Elementary was/is perfectly positioned to adopt Objective C and now that Swift is open source, it too.

Ideally it would have adopted gnustep too but I understand that might have been a tall order to get working. But adopting Objective C and now Swift should have been a no-brainer, at least as a first class supported way of interacting with the APIs, if they didn't want to abandon Vala for themselves.

Instead it's become some kind of Vala Purity Contest it feels like.