Comment by jdc0589

3 days ago

man I haven't heard anything about Vala in ages. is it still actively developed/used? how is it?

Yes, it is actively being developed.

Quite easy to make apps with it and GNOME Builder makes it really easy to package it for distribution (creates a proper flatpak environment, no need to make all the boilerplate). It's quite nice to work with, and make stuff happen. Gtk docs and awful deprecation culture (deprecate functions without any real alternative) are still a PITA though.

There's a surprising number of GUI apps built using Vala, if you've used Linux long enough, there's a chance you may have used a Vala based GUI and not even known you were. It's just such a nice language, it's a shame it's not more prevalent since Gnome libraries can compile basically anywhere.

Vala is still being developed and used in the GNOME ecosystem. Boo, on the other hand, is pretty dead.