Vala was super neat as it came out of the ElementaryOS line of work. Their holistic focus towards usability and approachability of a Linux distro was inspiring enough that I even supported them with my meager student developer income. Since then, I've moved to Mac and haven't dabbled much in desktop Linux machines. As it grew older and some things got broken up (like serenity and ladybird), the novelty-energy wore off and I looked away for years.

As a language, I hoped Vala would pave the way for a beautiful high performance application tool. Instead, we got Electron.