Comment by clarifier123 | Hacker News Reader

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Comment by clarifier123 | Hacker News Reader

I think it's interesting that so many things in elementary OS are written in Vala. They are probably the biggest user of the language.

For example:

Calculator: https://github.com/elementary/calculator

Calendar: https://github.com/elementary/calendar

E-mail client: https://github.com/elementary/mail

File manager: https://github.com/elementary/files

Image viewer: https://github.com/elementary/photos

Music Player: https://github.com/elementary/music

Terminal: https://github.com/elementary/terminal

Window manager: https://github.com/elementary/gala

They actually offered to become stewards of the language itself when it looked like it was dead, IIRC.

I think its development has picked back up, although I'm still not sure it's getting much love, as most developers are pushed just to use GNOME Builder instead.

Vala is really good language, if you target GObject/Gtk. GNOME also uses Vala extensively.

Being able to switch to Genie on a whim is great¹. I've used vala on a few projects, and depending on the devs involved or type of project the ability to choose a syntax is really useful.

Although, quickly scanning through the GitHub topic doesn't paint the rosiest of futures² :/

¹ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genie_(programming_language)

² https://github.com/topics/vala?o=desc&s=updated

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