<story><title>Elementary OS – Fast, open, privacy-respecting replacement for Windows and macOS</title><url>https://elementary.io/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mepian</author><text>This kind of attitude towards less popular programming languages is very damaging to the field of software engineering. Domain-specific languages are our best tool to combat the excessive complexity of software. The difficulty of learning a new programming language is overblown.</text></item><item><author>kitsunesoba</author><text>The project is interesting and I have to give it props for being one of the few Linux distros that’s put the necessary level of thought into UI&amp;#x2F;UX and made consistency a priority.&lt;p&gt;That said, I question some of their technical choices, most namely the choice of Vala as the project’s official language. Not that Vala is bad, but it’s incredibly niche at best and I think it severely limits contributions. Not many are going to want to learn a new language that’s scarcely used elsewhere in order to be able to work on any kind of project.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>zapzupnz</author><text>When people say they resent having to learn another language, I wonder if it&amp;#x27;s really the language they don&amp;#x27;t want to learn or another set of libraries and frameworks. I mean, that&amp;#x27;s fair enough, the wheel only wants reinventing so many times.&lt;p&gt;Windows has Windows Forms, WPF, and UWP; macOS has Cocoa; and Linux has … well, a lot of things, each with their own quirks, and not all of them with bindings into every language a developer might want to use.</text></comment>
<story><title>Elementary OS – Fast, open, privacy-respecting replacement for Windows and macOS</title><url>https://elementary.io/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mepian</author><text>This kind of attitude towards less popular programming languages is very damaging to the field of software engineering. Domain-specific languages are our best tool to combat the excessive complexity of software. The difficulty of learning a new programming language is overblown.</text></item><item><author>kitsunesoba</author><text>The project is interesting and I have to give it props for being one of the few Linux distros that’s put the necessary level of thought into UI&amp;#x2F;UX and made consistency a priority.&lt;p&gt;That said, I question some of their technical choices, most namely the choice of Vala as the project’s official language. Not that Vala is bad, but it’s incredibly niche at best and I think it severely limits contributions. Not many are going to want to learn a new language that’s scarcely used elsewhere in order to be able to work on any kind of project.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ionforce</author><text>&amp;gt; The difficulty of learning a new programming language is overblown.&lt;p&gt;This is a value judgement, ripe for disagreement.&lt;p&gt;Why do you think learning a new programming language is not difficult, as others perceive?</text></comment>