4 ms·

I hope the ui not built with vala

by firemelt 7y ago

aksx 7y ago
Why do you hope so? Vala is a decent language which let's users build Gtk applications easily.
- m0zg 7y ago
  Because most people aren't going to learn yet another language for the privilege of being able to contribute to something.
  - toyg 7y ago
    If you are going to contribute to a Linux Desktop Environment, you are not the target audience for Elementary. Elementary wants to be “the Apple of Linux”, to attract less-technical users and switchers from other OSes. Their development philosophy is similarly top-down: someone sets a “vision” and a small group of people gets to implement it. If you are a coder and you value bottom-up development, you should really look elsewhere.
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      https://elementary.io/get-involved https://elementary.io/get-involved
      - toyg 7y ago
        Yep, that page is perfectly ordered by priority: funding, free labour for annoying tasks, and only towards the end, if you really really have to, you can give us a hand under the hood or even (dead last! Why are you still here?!?) help with design.
  - kzrdude 7y ago
    Vala is probably the easiest way to work with Gtk+ anyway, so might as well be Vala if the stack is Gtk. I don't know Vala well, but wouldn't mind jumping in with it, scares me a lot less than Gtk in C.
    - m0zg 7y ago
      Be that as it may, it was a mistake to roll a different language for this in the first place. It's not really useful for anything else, so unless you're totally dying to contribute to GNOME (very few people do), there's no reason whatsoever to learn it.
  - scythe 7y ago
    Vala is about as easy to learn as any language could ever be. If you have experience with Java, C++, C# or D you can probably already read 97% of Vala code. And if it’s your first statically typed language, it’s one of the simplest. Plus, most people don’t know most languages, so no matter what you choose, most devs have a language barrier. Vala, again, is very easy to pick up — certainly easier than C or C++ and probably easier than Java/C#/D.
saagarjha 7y ago
It is.
ossworkerrights 7y ago
I'm not sure why you are getting downvoted, as this is a legitimate issue. If the authors want someone else but themselves to contribute to this MacOS clone, they should use a more common language.
jacobush 7y ago
I am sad they didn't decide to build it with Objective C. It would have made sense given Objective C could work well with GTK, and Apples devs would have felt half at home. Swift would be cool nowadays. https://rhx.github.io/SwiftGtk/ https://rhx.github.io/SwiftGtk/ New apps in the Pantheon system could I guess be written in any language.
- pjmlp 7y ago
  Except that is hardly any usable Objective-C tooling outside Apple platforms. GCC is stuck on a pseudo Objective-C 2.0 support. clang does support the basic stuff, but there are no libraries. Yeah, there is GNUstep, but it is like stuck on Pather level compatibility or something like that.
  - jacobush 7y ago
    I wasn't even longing for the libraries, I think just the languages could lure over some Mac programmers to Elementary.
pjmlp 7y ago
Why not? Anything that helps not writing unsafe C code is a plus.

I hope the ui not built with vala

aksx 7y ago

Why do you hope so? Vala is a decent language which let's users build Gtk applications easily.

m0zg 7y ago
Because most people aren't going to learn yet another language for the privilege of being able to contribute to something.
- toyg 7y ago
  If you are going to contribute to a Linux Desktop Environment, you are not the target audience for Elementary. Elementary wants to be “the Apple of Linux”, to attract less-technical users and switchers from other OSes. Their development philosophy is similarly top-down: someone sets a “vision” and a small group of people gets to implement it. If you are a coder and you value bottom-up development, you should really look elsewhere.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    https://elementary.io/get-involved https://elementary.io/get-involved
    - toyg 7y ago
      Yep, that page is perfectly ordered by priority: funding, free labour for annoying tasks, and only towards the end, if you really really have to, you can give us a hand under the hood or even (dead last! Why are you still here?!?) help with design.
- kzrdude 7y ago
  Vala is probably the easiest way to work with Gtk+ anyway, so might as well be Vala if the stack is Gtk. I don't know Vala well, but wouldn't mind jumping in with it, scares me a lot less than Gtk in C.
  - m0zg 7y ago
    Be that as it may, it was a mistake to roll a different language for this in the first place. It's not really useful for anything else, so unless you're totally dying to contribute to GNOME (very few people do), there's no reason whatsoever to learn it.
- scythe 7y ago
  Vala is about as easy to learn as any language could ever be. If you have experience with Java, C++, C# or D you can probably already read 97% of Vala code. And if it’s your first statically typed language, it’s one of the simplest. Plus, most people don’t know most languages, so no matter what you choose, most devs have a language barrier. Vala, again, is very easy to pick up — certainly easier than C or C++ and probably easier than Java/C#/D.

saagarjha 7y ago

It is.

ossworkerrights 7y ago

I'm not sure why you are getting downvoted, as this is a legitimate issue. If the authors want someone else but themselves to contribute to this MacOS clone, they should use a more common language.

jacobush 7y ago

I am sad they didn't decide to build it with Objective C. It would have made sense given Objective C could work well with GTK, and Apples devs would have felt half at home. Swift would be cool nowadays. https://rhx.github.io/SwiftGtk/ https://rhx.github.io/SwiftGtk/ New apps in the Pantheon system could I guess be written in any language.

pjmlp 7y ago
Except that is hardly any usable Objective-C tooling outside Apple platforms. GCC is stuck on a pseudo Objective-C 2.0 support. clang does support the basic stuff, but there are no libraries. Yeah, there is GNUstep, but it is like stuck on Pather level compatibility or something like that.
- jacobush 7y ago
  I wasn't even longing for the libraries, I think just the languages could lure over some Mac programmers to Elementary.

pjmlp 7y ago

Why not? Anything that helps not writing unsafe C code is a plus.