4 ms·

There are many people designing languages for hobby. See r/programminglanguages for examples. But they didn't claim they were creating next big thing with all t

There are many people designing languages for hobby. See r/programminglanguages for examples. But they didn't claim they were creating next big thing with all those 'dreamed' features.

johnfn 6y ago
I don't see anywhere on the website that the author claims the language is 'the next big thing'. Perhaps the author takes some pride in what they've accomplished, but should we really police people feeling proud of their own work?
- cormacrelf 6y ago
  The context for most discussions of V is the over-promises about feature delivery the author has made. You could dig up all the old threads AGAIN (what, 5 times this year?), but that wouldn't really help anyone. Judging by the website, I don't think the general hype pattern (including the impossibly thin claims about compiler performance mainly measuring Clang) has changed all that much, though it appears to have slowed. A lot of the actual Next-Big-Thing-ism seems to be coming from excited users rather than the author himself. There is a GitHub issue entitled "Very long term consideration: what it takes to get a language adopted by Google?"; there are others about getting "parallelism & concurrency for seamless local and distributed programming" and similarly extraordinarily lofty goals. People love being part of the winning project, and the overall hype history has drawn them like moths. That's OK, they can all go hang out writing V programs and wishing upon stars. It probably shouldn't bother people as much as it has. When should we "police people feeling proud", then? Here I think there's not so much harm. Legally speaking, pretending he's in my jurisdiction (AU) for a moment, seeking donations can be trade or commerce, and then a bunch of consumer protection laws may apply, esp. ACL s 18. But you still need people who feel they've been wronged. Show me someone who tanked a heap of money into it on the pitch alone and I'll change my mind, but I don't think that's happening. On the point of design vs actual quality, you can get an idea of OP's perspective by browsing through the GitHub issues. To be fair, the project is only a few years old, but some of the issues there are simply alien to me. It just doesn't seem like it was written in a language that has the features V has. Every new feature seems to have missed matching an enum variant somewhere. I don't understand how a compiler could exist that appears NOT to be made of building blocks that don't completely break when you add new features. I just can't relate many of the errors people get to a "Parse -> Valid Syntax -> Type Checker -> IR -> ... IRs ... -> Machine Code" progression. This is what makes me think it's not going to survive very long -- those kinds of bugs don't simply stop cropping up.
  - delian66 6y ago
    Unfortunately, V currently does not generate a classical stricter IR, but C code (as strings) directly, which explains some of the issues concerning C compilation errors. I am optimistic about the future though, so I continue writing and changing V programs (the V compiler itself is a V program mind you)... I am not in the habit of wishing upon stars (or other people), for something that requires just thinking, engineering and time. p.s. PRs are welcome.
    - cormacrelf 6y ago
      Right. It's like sitting down in a café with your whole day of work ahead of you, a nice cup of coffee and some thinking, engineering and time. Except the day is perhaps 400,000 man-hours long, for all the things V wants to be. Every new project is nice when it's greenfield, but V is something else. V seems to be perpetually on the cusp of greater things. And it has done all the things that projects do when they are there, and will continue to do the things that projects do when they are there. (Like stability guarantees!) That does not make it a great thing, but it stays enjoyable to hack on because you get to be part of a thing that exists. And it's on the cusp! As long as V never gets good, and the author keeps claiming things are around the corner, it will always be on this cusp. And coding it will never be too complicated, because V doesn't do any of that fancy stuff. Well, it already does, but not yet. "It does but not yet" is exactly what makes you the happiest, because you simultaneously get to be part of the avant garde, and not have to know how to do it. I bet the author loves it. It's no fun when people point out that it doesn't yet, because it will, it will because all these people here are busily plugging away and adding all the things it already has, which is significantly easier than adding the things it hasn't. It's even worse when people say it won't, because if it won't, then it never did. Unfortunately, for the people you need to make it work, that kind of "It does but not yet" is not fun. It makes me bristle. This Sisyphus, reader, would rather throw himself down the mountain. You, too, can feel the nausea if you sit with it.
      - delian66 6y ago
        I am more motivated to have a language that compiles fast to small binaries, is easy to understand and use, and is cross platform, but thanks for you attempt for psychoanalysis of a stranger on the internet anyway. If I were you though, I would stick to coding, your prose is hard to read - at least try to use proper punctuation and spacing.

There are many people designing languages for hobby. See r/programminglanguages for examples. But they didn't claim they were creating next big thing with all those 'dreamed' features.

johnfn 6y ago

I don't see anywhere on the website that the author claims the language is 'the next big thing'. Perhaps the author takes some pride in what they've accomplished, but should we really police people feeling proud of their own work?

cormacrelf 6y ago
The context for most discussions of V is the over-promises about feature delivery the author has made. You could dig up all the old threads AGAIN (what, 5 times this year?), but that wouldn't really help anyone. Judging by the website, I don't think the general hype pattern (including the impossibly thin claims about compiler performance mainly measuring Clang) has changed all that much, though it appears to have slowed. A lot of the actual Next-Big-Thing-ism seems to be coming from excited users rather than the author himself. There is a GitHub issue entitled "Very long term consideration: what it takes to get a language adopted by Google?"; there are others about getting "parallelism & concurrency for seamless local and distributed programming" and similarly extraordinarily lofty goals. People love being part of the winning project, and the overall hype history has drawn them like moths. That's OK, they can all go hang out writing V programs and wishing upon stars. It probably shouldn't bother people as much as it has. When should we "police people feeling proud", then? Here I think there's not so much harm. Legally speaking, pretending he's in my jurisdiction (AU) for a moment, seeking donations can be trade or commerce, and then a bunch of consumer protection laws may apply, esp. ACL s 18. But you still need people who feel they've been wronged. Show me someone who tanked a heap of money into it on the pitch alone and I'll change my mind, but I don't think that's happening. On the point of design vs actual quality, you can get an idea of OP's perspective by browsing through the GitHub issues. To be fair, the project is only a few years old, but some of the issues there are simply alien to me. It just doesn't seem like it was written in a language that has the features V has. Every new feature seems to have missed matching an enum variant somewhere. I don't understand how a compiler could exist that appears NOT to be made of building blocks that don't completely break when you add new features. I just can't relate many of the errors people get to a "Parse -> Valid Syntax -> Type Checker -> IR -> ... IRs ... -> Machine Code" progression. This is what makes me think it's not going to survive very long -- those kinds of bugs don't simply stop cropping up.
- delian66 6y ago
  Unfortunately, V currently does not generate a classical stricter IR, but C code (as strings) directly, which explains some of the issues concerning C compilation errors. I am optimistic about the future though, so I continue writing and changing V programs (the V compiler itself is a V program mind you)... I am not in the habit of wishing upon stars (or other people), for something that requires just thinking, engineering and time. p.s. PRs are welcome.
  - cormacrelf 6y ago
    Right. It's like sitting down in a café with your whole day of work ahead of you, a nice cup of coffee and some thinking, engineering and time. Except the day is perhaps 400,000 man-hours long, for all the things V wants to be. Every new project is nice when it's greenfield, but V is something else. V seems to be perpetually on the cusp of greater things. And it has done all the things that projects do when they are there, and will continue to do the things that projects do when they are there. (Like stability guarantees!) That does not make it a great thing, but it stays enjoyable to hack on because you get to be part of a thing that exists. And it's on the cusp! As long as V never gets good, and the author keeps claiming things are around the corner, it will always be on this cusp. And coding it will never be too complicated, because V doesn't do any of that fancy stuff. Well, it already does, but not yet. "It does but not yet" is exactly what makes you the happiest, because you simultaneously get to be part of the avant garde, and not have to know how to do it. I bet the author loves it. It's no fun when people point out that it doesn't yet, because it will, it will because all these people here are busily plugging away and adding all the things it already has, which is significantly easier than adding the things it hasn't. It's even worse when people say it won't, because if it won't, then it never did. Unfortunately, for the people you need to make it work, that kind of "It does but not yet" is not fun. It makes me bristle. This Sisyphus, reader, would rather throw himself down the mountain. You, too, can feel the nausea if you sit with it.
    - delian66 6y ago
      I am more motivated to have a language that compiles fast to small binaries, is easy to understand and use, and is cross platform, but thanks for you attempt for psychoanalysis of a stranger on the internet anyway. If I were you though, I would stick to coding, your prose is hard to read - at least try to use proper punctuation and spacing.