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Comment by sandGorgon | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone know what happened to Vala[1] and why it was not picked ? It seems to have a huge amount of traction[2] and generates compiled code (which seems to me as performant than Javascript)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vala_%28programming_language%29 [2] https://live.gnome.org/Vala/Documentation#Projects_Developed...

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Mostly because Vala is a GNOME-only language with no external support or buy-in. It'd be rather insular of GNOME to say "if you want to write apps, then learn our new, GNOME-only language."

Vala is modeled after C#, which probably is (empirically) the most popular desktop app development language.

genuinely curious : In general, do we see a lot of desktop app developers coming from the web world on Linux ? I'm pretty sure that is not the case in the Windows world. In fact, more often than not I have seen die hard fanatics ("interpreted languages sucks for desktop apps!!" vs "C++ sucks") on both sides unwilling to cross over.

"the most popular desktop app development language" on MS Windows only, where GNOME doesn't run

its the most popular desktop app dev language period - by sheer numbers. I see these people as the target market for Linux, especially with the closed marketplace of Windows 8 RT.

I am not sure these developers would come onboard with knowledge of javascript - so the biggest advantage (ubiquity) is nullified.

I am not sure which developers is Gnome targeting by choosing javascript. At this point in the evolution of OSes, its all about the app marketplace.

Linux has always had an app marketplace, it just wasn't called a "marketplace" (when everything is free, the marketplace/store analogy isn't appropriate). At least in Debian and derivatives, everything is a one-click install since '98.

How JavaScript fits in this picture, however, is still beyond me.

an app marketplace is not simply about package managers. Its about an ecosystem that allows developers to develop high quality apps. Additionally its about payment systems, etc - but tgats not relevant fof this discussion.

I'm finding it hard to believe that you can woo quality desktop app developers using javascript.

Yeah, I totally agree about JS.

Otherwise, I'd call the Free Software Movement a pretty neat ecosystem :P I'm sure at least some people will agree :)

> its the most popular desktop app dev language period - by sheer numbers.

By what numbers? Number of projects using the language? Number of lines of code in the wild in that language? Number of users using apps written in the language? Because I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I seriously doubt that that's correct. Firefox, Chrome, iTunes, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Excel, Word, Powerpoint... None of these apps are written in C#. The most popular app dev language, period, is C++. (Maker help us all.)

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