6 ms·

I remember shenanigans when V was first announced (release date for public preview, but for a little money you get early access), people being upset that it was

I remember shenanigans when V was first announced (release date for public preview, but for a little money you get early access), people being upset that it was half-baked, etc. and wrote it off, but I've heard that it has since changed a ton and is nothing like the early days. Can someone familiar with recent V developments comment on this? It makes bold promises that would be awesome to see realized, but I got the feeling there was just a lot of smoke and mirrors going on in the early days.

vlang1dot0 5y ago
Things have improved but it's not clear the author realizes the magnitude of what he's trying to do. The big ticket item is the autofree memory management system which promises near C/Rust performance and minimal overhead without the complexity of borrowing and ownership. To date, this system does not work and is "wip" as the vlang community likes to say. There are also no clear explanations of how it works beyond just "it inserts calls to free() when you are no longer using a variable" which is ... extremely obvious. The more interesting question of how the compiler determines something is no longer being used in the face of aliasing and no borrowing system is completely unanswered. No one working on the project understands how complex that problem is. Initially the goal was that this system would manage all memory for the programmer automatically, this goal has since moved to "manage 90% of objects in memory and use GC for the rest". I suspect we will see that number continue to drop as the author realizes this is intractable without whole program analysis (which they can't do and still hit their compilation time targets). Other items are very much in an alpha state if they work at all. Only in the last month have you been able to create a generic function with more than one type parameter, although V has been claiming support for generics since at least last year. There's still no ability to constrain the type parameter to something that implements an interface/trait/protocol. C2V, another wildly ambitious project that could literally be a PhD project in automatic language translation, was supposed to be released "this week" 5 weeks ago. It's currently in a very private alpha and no source has been released. Which is basically the state of most of the author's projects: huge promises in terms of features and performance with most of them little more than demos. I've come to believe this is an intentional strategy by the author to maximize his Patreon revenue. He makes big promises on social media and then delivers the easy 20% of the project to his followers before switching to another project. It would make far more sense to release a finished project before starting another massive one and yet he can't sit down and finish a project because he knows he can't actually deliver what's been promised.
- creata 5y ago
  Reminds me of this line by tom_mellior[0]: > I wish people stopped approaching language design from the point of view that the people who have been working on garbage collection for the last 60 years are all idiots who don't see how simple it all is. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26765369 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26765369
  - Twirrim 5y ago
    Honestly, that describes a lot of the tech hype cycle. The classic example would be MongoDB and other NoSQL solutions etc. in the early days. We can be lightning fast compared to these RDBs! Clearly they're idiots, as is anyone that uses them! Oh wait, what? You mean it's hard to actually work with data durably, and that not doing so is the main reason we're faster... crap.
- noobermin 5y ago
  I remember the hubbub a year (or longer? another covid timewarp) ago when this first came out. It looks like now the dev of V is just pulling under 1K a month so it's not like he's making bank so if they're still just grifting it's not really working.
  - ylluminate 5y ago
    No grifting going on. We have a vibrant awesome community that feels very Ruby-like in many ways. Good people.
  - vlang1dot0 5y ago
    He lives in Sweden where the cost of living is quite a bit lower than most of the US and also has people contributing to him on GitHub. A quick Google search suggests it's quite possible to live on $1k a month in Sweden for one person but I admit I have no personal experience in that point. Edit: I was wrong about the location but that does not change my opinion.
    - 5y ago
ylluminate 5y ago
Things are going great, stop in for a chat: https://discord.gg/vlang https://discord.gg/vlang
ohgodplsno 5y ago
It's still smoke and mirrors from a dreadfully unstable language. Criticism from https://christine.website/blog/vlang-update-2020-06-17 https://christine.website/blog/vlang-update-2020-06-17 still holds to this day.
- ylluminate 5y ago
  FALSE. Look at the date and check out: https://github.com/vlang/v https://github.com/vlang/v
  - colejohnson66 5y ago
    Just saying “FALSE” doesn’t address the big issue: Christine was blocked for asking questions.
    - ylluminate 5y ago
      I think, if that happened, perceived trolling is the more appropriate interpretation of what happened there to Christine. You're acting angry and critical whereas in reality we should be focused on solving problems and building community to make things good for everyone.
      - klyrs 5y ago
        > You're acting angry and critical whereas in reality we should be focused on solving problems and building community to make things good for everyone. Sorry, but you can't flip a critic into a productive community member by calling them angry. If you want help building community, you need to inspire trust with a kickass product that meets or exceeds your promises Critics fall away when they can't find valid criticism; browbeating and blocking them will only amplify the criticism. I see crap like this on almost all vlang-related posts. Y'all won't beat the drama with your current approach.
        pverghese 5y ago
dom96 5y ago
Not only did this project make a lot of false claims about itself but also other existing programming languages. This included Nim (which I am one of the core devs on). It’s rather sad to see people get roped in by these claims. This project is a true example of how far pushing false promises and lies can get you and it makes me a bit sad about the world.
- sim_card_map 5y ago
  Do you have links to false claims about Nim?
  - edoceo 5y ago
    I think they meant V-lang is making false claims about itself.
    - dom96 5y ago
      I meant both V-lang making false claims about itself and making false claims about Nim.
      - ylluminate 5y ago
        Please get specific - not sure what you're talking about. I've only ever seen other folks coming in and attacking V really quite baselessly.
        davidkunz 5y ago
        The specifics were discussed in the Nim forum: https://forum.nim-lang.org/t/4758 https://forum.nim-lang.org/t/4758
  - dom96 5y ago
    I don't and to be fair, from what I recall, these were dropped from the V website as soon as the Nim community challenged them.

vlang1dot0 5y ago

Things have improved but it's not clear the author realizes the magnitude of what he's trying to do. The big ticket item is the autofree memory management system which promises near C/Rust performance and minimal overhead without the complexity of borrowing and ownership. To date, this system does not work and is "wip" as the vlang community likes to say. There are also no clear explanations of how it works beyond just "it inserts calls to free() when you are no longer using a variable" which is ... extremely obvious. The more interesting question of how the compiler determines something is no longer being used in the face of aliasing and no borrowing system is completely unanswered. No one working on the project understands how complex that problem is. Initially the goal was that this system would manage all memory for the programmer automatically, this goal has since moved to "manage 90% of objects in memory and use GC for the rest". I suspect we will see that number continue to drop as the author realizes this is intractable without whole program analysis (which they can't do and still hit their compilation time targets). Other items are very much in an alpha state if they work at all. Only in the last month have you been able to create a generic function with more than one type parameter, although V has been claiming support for generics since at least last year. There's still no ability to constrain the type parameter to something that implements an interface/trait/protocol. C2V, another wildly ambitious project that could literally be a PhD project in automatic language translation, was supposed to be released "this week" 5 weeks ago. It's currently in a very private alpha and no source has been released. Which is basically the state of most of the author's projects: huge promises in terms of features and performance with most of them little more than demos. I've come to believe this is an intentional strategy by the author to maximize his Patreon revenue. He makes big promises on social media and then delivers the easy 20% of the project to his followers before switching to another project. It would make far more sense to release a finished project before starting another massive one and yet he can't sit down and finish a project because he knows he can't actually deliver what's been promised.

creata 5y ago
Reminds me of this line by tom_mellior[0]: > I wish people stopped approaching language design from the point of view that the people who have been working on garbage collection for the last 60 years are all idiots who don't see how simple it all is. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26765369 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26765369
- Twirrim 5y ago
  Honestly, that describes a lot of the tech hype cycle. The classic example would be MongoDB and other NoSQL solutions etc. in the early days. We can be lightning fast compared to these RDBs! Clearly they're idiots, as is anyone that uses them! Oh wait, what? You mean it's hard to actually work with data durably, and that not doing so is the main reason we're faster... crap.
noobermin 5y ago
I remember the hubbub a year (or longer? another covid timewarp) ago when this first came out. It looks like now the dev of V is just pulling under 1K a month so it's not like he's making bank so if they're still just grifting it's not really working.
- ylluminate 5y ago
  No grifting going on. We have a vibrant awesome community that feels very Ruby-like in many ways. Good people.
- vlang1dot0 5y ago
  He lives in Sweden where the cost of living is quite a bit lower than most of the US and also has people contributing to him on GitHub. A quick Google search suggests it's quite possible to live on $1k a month in Sweden for one person but I admit I have no personal experience in that point. Edit: I was wrong about the location but that does not change my opinion.
  - 5y ago

ylluminate 5y ago

Things are going great, stop in for a chat: https://discord.gg/vlang https://discord.gg/vlang

ohgodplsno 5y ago

It's still smoke and mirrors from a dreadfully unstable language. Criticism from https://christine.website/blog/vlang-update-2020-06-17 https://christine.website/blog/vlang-update-2020-06-17 still holds to this day.

ylluminate 5y ago
FALSE. Look at the date and check out: https://github.com/vlang/v https://github.com/vlang/v
- colejohnson66 5y ago
  Just saying “FALSE” doesn’t address the big issue: Christine was blocked for asking questions.
  - ylluminate 5y ago
    I think, if that happened, perceived trolling is the more appropriate interpretation of what happened there to Christine. You're acting angry and critical whereas in reality we should be focused on solving problems and building community to make things good for everyone.
    - klyrs 5y ago
      > You're acting angry and critical whereas in reality we should be focused on solving problems and building community to make things good for everyone. Sorry, but you can't flip a critic into a productive community member by calling them angry. If you want help building community, you need to inspire trust with a kickass product that meets or exceeds your promises Critics fall away when they can't find valid criticism; browbeating and blocking them will only amplify the criticism. I see crap like this on almost all vlang-related posts. Y'all won't beat the drama with your current approach.
      - pverghese 5y ago

dom96 5y ago

Not only did this project make a lot of false claims about itself but also other existing programming languages. This included Nim (which I am one of the core devs on). It’s rather sad to see people get roped in by these claims. This project is a true example of how far pushing false promises and lies can get you and it makes me a bit sad about the world.

sim_card_map 5y ago
Do you have links to false claims about Nim?
- edoceo 5y ago
  I think they meant V-lang is making false claims about itself.
  - dom96 5y ago
    I meant both V-lang making false claims about itself and making false claims about Nim.
    - ylluminate 5y ago
      Please get specific - not sure what you're talking about. I've only ever seen other folks coming in and attacking V really quite baselessly.
      - davidkunz 5y ago
        The specifics were discussed in the Nim forum: https://forum.nim-lang.org/t/4758 https://forum.nim-lang.org/t/4758
- dom96 5y ago
  I don't and to be fair, from what I recall, these were dropped from the V website as soon as the Nim community challenged them.