[Tozen]

A lot of the false accusations, spamming of negative links, and misinformation arguably comes from those with competing or hidden interests. It's a lot of language war antics, that got out of control.

Various competing languages use reddit as a forum, because their language didn't previously have one or their developers didn't open up discussions on GitHub. Evangelists of competing languages can be allowed to bash, flame, or troll opposing languages on various subreddits.

If they outnumber a rival language, in a place they often congregate and the mods will allow such behavior, then they can get away with typing the most outrageous or foul statements for points. It came become a bash and troll festival, and anyone that dares oppose, can get intentionally downvoted away or punished by their mods who have control.

People that are casuals or don't know what's going on behind the scenes, may see only their side. There is often no balanced discussion. Any opposing view points to the false accusations, extreme negative positions, misinformation, or wrong statements may not be allowed to be seen.

[richbell]

> A lot of the false accusations, spamming of negative links, and misinformation arguably comes from those with competing or hidden interests. It's a lot of language war antics, that got out of control.

Arguably? According to who? What evidence supports such a claim?

[ModernMech]

When V was first announced, the author made a lot of outlandish claims about what the language was able to do. Experienced language developers saw this immediately and pointed out correctly that the claims ranged from exaggerated and premature, to impossible based on current PL theory. Apparently the V community has decided that constructive and valid criticism from peers is an act of "war", and it's to be discounted because they are "competitors" and "rivals" who are "salty".

Notably the criticism died down a little (from the Zig author in particular) when the Vlang devs backed off some of the more outlandish claims and correctly added "WIP" labels to them instead of implying that they were actually working and implemented. So the Vlang devs/community at the time at least recognized they were doing something wrong in how they were communicating their work; although today in this thread it seems like they are trying to back peddle.

[Tozen]

V has the right to exist, have its supporters, and do things its own way. The creator and developers of V, from what I have seen, have responded well to actual constructive criticism. Their language has discussions opened at their GitHub, unlike those for various other languages. They even have a thread for what people don't like and want improved about the language[1], again, something many other languages don't have.

A lot of what was going on initially, was coming from obvious competitors and evangelists, to include being uncivil, inflammatory, and directly insulting. The initial "criticism" was not so much that, but false accusations of the language being a scam, vaporware, fraud, or didn't really exist. To include attacks and jealousy over donations, rising popularity, and having supporters. This was not any kind of "valid" criticism, that the creator or contributors of the language could reason about with instigators.

The "criticism" never died down, but rather V was open-sourced and established itself on GitHub. The initial series of false accusations could not stand nor could the support it was getting be stopped. So, the rhetoric and targets shifted to whatever could be found to go after on the newly released alpha version of the language and its new website. In that new mix of what was being thrown at it, there were indeed some very valid criticisms, as can be found with any new language and many sites.

Constructive and valid criticism, is not the same as insults, trolling, misinformation, rivalry, or false accusations. There is clearly a difference. It's disingenuous to pretend something from one group is the same as the other, or that the intent behind what is being done is not different.

[1] https://github.com/vlang/v/discussions/7610

[ModernMech]

A big reason this drama still exists on HN is your style of evangelism. You are not a good ambassador for this language, and if you care about it you should stop.

You’re not going to change my mind that the initial promises were outlandish unless you implement them (you haven’t yet in 4 years), and claiming today they weren’t (as Alex is) is literally the worst approach you could take to build trust in your language. People weren’t mad about V they were mad about the exaggerations, prevarications, shifting explanations, aggressive tone, and now gaslighting from the V author. And if you turn it back around on me yet again you’re proving my point.

[Mawr]

> The "criticism" never died down,

Well, that's because the reason behind the criticism was never really the language. It was the attitude of its author and proponents. Sadly, this very thread proves that that attitude has not changed [1] one bit, so it's no wonder the criticisms remain.

> The initial "criticism" was not so much that, but false accusations of the language being a scam, vaporware, fraud, or didn't really exist.

Backlash is to be expected whenever extraordinary claims get made with nothing to back them up. Apparently V is supposed to be able to translate entire C & C++ projects to V and run as fast as C, but with memory freed automatically by the compiler. Now, combine such impossible claims with the initial unavailability of the source code, asking for donations, refusing to elaborate on how exactly this would work, and the fact that none of is is true even today.

That's because none of the outrageous claims are possible. They weren't possible back when V was announced either and when the programming community immediately pointed it out, the response was the same as we've seen in every thread since then - gaslighting.

It's one thing to make hopeful and starry-eyed, but misguided claims, it's another to double down on them, deny any mistakes, and play a victim.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31793554

[delian66]

I would appreciate, for you to not speak about the V community and V devs, which consists of many people (660 contributors currently), with various positions and attitudes, including me.

I have not spoken about anyone being a salty rival, whatever that means.

Thanks in advance.

[ModernMech]

The lead developer and very vocal community members brigade HN every time V is mentioned. They form the basis of my opinion of your whole community — you maybe should send some more measured voices here if you feel they don’t represent you. The impression they give off has informed my opinion, and if you don’t like that it’s your job to change my opinion through positive interactions. Meanwhile I’ll voice my opinion as much as I like thank you very much.

The words in quotes are from what appear to be ambassadors of the V language here on HN. If you feel they don’t represent your community, maybe ask them to stop brigading instead of asking me to shut my mouth? Just another example of the V community I guess…

[delian66]

My job, thank God, is not to please entitled rude people on HN.

If you have some problem, you can simply address people individually, without attacking an entire community of many, that share a common interest in a programming language.

[ModernMech]

Sadly, that's not how community management and representation works, and you should know that. If the people in the V community who post here aren't representative of the V community, then maybe send community members who have better people skills.

The people you send are the people who represent all of you. Sorry if you think that's unfair, but that's the reputation you're building. That's not on me, that's on you.