but also to enjoy seeing how many lines of codes you have saved by using Vala.
- 4.
Similar to C++, Java, and Objective-C, the this parameter is supplied as an invisible parameter when calling an instance’s method. Some programming languages make this explicit in their method definition, i.e., Smalltalk’s and Python’s self parameter work this way.
- 5.
Vala does not support operator overloading.
- 6.
POSIX defines that the name of the executable is being passed as the first parameter.
- 7.
Note that these properties are merely hints to the window manager on your chosen platform; hence they may or may not be respected.
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© 2019 Michael Lauer
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Lauer, M. (2019). Getting Started. In: Introducing Vala Programming. Apress, Berkeley, CA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-5380-9_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-5380-9_2
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Publisher Name: Apress, Berkeley, CA
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Online ISBN: 978-1-4842-5380-9
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