[oddity]

It's almost tautological, but outside of academia, languages tend to become relevant and useful because software gets written in them. If the funding stays, then it's only a matter of time before one of the non-zero people interested in V writes something useful in it. The problem then reduces to whether that happens before the funding/development stops.

C alternatives/rehashes are probably on the same order of magnitude as C programmers. Years ago, I would eagerly hop from one to the other until they eventually died, so I can understand the appetite. Nowadays, I'm more aware of the costs of not using something that is well-established. I'm glad people keep making them and will never discourage learning, exploration, and experimentation, but I think they're generally a waste of time for everyone who isn't the author/maintainer.

On the other hand, there's a certain language where I felt (and still feel) it had no good technical reason to exist or be used at launch. At launch, I didn't take it seriously and was irritated when people started using it. However, it had the backing of a multibillion dollar company, a somewhat stable implementation with tooling, and users who were clearly enthusiastic regardless of what I thought. Now, there's actual libraries written in it and I can't find the effort to be angry. The existence of an ecosystem made the language useful.