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V Is for Vaporware

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Re: V Is for Vaporware

#21

Post by pdimitar »

detaro wrote: post #20
pdimitar wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I see you edited out most of your comment. Still leaving some of mine in place.) > I did not read the page as a roadmap... I'll say again that I fail to understand what's so bad if somebody didn't say something is WIP and claimed it's ready. We're programmers and very far from helpless clueless non-technical users. We can download the thing, try it and see for ourselves. I am asking: where's the actual, measurable,…

Oops, I just had removed that section after reading the other thread a bit more. To "where's the actual, measurable, tangible harm in that?": People's sense of what's fair or not doesn't necessarily match that perfectly. A single project being overhyped probably doesn't do much harm (although discouraging contributors to other projects, taking mindshare from them, ... probably is a minor form of harm, even if hard to…

Eh, maybe. We're a much smaller community and we self-correct quite well IMO. If people start claiming obvious non-truisms left and right we'll ignore them and their projects will never take off.

Thanks for the good discussion. ^_^

Re: V Is for Vaporware

#22

Post by detaro »

pdimitar wrote: post #21
detaro wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oops, I just had removed that section after reading the other thread a bit more. To "where's the actual, measurable, tangible harm in that?": People's sense of what's fair or not doesn't necessarily match that perfectly. A single project being overhyped probably doesn't do much harm (although discouraging contributors to other projects, taking mindshare from them, ... probably is a minor form of harm, even if hard to…

Eh, maybe. We're a much smaller community and we self-correct quite well IMO. If people start claiming obvious non-truisms left and right we'll ignore them and their projects will never take off. Thanks for the good discussion. ^_^

Yes, with the additional context I totally get where your original comment came from, and as I said in a comment to the creator here I hope this doesn't overshadow the work long-term.

side note: as a vaguely related comparison, Rust, despite all it's merits, still has some problems with being overhyped, not even by its creators, who at least from what I've been seeing are fairly careful about it, but by random fans, which causes friction in the wider community, because people don't like being promised unfullfilled things or being told to feel bad for what they're doing. I respect Rust, I don't like it's fans pretending everything would be better if I used it or comparing my daily work to war crimes because it involves C++, it's a factor I need to actively tune out because I know there is something behind the hype.

Re: V Is for Vaporware

#23

Post by dinglejungle »

pdimitar wrote: post #19
detaro wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hadn't seen that thread you linked - ugly in both directions IMHO. I see why people have a problem with it, some of the comments are over the line IMHO, and it's still just someones small project, so I get why looser standards should apply. To me, the comments there are different than what I read from the article submitted here. EDIT: large rewording, sorry!

(I see you edited out most of your comment. Still leaving some of mine in place.) > I did not read the page as a roadmap... I'll say again that I fail to understand what's so bad if somebody didn't say something is WIP and claimed it's ready. We're programmers and very far from helpless clueless non-technical users. We can download the thing, try it and see for ourselves. I am asking: where's the actual, measurable,…

> We can download the thing, try it and see for ourselves.

You couldn't two days ago, and nothing was marked as WIP two days ago, either. Hopefully things can cool down now that it's available.

Re: V Is for Vaporware

#24

Post by fastball »

Volt wrote: post #12
fastball wrote: post #10

Not sure the author understands what "Work in Progress" means. A good portion of the article seems to be taking claims marked (WIP) and saying "hah! gotcha! this doesn't work yet!" Almost like, I dunno, a work in progress.

They were only marked as WIP when people noticed they were missing.

The article literally has "[wip]" quoted throughout.

Re: V Is for Vaporware

#25

Post by kingkong2022 »

fastball wrote: post #24
Volt wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were only marked as WIP when people noticed they were missing.

The article literally has "[wip]" quoted throughout.

V was originally released 2-3 days ago with absolutely no WIP written on the website but the readme in the downloaded compiler told a different story, that half the things mentioned in the website do not work.

After being called out as a liar and cheat on HN, first he became aggressively defensive saying that he did not lie, and everything does work. But later on, he changed the website and marked everything WIP but still did not accept on HN that things do not work as advertised.

Hence the vaporware.

Re: V Is for Vaporware

#26

Post by kingkong2022 »

pdimitar wrote: post #8

I don't understand these kinds of articles at all, maybe somebody can help me. So the author has overhyped its creation. So what? Humans get attached to their creations and can't view them objectively. That's a documented psychological fact -- just look at your typical parent, their kids can do no wrong in their eyes. I tried following V's story lately on HN and truthfully, I got very surprised by the ton of hate and…

[dead]

Re: V Is for Vaporware

#27

Post by [deleted] »

detaro wrote: post #16
amedvednikov wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks :) It's 0.0.12, the first public release. What's with all this "vaporware"? The compiler can already compile itself in 0.3 seconds and is written 100% in V: https://github.com/vlang/v#installing-v-from-source It allows building easy cross platform graphical apps: https://github.com/vlang/v/tree/master/examples/tetris It has easy cross compilation and can even compile itself for another platform: https://twitte…

If you have all these great examples, why aren't they on the marketing page instead, and future plans clearly on a roadmap or whatever? They're pretty cool achievements! And something I can now go look at is way more interesting than something thats "coming soon". Good luck with your project, I hope this drama doesn't overshadow it too much long-term (but you're probably better off if you work on your messaging to av…

[deleted]

Re: V Is for Vaporware

#28

Post by nickpsecurity »

pdimitar wrote: post #8

I don't understand these kinds of articles at all, maybe somebody can help me. So the author has overhyped its creation. So what? Humans get attached to their creations and can't view them objectively. That's a documented psychological fact -- just look at your typical parent, their kids can do no wrong in their eyes. I tried following V's story lately on HN and truthfully, I got very surprised by the ton of hate and…

Maybe most of you forgot the previous articles. When V author was here, he and his original site promised all sorts of huge claims that teams of pro's had either failed to pull off or barely pulled off. Not just excited about future work: claimed he already had a lot done. He talked about a few things as work in progress that would be out in a few months as if he had most of it done. Later, after much debate, he said he was just getting started on a few of those. Bigger claims remained on the website.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19086712

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19403271

So, cadey on Lobste.rs was really excited about the V language hoping it was delivering on its claims. She usually submits good stuff, too. She submitted his repo when it went up, started playing with it, found all kinds of problems (esp not matching advertised claims), and told him about it. She claimed he banned her from his Discord. So, after much hype and BS on both sites, she posted a counter to it all on her blog and Lobsters. Apparently, someone cross-posted it over here without that context, maybe assuming you'd all remember.

Just some backstory for you all there. I was speculating he was full of shit when he made the claims. She just proved it with hard data.

Re: V Is for Vaporware

#29

Post by pdimitar »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #28
pdimitar wrote: post #8

I don't understand these kinds of articles at all, maybe somebody can help me. So the author has overhyped its creation. So what? Humans get attached to their creations and can't view them objectively. That's a documented psychological fact -- just look at your typical parent, their kids can do no wrong in their eyes. I tried following V's story lately on HN and truthfully, I got very surprised by the ton of hate and…

Maybe most of you forgot the previous articles. When V author was here, he and his original site promised all sorts of huge claims that teams of pro's had either failed to pull off or barely pulled off. Not just excited about future work: claimed he already had a lot done. He talked about a few things as work in progress that would be out in a few months as if he had most of it done. Later, after much debate, he said…

May I remind you that you are not addressing a single point of those I made?

I asked what's the big deal that V's author promised and under-delivered.

Re: V Is for Vaporware

#30

Post by burntsushi »

pdimitar wrote: post #29
nickpsecurity wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe most of you forgot the previous articles. When V author was here, he and his original site promised all sorts of huge claims that teams of pro's had either failed to pull off or barely pulled off. Not just excited about future work: claimed he already had a lot done. He talked about a few things as work in progress that would be out in a few months as if he had most of it done. Later, after much debate, he said…

May I remind you that you are not addressing a single point of those I made? I asked what's the big deal that V's author promised and under-delivered.

This isn't a case of promising to do something and then not meeting that promise. I certainly do that a fair amount myself, where I might promise to get to something but then forget about it or just generally don't achieve it. Unless you're a company providing a product, folks generally aren't going to hold that kind of stuff against you in my experience.

The issue here is that the author made claims that were just not true. As I understand it, the author has updated the presentation of the web site to be clearer, but what I remember, there were a lot of fantastical claims that winded up not being true. There's a big difference between saying, "I hope to accomplish X" and "my software does X." If you're doing the latter repeatedly and it doesn't reflect reality, then people are going to be upset. I'm totally in favor of articles like the OPs, because they prevent other people from wasting their time.

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