V is not a finished product nor 1.0 yet. It's unproductive to act like things were carved in stone, from day 1. Programming languages go through development phases, where things do change and lead developers are allowed to make changes.
But gaslighting people and pretending that overly grandiose claims/promises haven't been made in the past leaves a bitter taste, and doesn't inspire trust in core developers. Instead, it makes me think that the core devs are incapable of admitting a mistake - which would make their language a hazard.
For example, what if V gets huge and a serious security bug gets discovered - how can I trust that the developers will properly communicate the existence of such a bug and not just keep quiet about it, consider how they aren't even willing to admit that V has made some impossible claims/promises in the past? If I discover a bug, will they also pretend that the bug doesn't exist, even when confronted with indisputable evidence, because it threatens to damage their reputation?
As long as that attitude doesn't change, I'm not touching V with a 10 foot pole.
You're still pretending that V has never made an impossible claim, which I have clearly demonstrated that it has.
See my numerous replies to you in this thread, where I have quoted the documentation, provided the archive.org link and explained why the claim is impossible.
Do you have any other argument except "nuh-uh, didn't happen, lol"?
That is your interpretation of what is being said, where "prove to be something viable" is being added, and graciously giving the benefit of the doubt to the person who wrote the statement.
I took it, as possibly many others, as "ignore V until it dies". Thus, "V should die", would also be near enough to the intent, malice, and vitriol be conveyed. If someone said something similar to me or about something I created, "Ignore X until it dies", would not interpret it as anything other than ill intent.
Of course if she only said that your interpretation is more likely. But she first stated "I hope this feedback can help make V a productive tool for programming" in 2019, and the last post in June 2020 stated that:
> I would like to see this situation result in a net improvement for everyone involved. V is an interesting take on a stagnant field of computer science, but I cannot continue to comment on this language or give it any of the signal boost I have given it with this series of posts.
This exactly aligns with what she said in the comment I quoted (the only addition is "[V] should be ignored", which is another way to say "no more signal boost"). You are free to disagree with my interpretation, but your interpretation doesn't seem to explain this paragraph.
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> If someone said something similar to me or about something I created, "Ignore X until it dies", would not interpret it as anything other than ill intent.
I also have my share of people saying mean things to me (as I've said elsewhere, I also went through lots of shitposts), and I learned that I have only a finite amount of time to deal with them. Salvage what you can learn from them (positive or not), but otherwise minimize useless interactions because it is often the case that actually I was at fault, or even that no one is at fault and the human language is just so imperfect. I believe the latter was indeed the case for aforementioned reasons.
(In the case anyone wondering why I'm trying to interact this much then, I still want V to be successful and my experience suggests that no one said something like my comments so far. It is sort of a folk knowledge and many take or assume it granted, but it has to be learned and few will tell you that fact.)
In both the review itself and in V's documentation, from which the example came, it states that autofree is still WIP. It's arguably disingenuous to pretend otherwise or present unintended usage.
The normal "day-to-day" situation would be to have the GC on or as fallback, and to do otherwise (like -gc none or -prealloc), one should know what they are doing or be prepared to deal with such issues.
Those parts of the review, considered relevant in normal usage were resolved:
But even beyond that, the intent of the so-called review was arguably malevolent. It was not done in good faith, to be helpful to the developers or community, but done to spur on drama (thus adding the vaporware link and spamming it) and knowingly looking for ways to bash an alpha version of the language.
But I'm not pretending that autofree isn't documented as WIP, nor am I suggesting that anybody should use anything unintended.
I am simply pointing out that a single claim from the article is still relevant to how V functions today. To be more specific, the still-relevant claim is: "So forcing the value to be allocated on the heap reveals that autofree leaks the values."
The post I am replying to did not say "almost none of the claims in this article are relevant now," it specifically said "none" without qualification.
Maybe I am just unusual in how I use the English language, but I would unquestionably consider this to be a case where you should really qualify the word none, because otherwise it's just not true.
Whether autofree is completely in alpha and intended not to be used or not, the claim from the article that it doesn't work for everything is relevant. I don't see how it couldn't be.
Surely if autofree is WIP, it's no big deal to simply agree that the fact it doesn't work on heap-allocated structs is relevant to its current state?
Now, to be clear, I am aware that arguing over a single extremely small point is, to some degree, missing the point of the comment I was originally replying to. But this is also just how I talk about things on the internet. If part of your claim is untrue, even to an extremely minor degree, I will point that out. This is why when I personally claim things, I almost always qualify what I am saying. (See? Even here I said "almost always," because I just naturally add qualifications so as not to overstate my case).
Developers are allowed to get or ask for contributions, donations, or sponsors.
To add to the strangeness of how its being mischaracterized, was the apparent jealousy (back in 2019) over the amount of donations that other developers got. Then for certain ones to have got so upset at getting less, they started to bash and publicly ask people to give them their money instead.
Somehow, it's OK for X to get money for their competing language, but it's "wrong" for Y to get money for their language.
V was never a "scam" or "vaporware", that's a false characterization and misuse of the terms. Such is being done for the purpose of attempting to hurt the public image of competition, for the benefit of certain parties.
V has been open-sourced, on GitHub, and downloadable since June 22nd of 2019. The language creator publicly stated he would put it out in late June, and did.
There was some excessive fuss about, around June of 2019, over a Patreon supporter early release. That was his right to do such a release, and it was specific for those supporters, but detractors were "angry" that it wasn't for them or open-sourced.
What some detractors were trying to do, was claim that V would never be released because it was somehow a "scam" or "vaporware". That is, there was nothing to release. They were of course wrong, because V was publicly released. That's when targets were switched or the goal posts moved. Anything that could be used to attempt to justify the earlier vitriol, inhibit the rising popularity, or hurt the public image of the language was used.
Furthermore, no programming language is released as a finished product. And an alpha version of any language, is understood by most, as work in progress (WIP) by default. There is no "scam" there. For open-source projects, any person is free to contribute, if they are really so technically knowledgeable as they claim or give the appearance of being. Everyone is free to donate or sponsor a project that they like, there's nothing nefarious about that.
My exact statement is that: people had good reasons to believe V is a scam or vaporware before 2019-06-22. Note that this is completely distinct from the statement that V was a scam or vaporware in the same period [1]. I believe this is true. If you don't think so, I'd like to hear your rationales for that---not the reason that V is not a scam or vaporware.
[1] I should point out that vaporware can be a temporary status, that is, something can become a vaporware until it no longer is. So the exact pinpointing is necessary.
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.
> 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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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…
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.
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.
Think all you want about me, I'm nobody. But it's clear that the same handful of V community members (including the lead dev) show up every single time V is mentioned. So if you feel their voices don't represent the V community, talk to them instead of telling me to (in so many words) STFU. Cause that aint happening. Because they're all I see of V.
@ModernMech, you can just address people here individually, and not refer to them as V developers or V community - that currently is already too broad and paints people that you do not know at all, with the same paint, be it bright or dark.
It is the same, as asking you to not talk about all Australians, all Chinese or all Bulgarians, when you mean the actions of specific people/individuals.
That is all I am asking for, and I think that is not difficult to understand.
What you and your community do on HN reflects on you, regardless of what anyone else does. You're earning your reputation one post at a time. I mean, several of your posts here are dead and flagged. Take a hint. Your evangelism isn't working here, it's doing the opposite of what you want.
My suggestion is to work on your C++ to V translation engine instead of posting here. Maybe you'll move it past the early stage.
> You're spamming this thread and with your anti V attacks, have a bunch of them downvoted and flagged, and are teaching me about communication...
> So rude indeed.
I count ~10 comments across three comment threads, most of which are responses. It's a bit scummy to characterize this as "spamming anti-V attacks".
I never claimed to be anything, and I have no dead or flagged comments.
But I'm an asshole. I'm very rude and blunt. That's a given. Never claimed otherwise. But I'm not the leader of a community I'm trying to build. That's you. You need to take a higher road if you want to build a positive reputation. Or you can roll around with pigs like me and get a reputation for being muddy.
The fact that you turn it back to me personally when you should be standing on the merits of your work says everything I need to know about you and your community. Change my mind.
> I never claimed to be anything, and I have no dead or flagged comments.
You just said yourself, that you are an asshole, rude and blunt, after insulting a whole community of people ... Have you thought, that maybe you should stop?
> Or you can roll around with pigs like me and get a reputation for being muddy.
I am a farmer. I live in a village in Bulgaria, and I've had to deal with actual pigs before from time to time... Pigs should know their place, and it is not, where people discuss ideas.
Think it's way more about detractors trying to push a negative narrative on the language, than it's any kind of reflection of the community, who are elsewhere.
All open-source programming languages are allowed to get or ask for donations and have sponsors, not just the languages that one is a fan of.
It's also ethically wrong to engage in falsely labeling or making false accusations, such as "scam" or "vaporware". Particularly, when the actual intent or agenda is that such persons are detractors or competitors from rival languages.
Lastly, various financial supporters of the V language have even come on HN to tell and explain how proud they are of the language and the progress it has made. Despite detractors and competitors, V is still making fantastic progress, and that's great to see.
> All open-source programming languages are allowed to get or ask for donations and have sponsors, [...]
> Particularly, when the actual intent or agenda is that such persons are detractors or competitors from rival languages.
V was not open-sourced when the accusation was made, and there were probably two or three people qualifying your description of "rivals" (even after assuming bad intents). Stop diluting the context.
> Lastly, various financial supporters of the V language have even come on HN to tell and explain how proud they are of the language and the progress it has made.
This is not different from how many investors to failed crowdfunding campaigns would behave before the actual failure. They will either acknolwedge risks (but few actually evaluate them) or "answer" every criticism with non sequiturs. It is not really their fault, but still useless as an evidence.
The "early access" thing makes sense in closed-source projects but not much in F/OSS projects. Now I understand what you meant, but as I've said it was not technically open-sourced for two days and no one would be sure whether you are sincere or not.
This confusion should have been temporary and could have been easily resolved, but your reaction arguably made things worse. For example back then I actually asked you about the exact generic compilation strategy [1], and your answer was unnecessarily aggressive and content-free. It turns out that my later guess (to which you never replied) was right, i.e. the initial V compiler maintained a partial C code template that can be patched. If you had actually answered as such, people would have less reasons to disbelieve you because you have demonstrated a necessary understanding. This was also why other language developers were particularly harsh to you at the beginning.
> You have previously claimed that the V compiler uses no AST. However, most of the features that you claim would require a form of AST to even work, including generics and interfaces. [...] It's pretty much impossible to not have unless you have a very basic language or doing naïve transformations into another similar language.
You have misinterpreted this as follows:
> Claims like it's not possible to build features without AST or codegen json decoders are just ridiculous.
GingerBill pointed out that you have misread his comments and restated that:
> [...] if you language does not have an AST, which is technically possible, then you cannot have a lot of the features you have been advertising.
This is not saying "impossible". He is claiming that it is possible, but some features will be lacking. I considered this is inaccurate because he was unclear about which features will be affected, so I quantified the original claim as follows and asked you for the confirmation:
> For example, you can implement generics without an AST if you don't care about performance; [...] [T]hose features can be implemented without an AST, but an AST is a standard and reasonable way to do them and not using an AST would require a strong rationale. So what's that rationale? (And amedvednikov, this is my question for you.)
Now, I knew the discussion can often go awry even without bad intents and tried to make it constructive as much as I could. There were many reasonable answers, like "yeah, that's how I did and that makes compilation much faster" or "none of both, the compiler doesn't directly emit binaries". The latter would trigger other questions and at the end everyone could have a much better understanding of what the V compiler actually does.
Instead you replied:
> No you don't understand :) It's IMPOSSIBLE without AST. The Odin creator says so. That's why I'm a liar.
I still don't know why you said that. I even explicitly said that gingerBill has another misconception! You've said that you have no bad feelings to me, and I wish it's true, but this is a typical way to convey that you are angry at me (and gingerBill). "Aggression" generally refers to any action or response that makes someone else unpleasant, and your comment was clearly aggressive to me.
On the other hand, I can see why you have bad feeling about gingerBill. That's another reason I wanted to step in because confirmation bias is pervasive and continuous counterarguments are needed to avoid that---gingerBill initially didn't question your intents. I wanted to make you distracted and not vent your apparent anger by throwing another question, but it didn't work.
For that reason I chose to entirely ignore that paragraph in my reply and asked for the confirmation again, but you never replied back. Others may consider this as another evidence that you were indeed angry at me. I don't, to be explicit, but such an unnecessarily aggressive discourse is often colloquially called a drama.
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I still can't believe I have to explicitly write this comment, but after multiple interactions I feel it's necessary and hope it helps. It is very hard to effectively communicate only with texts, and I had been there years ago. I only sort-of-learned this after decades of shitposting and fruitless debates. I believe one can learn this without all my hassles.
Not understanding the need to be dismissive of someone else's plans. Part of the fun of programming is checking things out, if we maintain an open-mind.
> this language has literally no unique attributes that would make it different than D or Go, so you won’t improve as a developer from it at all...
Such a statement can be perceived as highly inflammatory. V clearly has different features from D and Go. Additionally, V is among the most popular programming languages on GitHub[1], based on stars. And has been so for some years now. Other people clearly use and experiment with it. What you and I like, doesn't mean that others don't or can't have different preferences.
I'm fairly familiar with both V and D (even made some minor contributions to the V compiler), and I can't think of a single notable feature that isn't also available in D. V has a more modern and straightforward syntax, but that's the only major advantage imo. In terms of what you can _do_, I'm pretty sure D is almost strictly more powerful.
V can produce JavaScript, and it has an interpreter, but those are pretty experimental features. V has built in markup templates (like Mustache but worse), basic built in JSON reflection (D's CTFE can implement this), and built in portable inline SQL (for some reason), but that might be less desirable than targeting one specific ORM with its entire feature set. V also has a built in Sokol shader compiler, and can run `.vsh` files in a special script mode that works very slightly differently than normal V, but those aren't exactly killer features compared to D imo.
