The bizarre world of the V Programming Language

The bizarre world of the V Programming Language(justinas.org)

6 points by lr0 16 days ago | 4 comments

arenz 15 days ago |

Most new programming languages come out of academia and are mathematical toys proving some aspect of type theory. They are as flawless as they are useless, more demos to backup a paper than things of independent value. No one attacks them because they make no claims that are not proven with 20 pages of denotational pedantics.

And then other languages come out companies (Apple, Facebook, Google) and are backed by endless money and instant communities of their own internal users. The languages are made by teams of elite engineers and enjoy instant institutional credibility.

It is a hard world for the independent language creators. I know, I've burned a decade on my own language project. So I am pretty forgiving.

I find Alex's wild, "I'm sure a solution exists to this problem and I'll solve it when I have the spare time", philosophy rather refreshing. And the fact that people write about his work and that he has an active community shows there is something to the project. I suspect people in the community have workarounds for the missing bits and treat the unsolved problems as goals.

If Alex had been conservative, never sharing until he was done and never risking a promise he might not keep, would you know his name?

theamk 3 days ago | |

> If Alex had been conservative, never sharing until he was done and never risking a promise he might not keep, would you know his name?

I think you misunderstood the article - it's great to try new things, and it's not a problem to promise things you are not 100% sure about. What's important is the honesty - "I've tried, I've failed, here is what I learned". OP said the the best:

> "Failure" does not have to be a failure, and V itself does not have to be the sole product of V's development. Alex has time and time again promised to write blog articles on various aspects of V's development. Had he done that, instead of silently backpedalling on claims about V, we could have had very interesting reads reflecting on the challenges of creating a new programming language.

instead, we have disappearing claims that require internet archive to find out, denial of any problems, and blaming of every problem on "misinformation from haters".

You don't need to be corporate or in in academia for basic integrity.

baranul 4 hours ago | | |

> Alex has time and time again promised to write blog articles on various aspects of V's development. Had he done that...

There are a number of problems with this statement and others made:

(1) Alex (and other contributors to the V project) have written blog articles, a changelog, and a roadmap[1][2][3][4][5]

(2) To not know of Alex's (and other contributors) blog posts or tweets (Twitter/X), gives the impression of only reading misinformation from specific outdated negative blogs, and not having a fair or balanced view.

> independent language creators

> think you misunderstood the article

Others can say you are misunderstanding the perspective given by another language creator who is showing respect for how far the V project has come and what they had to overcome:

(1) Real reviewers of languages, review other languages, not specifically target a language or creator.

(2) It is not honest or valid criticism to engage in defamation or insults because someone created a language one doesn't prefer or is competition.

(3) Languages are not static. They develop, change, and fix things. Which is what the V project does and should be acknowledged for doing.

(4) People will notice when a suddenly self-anointed reviewer of language is presenting outdated, unfair, misleading, or unbalanced views.

As if the sky is falling by selecting a few difficult issues from a clearly developing language, while their preferred or other languages and creators have 2,000 or 20X more issues.

Refs:

[1]: https://vlang.veery.blog/ (blog link at top of the vlang.io site)

[2]: https://github.com/vlang/v/discussions/categories/blog (blog link on left side of github.com/vlang/v/discussions)

[3]: https://x.com/v_language (vlang on twitter; tweets similar to blog posts)

[4]: https://github.com/vlang/v/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md (changelog)

[5]: https://github.com/vlang/v/blob/master/ROADMAP.md (roadmap)

baranul 7 days ago | |

Agreed. Also, find the pettiness and jealousy exhibited by certain detractors and rivals, as very unnecessary and often ridiculous. Can't remember ever seeing persons so strangely invested to pull out such outdated and invalid criticisms or very obvious misinformation attack blogs. Popular open-source projects are not static; they develop, change, and fix things. Instead of hate or slander, people can join and help.

Maybe it could be argued that the corporate maneuverings to repress the popularity of Pascal/Object Pascal/Delphi or PHP were somewhat similar, but that didn't seem to have such a childish or cultish tone to them. And despite the unethical efforts, those languages were and are relatively successful too.

Regardless of these bizarre efforts at repression, the popularity and development of V continues. Almost 38,000 stars, over 2,300 forks, and 850 contributors. One of the most popular programming languages on GitHub. More new books (Amazon), tutorials, and examples are continually published[1].

Free 3rd Party Tutorials and Examples[1]:

https://codefreelance.net/apps/vlang.html (The V Programming Language: A Comprehensive Textbook Guide - new)

https://rosettacode.org/wiki/Category:V_(Vlang) (Rosetta Code - almost 700 examples)

https://exercism.org/tracks/vlang (Exercism - free personal mentors)