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I remember to have high hopes in Vala when discovering it. But never actually felt the need to learn or use it for real. Which tells a story.

silisili 2y ago
That's the same place I ended. A desktop environment does not need its own language, and it was kinda hubris to think people would do that. What's also interesting is that in Gnome 3, which came just a few years after, they chose JS because so many people already knew it and could easily develop for it. I'd say the latter was the better idea, as there are far more shell extensions than Vala applications.
- nrr 2y ago
  "A desktop environment does not need its own language ..." I'm unsure that I agree. Given that part of Vala's raison d'être was interoperability with C and that it integrated well with the parts of the desktop environment that made it a desktop environment (i.e., the gadget toolkit and the accompanying services), if I wrote GNOME (Gnome these days?) applications, I'd probably be fine writing the UI in Vala and the rest of my logic in something that, at a minimum, spoke the C ABI. Likewise, I used to write Windows software in Pascal with parts in C and C++ because I oddly both found Win32 and COM and found interfacing with third-party libraries easier to deal with that way.
  - silisili 2y ago
    These are kinda ergonomic decisions, though, and a whole new language really isn't necessary for that. You could do that by making a fantastic library for another language/languages. I'd point to PyQT as an example. It's function and documentation are flawless. I was able to build an entire web browser using it in a day(no, not a chrome competitor, just a simple one using QT and webkit components). The 'official' libraries are so clumsy in comparison.
    - nrr 2y ago
      My argument is exactly about the ergonomics. If the goal is to target Gnome in particular and take advantage of C interoperability (ideally, without the overhead of a foreign function interface), Vala seems like a solidly ergonomic solution to that problem.

silisili 2y ago

That's the same place I ended. A desktop environment does not need its own language, and it was kinda hubris to think people would do that. What's also interesting is that in Gnome 3, which came just a few years after, they chose JS because so many people already knew it and could easily develop for it. I'd say the latter was the better idea, as there are far more shell extensions than Vala applications.

nrr 2y ago
"A desktop environment does not need its own language ..." I'm unsure that I agree. Given that part of Vala's raison d'être was interoperability with C and that it integrated well with the parts of the desktop environment that made it a desktop environment (i.e., the gadget toolkit and the accompanying services), if I wrote GNOME (Gnome these days?) applications, I'd probably be fine writing the UI in Vala and the rest of my logic in something that, at a minimum, spoke the C ABI. Likewise, I used to write Windows software in Pascal with parts in C and C++ because I oddly both found Win32 and COM and found interfacing with third-party libraries easier to deal with that way.
- silisili 2y ago
  These are kinda ergonomic decisions, though, and a whole new language really isn't necessary for that. You could do that by making a fantastic library for another language/languages. I'd point to PyQT as an example. It's function and documentation are flawless. I was able to build an entire web browser using it in a day(no, not a chrome competitor, just a simple one using QT and webkit components). The 'official' libraries are so clumsy in comparison.
  - nrr 2y ago
    My argument is exactly about the ergonomics. If the goal is to target Gnome in particular and take advantage of C interoperability (ideally, without the overhead of a foreign function interface), Vala seems like a solidly ergonomic solution to that problem.