Yeah I don't get it. While it's certainly not the post popular language out there, it's not like you as a user are impacted by the choice of a programming language it's written in.

Default apps are mostly good. Music is the only one I don't like in general, and while Epiphany is not my preferred browser, it seems perfectly capable (hell, it even syncs with Firefox Sync). The rest of the apps feel very pleasant to use and I never had to bother with looking for an alternative.

We're not talking about a simple piece of software here but an entire ecosystem which has Vala as it's language of choice.

Using a certain operating system comes with the implicit assumption that I'm also gonna write programs for said operating system. And I'm not gonna learn some obscure version of C#/Java for that, just because the gnome project felt that they had to n.i.h. an entire programming language.

> gnome project felt that they had to n.i.h. an entire programming language.

This isn't what happened. When Vala came out (2006), it was at the time the only programming language advertising such high-level concepts as found in C# (like async/await) while guaranteeing you native performance without a VM. At the time it was billed as a better C++ and a faster C#. When the elementary project adopted Vala (2007), Swift and Rust weren't things, and they would remain unstable for at least the next decade.

Today the world has changed, and while I'd argue that Rust is one of the best languages invented, Vala still has some things over it: easier to learn, binds well with C and a million other languages, faster compilation and a simpler toolchain, has built-in type annotations for Gtk and DBus, all while guaranteeing you native performance.

You admittedly made me change my mind a bit about Vala. Apparently it was ahead of it's time, which is a bit sad. Nevertheless, elementary is the closest thing I know to a working open-source desktop OS, and Vala hinders it's adoption.

At some point you gotta pick the hill you're gonna die on, and that shouldn't be dev mind-share.

The horse they bet on didn't make it, why fall into the sunken cost trap, either bet on a different horse (rust), or pick a tried and true one (C) and write a decent FFI for alternative languages.

It's not sunken cost. Vala is performant, plays well with a multitude of languages, doesn't require a VM, and makes it easy to write Gtk applications. Unlike Rust it's very simple to learn and the elementaryOS project likes it for that reason since it lowers the barrier to entry for app developers. Based on this I'd say it's still got a lot of things going for it.

Now is there more to improve? Absolutely. Despite its use by users, development of the language itself suffers from chronic underinvestment. But I think that's changing a bit recently. (Full disclosure: I'm involved in developing the language and tooling. We could always use more contributors.)