[longrod]

I never understood the motivations behind V. It's clearly not a hobby project started out by a developer who is genuinely experimenting with PLs and want to put out something unique. It feels more like a stunt or a flair to either extort money or become famous. All that would be perfectly okay if V did what it claims to do but the author fanatically makes exciting claims but implements only fluff to hide the underlying broken machinery.

I tried V when it first got popular (about 3 years ago). I am no expert on languages but the way it was ductaped (AST-less compiler for "performance", a "graphic library" when even basic things don't work etc etc) made me eventually lose interest.

3 years later V is still mostly where I left it. If the V author focused on the stabilizing the compiler instead of starting off shoot projects like vui, vdb etc. it might actually work.

[yjftsjthsd-h]

> It's clearly not a hobby project started out by a developer who is genuinely experimenting with PLs and want to put out something unique. It feels more like a stunt or a flair to either extort money or become famous.

Is that obvious? Yes, if I put on my cynical hat it pattern matches a money-grab or some other sort of fraud, but if I put on my charitable-interpretation hat V also perfectly pattern matches my idea of "solo developer wants to create the perfect language and goes after it with fresh eyes and a lot of enthusiasm (and yes, does get slowed down when it comes to fleshing out every little detail correctly and fully)". How do you distinguish?

[411111111111111]

Yeah, a lot of projects that fall through aren't actually made by scam artists or people trying to make a quick buck. I'd wager most of these are just by overly ambitious people that massively underestimate the challenge of getting there.

It's especially prevalent in indie gaming and large Kickstarters. Some are actually scams, but a lot are just entirely out of their depth and realize this too late/only when their deadlines come due. And yet there are content creators which just make video after video just shitting on these people. Quiet sad all around.

(Though that link from the sister comment does make it look quiet bad in this case. Projects that just make great sounding claims about the current state of the project, even though none of it is true can't be taken seriously in my opinion.)

[spacechild1]

> when it comes to fleshing out every little detail correctly and fully

In the case of V it's not only about details. Memory management, for example, is a fundamental part of a programming language and not something you can do as an afterthought. It is still not clear at all how memory management works in V.

[Tozen]

The V language pattern matches with new programming language initiatives such as Odin or Zig. It is in the category of both C and Go alternatives.

Note- just by being a strong Go alternative by itself, one can see possible "behind the scenes" conflicts and motives. Though both V and Odin really should be fully embraced, because they continue the direction and changes in thinking started by Go, while providing features that such users might crave or have wanted.

V has been more successful than other newer programming languages at getting sponsors and supporters (check V's GitHub or vlang.io), to include publicity, both very good and at times negative (which appears to include angry detractors). It also has been developing at a more rapid pace than other languages in its category.

From looking at the history, some of the controversy appears to come from years ago and whether or not the language was real or was going to be released, because it was already "advertising" itself and had sponsors. Keep in mind that other languages have a very hard time at getting sponsors, supporters, or users. So, that another language getting what they are not able to or feel they deserve, can become a source of conflict as well.

My opinion is that the V creator did nothing wrong, because it was a very smart decision to attract sponsors and users, and the creator did release the language. This alone already separated V from the many languages we never know or hear about, the ability to get enough sponsors and supporters to sustain growth and momentum.

Yeah, it's might seem great to be a solo developer making what he/she feels is the perfect language as a hobby, but at some point the enthusiasm stops or the person realizes what's the point if nobody cares and nobody uses it.

Another aspect of this situation is it appears detractors were running with the narrative that V was "fake" or "vaporware", and then when it was actually released, they had to reset their narratives. You can't claim that something that exists and is used by many, is "fake" or non-existent. So then the attacks appear to then go for whatever might stick. Anything about the language, which is "not perfect" or as they feel is claimed, is then targeted. This is why we have these odd and controversial takedown attempts of a language which is still in alpha and evolving. I'm very much not saying that people shouldn't be criticizing or pointing out flaws, but rather it doesn't need the viciousness or underhandedness of trying to persuade people to stop using or attempts to kill it off.

Ultimately, just don't think that such tactics are going to work, because V has such strong community support and is continually improving. V is well on the path of becoming a very viable and highly useful language.

[kristoff_it]

You must come from an alternative reality because all that V achieved in terms of popularity is a big initial uptick of GitHub stars and donations obtained thanks to straight-up, no-discussion, clear-as-sky false advertising.

When it comes to sponsors and donations, V is far (really far) from the best in the category. Not to mention that Zig has a proper non-profit foundation, which is a far greater achievement than GitHub stars or even sponsors.

All your comments in this thread are in disagreement with reality to the same absurdist degree of conspiracy theories. And of course you yourself can't help but point out that everything is a conspiracy against V, which is laughable.

[amedvednikov]

A conspiracy theory is claiming that a competitor's compiler has a dependency on an OpenGL context creation library.

And it's laughable to claim that its popularity on launch was due to false advertising. Even your leader admitted that self hosting on launch is impressive:

> Wow, that's incredibly fast. Self-hosted in 2 weeks? Hot code reloading? This is everything I plan to do with Zig, but apparently done already. How did you do it so quickly?

(I hope you won't argue that V wasn't written in V on release.)

Funny how the agenda changed.

[Tozen]

Says a competitor from the Zig software foundation, as if you wouldn't have any ulterior motives, to include a clearly divergent reality.

If anything, I suppose the urge was too great, to not expose yourself.

[burntsushi]

I'm not in the ZSF, although I do throw $50 a month to them, even though I don't use Zig. I use Rust a lot personally. I just like what Zig is doing. They haven't achieved all of their goals yet---just like V hasn't---but I look forward to when they do. And they've already produced some awesome stuff. While there are many differences between Zig and V, one of the most important ones is that Zig doesn't falsely advertise. If they did, I wouldn't contribute a single cent to them.

I totally agree with kristoff here and also munificent[1]. Y'all have a massive victim complex on grand display in this thread and exhibit the classical signs of projecting your own issues on to everyone else.

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31795322

[Tozen]

The V community does not create these continuous attack threads or blogs (which is very obvious when reading them), nor told competitors or detractors to come join in on these underhanded attacks.

The "projection", is coming from yourself. That you are a supporter of Zig and Rust, is your own business, that's not the focus of this thread or what my comments are about. But clearly you couldn't help yourself to come do some bashing of a rival language, then gaslight about why there might be a reaction to it.

[lifthrasiir]

Ductaped languages can be extremely useful though (cf. PHP). But extraordinary claims were what failed V and---sadly and contrary to my remaining hope---continue to do so.

[the_duke]

Ductaped languages usually exist because they served some specific need, become popular and then evolved from there. PHP is the perfect example.

They were not "clean sheet, let's make a great new language" implementations.

[lifthrasiir]

PHP was already ductaped at the point of PHP/FI 2 [1], when it became more or less a proper programming language. PHP survived despite its ductape nature.

[1] https://www.php.net/manual/phpfi2.php

[amedvednikov]

Can you list here the extraordinary claims that failed please.

[lifthrasiir]

Read correctly; I said extraordinary claims failed V. But the other reading doesn't seem to paint a pretty picture anyway. Every point made in the original article is a reasonable expectation by outsiders, and many of them are still unsatisfactory ("failed claims" if you like).

What you should do now is to decide what to do with those points instead of arguing. If the decision is WONTFIX (okay to do, not everything can be made into the language) then the advertisement should be updated (ProTip: you should really have done this years ago). If the decision is to do something with that then the advertisement should be still updated, hopefully with a link to the tracking issue. If you are already doing something about that then you still should have a link to the tracking issue. If the point is "misleading", then you should write out clearly why it's misleading, how the author could have concluded in that way (i.e. assume no malice and debug instead), and how to verify your updated claim. With no strings attached.

Honestly though these points have been iterated and reiterated years ago. I had a hope that you have learned (hard) from that past experience; my hope seems not justified.

[amedvednikov]

Can you elaborate how language features failed V? And what claims were extraordinary?

Like the language compiling itself in <1s? It's true and you can verify it yourself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvP6wmcl_Sc

[lifthrasiir]

Look, you are doing what I've just said not to do. I have nothing to say because the OP did most of claims already, you should directly respond to the OP.

And you are slightly altering the very claim you've already said; the OP specificially tests the claim that "V compiles [...] ~1 million (x86 and tcc backends) lines of code per second per CPU core", which I can easily verify on my machine (1m_helloworld.v took 25.5 and 15.5 seconds to compile under the same settings). To be fair these test files are edge cases you can easily dismiss (ProTip: you can make your advertisements more accurate), but edge cases show the weakness of your design and you should not confront them.

[amedvednikov]

You made a claim:

> extraordinary claims failed V.

I asked you to list such claims. You fail to do so.

There's no way it takes 15s to compile 1m_helloworld.v. You're probably using a debug build of V.

What's your hardware? CPU/SSD.

[Tozen]

Let's not discount the hundreds of contributors, sponsors, and other developers that continually make contributions to and improve V.

The impression should not be given that V is just a one-man show. Many of the offshoot projects are in collaboration with others, not just the author, who have invested heavily in them and also wanted or helped create them.

[super_flanker]

Even when they are known to be scammers and frauds?

V's author is paying others to write things in V (even when basic functionalities don't work as advertised). They don't want to improve the language, they want to create a showcase to attract more funding, that's about it.

[Tozen]

From what I've seen, V's author (along with other contributors and sponsors) have been constantly improving the language. Of which, these efforts are applauded by V's users and supporters.

As far as I'm concerned, V works as described in their documentation. As with any language, there are some specifics that are subject to interpretation or debate, but that is to be expected.

And, V is not doing anything that other languages also try to do in terms of sponsors and investors to sustain progress, increase popularity, or make improvements.

[spacechild1]

> As far as I'm concerned, V works as described in their documentation.

Really? Can you explain to me how memory management works in V?

[Tozen]

V (which is at 0.2.4) is using -gc boehm, which is presently the default. On present versions, you don't have to do anything to enable it. On older versions, you needed to enable -gc boehm. You can choose to use and enable Autofree (-autofree), which works, but you have to know what you are doing. Thus it's best to refer to examples of its usage. Then you can also manage memory manually, where of course you clearly must know what you are doing.

Autofree will not be the default until version 0.3 of the language. Autofree inserts free calls during compilation, and the rest is managed by RC. V will be giving users 3 choices: GC, Autofree, or manual. Those people that actually use the language, would already know this.

This is mentioned on both the website and in the documentation, and any confused users can simply ask on discord (https://discord.com/invite/vlang) or the GitHub discussion (https://github.com/vlang/v/discussions).

[spacechild1]

Can you point me to a source that explains how "autofree" is supposed to work?

EDIT:

> which works, but you have to know what you are doing

This does not feel very convincing...

[ylluminate]

This is a complete lie.

[super_flanker]

Like what is lie? I was offered money to develop something in WASM using V, so that they could add it to their "awesome-v" list.

Aren't you the part of the core team who bans anyone on discord who asks questions about V's memory management?