Re: [Vala] Vala on Embedded Devices

[George Hahn <george hahn vhs gmail com>]

Thank you all for your input.

I'd like to add a third scenario to Dmitry's two. Rather than generalizing
this scenario, I'll give my specifics. Generalize as you like.

- Product turnover is important. We generally move from schematic to
shippable in six to eight weeks.
- Need peripherals that may not be available on slower microprocessors.
- Need to perform one thing among many quickly. Often I'll use a tight loop
to handle a single responsibility and let everything else run in the
background. (Generally a main loop & interrupt driven structure)
- Want to give room for future improvements. If we're right at a code size
boundary, we'll often bump the microprocessor to a superior model to allow
for in-field bootloading. Sometimes this comes with a 'free' RAM or
frequency boost.

I can definitely see Vala being useful for 'main loop' tasks - tasks that
don't need to be done *now* and that may be shared among products.
Essentially, I live in a realm below .NET/Java/Python, but would still like
modern syntax.

I have some spare time at work right now, so I hope to prototype a Vala
application for PIC32 embedded systems.

George.


On Fri, Dec 7, 2012 at 12:15 PM, Dmitry Romanov <romanovda gmail com> wrote:

> As an embedded world developer, I strongly disagree with the statement
> about C, C++ and libstdc. Vala is really something that could be
> useful for embed world.
>
> There are two scenarios:
> 1. When you have developed a unit and you want to put it for mass
> market. Then you want to make everything cheaper. Then you have to
> take maximum from your controller. When you are selling 1 000 000 pink
> bunnies, the difference between controller costs is more than
> difference in costs of development time.
>
> 2. If you have researching and development stage of your device. If
> you have one off production of high precision equipment, custom
> machine tool or many other non mass market complex applications, the
> cost of the development is much much more than costs of controllers.
> In this case, the time when controllers should be programmed only in
> assembly language is passing away.
>
> There are java and .NET driven controllers available on the market.
> But there are specific problems with real time and garbage collection
> for those technologies as well.  At the same time Vala claims to be as
> fast as C++ and to be run anywhere with C support. So definitely Vala
> will find a lot of users in embedded programming (with all vala syntax
> sugar).
>
>
> On Fri, Dec 7, 2012 at 4:21 AM, Ma Xiaojun <damage3025 gmail com> wrote:
> > In embedded environment, people even find glibc bloated...
> >
> > If the mailer want OO support, what about C++ without libstdc++?
> > If the mailer want some sugars in GLib, that's probably harder.
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