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V Language Review (2023)

n-skvortsov-1997.github.io

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Re: V Language Review (2023)

#21

Post by agumonkey »

arp242 wrote: post #18
agumonkey wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's musk approach, which is double edged sword interesting that bill joy did use a similar way, but i assume that an incomplete text editor is a lot less critical than a failing compiler :)

I don't know what "musk approach" is, presumably referring to Elon Musk? > interesting that bill joy did use a similar way, but i assume that an incomplete text editor is a lot less critical than a failing compiler :) I think it's very common. GitHub is probably full of projects that do this to some degree. But most people also don't pay attention to these projects. I'm not saying the V people are without blame or co…

Musk says "full self driving car next year for 60k" means "partial self driving in 5 years for 75"

I don't have a full explanation of why V made me so angry, but coming up with so many bold claims invalidating whole decades of an entire industry is mind boggling for sure.

Re: V Language Review (2023)

#22

Post by MuffinFlavored »

lkey wrote: post #9

V's claims have always been dubious on their face. It promised the programming language equivalent of magic with no overhead. I'm glad that someone took the time to print receipts. The author clearly wants a reckoning, but he's unlikely to receive satisfaction. The people that still use or evangelize V are locked in, the contradictions will only make their belief stronger. Alex is a bullshitter, and arguing with some…

Is the author better at marketing/sales/promising or programming (delivering)?

Re: V Language Review (2023)

#23

Post by MuffinFlavored »

ck45 wrote: post #5
Alifatisk wrote: post #2

I remember there was some controversy or drama with V a couple of years ago regarding the language. I forgot what it was about but I haven’t heard about V since then. This article was interesting to read!

Isn't it about the authors have been overpromising and underdelivering since the beginning? https://mawfig.github.io/2022/06/18/v-lang-in-2022.html is a year older than this article, still interesting and it links to some other articles right at the beginning.

If the author wanted e-fame (the good kind or the bad kind), they absolutely got it.

Re: V Language Review (2023)

#24

Post by nazgulsenpai »

arp242 wrote: post #11

A good faith look at V is that it's very much a work-in-progress, and that at times the documentation is "aspirational" rather than "factual". I'm reminded by an remark from Bill Joy in an old interview talking about writing vi: "I wrote manual pages for all the great features we were going to do but never implemented".[1] We've all done that, right? I certainly have, including in public projects. There's a lot to be…

I agree with this perspective, in theory. Not liking how something is implemented is different than suggesting it isn't implemented. The real damning aspect of this is that criticism surrounding these decisions seems to result in the silencing of the critic. There are times where moderation and banning are necessary, such as when the critic resorts to name calling or trolling. Criticism can lead to more awareness which could lead to a better implementation down the pike, even if there's alot of headbutting in the process. Outright silencing the dissent is counterproductive.

I also don't think reporting about being banned/silenced for such criticism is perpetuating the drama/toxicity of the community for the sake of it when it's a real world outcome.

Re: V Language Review (2023)

#25

Post by arp242 »

agumonkey wrote: post #21
arp242 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what "musk approach" is, presumably referring to Elon Musk? > interesting that bill joy did use a similar way, but i assume that an incomplete text editor is a lot less critical than a failing compiler :) I think it's very common. GitHub is probably full of projects that do this to some degree. But most people also don't pay attention to these projects. I'm not saying the V people are without blame or co…

Musk says "full self driving car next year for 60k" means "partial self driving in 5 years for 75" I don't have a full explanation of why V made me so angry, but coming up with so many bold claims invalidating whole decades of an entire industry is mind boggling for sure.

Ah right. Well, Tesla is a company, whereas V is basically just a few people working on it in their spare time. I don't think you can really compare the two or hold them to exactly the same standards.

Or to put it in another way: people can be flawed, and I think that's okay. I don't think it's right to jump on that with assumptions of malice.

Re: V Language Review (2023)

#26

Post by attractivechaos »

agumonkey wrote: post #15
lkey wrote: post #9

V's claims have always been dubious on their face. It promised the programming language equivalent of magic with no overhead. I'm glad that someone took the time to print receipts. The author clearly wants a reckoning, but he's unlikely to receive satisfaction. The people that still use or evangelize V are locked in, the contradictions will only make their belief stronger. Alex is a bullshitter, and arguing with some…

What's amazing is how large the community became and how strong their love and belief was.

The V devs have promised a lot, have missed a lot but have also achieved a lot. I have written a few short programs in V. IMHO, the V syntax is concise and intuitive and the performance is good. It is lightweight and easy to install and to use. The blog post is probably right that V has many rough edges but I would say the core features in V are well planned. I actually prefer it over some other more popular languages. That said, because V hasn't reached 1.0, it is probably too early to use it in production.

Re: V Language Review (2023)

#27

Post by gnuvince »

mratsim wrote: post #4
Alifatisk wrote: post #2

I remember there was some controversy or drama with V a couple of years ago regarding the language. I forgot what it was about but I haven’t heard about V since then. This article was interesting to read!

Overpromise and underdeliver. And lots of funding for then vaporware

Isn't that our entire industry though?

Re: V Language Review (2023)

#28

Post by yogorenapan »

frfl wrote: post #14
whiterock wrote: post #12

Thank you for this. Saved me a lot of time and hassle - definietly steering clear of V land. A similar review for Nim would be of interest to me. Should not be that bad I‘d hope.

Nim shouldn't really be used in the same sentence as V. I've never used Nim, but I've never seen anyone out right say anything negative like that's said of V. The only thing close to "negative" regarding Nim I've seen is this, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36563796 and the thread it links to https://forum.nim-lang.org/t/10312 I could be wrong of course. Maybe someone can point to actual negative aspects of the…

I’ve used Nim in the past. It is definitely not vaporware like V. It’s a pretty pleasant language although I’ve since moved on to Zig.

Re: V Language Review (2023)

#29

Post by dsp_person »

12_throw_away wrote: post #13

I know it's a meaningless metric, but I still find myself wondering how, exactly, vlang got to 35K stars on github, very much in the same order of magnitude as, say, cpython with 58K.

I've been comparing various projects in a particular domain and noticed that stars aren't the best indicator for adoption/maturity level. More interesting:

- number of contributors

- number of open/closed pull requests

- number of open/closed issues

Most of the time they scale with stars, but sometimes there will be 1k+ stars but only a few pull requests, which is odd.

Re: V Language Review (2023)

#30

Post by arp242 »

nazgulsenpai wrote: post #24
arp242 wrote: post #11

A good faith look at V is that it's very much a work-in-progress, and that at times the documentation is "aspirational" rather than "factual". I'm reminded by an remark from Bill Joy in an old interview talking about writing vi: "I wrote manual pages for all the great features we were going to do but never implemented".[1] We've all done that, right? I certainly have, including in public projects. There's a lot to be…

I agree with this perspective, in theory. Not liking how something is implemented is different than suggesting it isn't implemented. The real damning aspect of this is that criticism surrounding these decisions seems to result in the silencing of the critic. There are times where moderation and banning are necessary, such as when the critic resorts to name calling or trolling. Criticism can lead to more awareness whi…

I've seen this play out a few times now in a few different communities: systemd, Gnome/GTK, wider JavaScript and PHP communities, and probably some others.

There is legitimate reasonable criticism of these things, even today.

However, they have also been subject to profoundly unreasonable – even unhinged – criticism, and this has created a rather unhealthy dynamic where both reasonable and unreasonable criticism are all treated the same by the developers. You kind of need to insulate yourself to some degree.

For example, consider my write-up of the "GTK thumbnail issue" at [1] (I since deleted my account there, but that was written by me). It's easy to come off with a bad impression of the Gnome/GTK developers based on that, but at the same time ... they've been subject to so much unreasonable whining and criticism that it has also created this dynamic.

There's tons of examples like this. Also see: every time GIMP comes up on HN, with people ranting and whining about all sorts of things. I wouldn't be surprised if the GIMP devs don't even bother reading HN any more.

[1]: https://lobste.rs/s/ky5yop/gnome_has_no_thumbnails_file_pick...

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