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Maybe the author just likes to implement programming languages and sets high goals. All those who have experience with this know that it is a lot of work. Appar

by Rochus 5y ago

Maybe the author just likes to implement programming languages and sets high goals. All those who have experience with this know that it is a lot of work. Apparently, the author has been working on this for many years and has achieved a lot. I recently bought the Packt book; what is not clear to me at the moment is what are the specific innovations over the other already established languages. Thus, it would be helpful if on the main page of the language there was an essay on why the author thinks there is a need for a new language, and what the specific advantages are with respect to concrete features of the other languages.

amedvednikov 5y ago
> what is not clear to me at the moment is what are the specific innovations over the other already established languages. I'll make it more clear on the website. There's already a comparison to Go, the language V is most similar to: https://vlang.io/compare#go https://vlang.io/compare#go Quite a lot of improvements. V is basically about having the performance of C, the ease of use of Python, the simplicity of Go.
- Rochus 5y ago
  Thanks for the link; that's going in the direction I was looking for. So could one say that V is essentially the Go the author would have wanted, and the new language is justified by the "~20%" difference, and an independent development is necessary due to the slow pace at which Go is evolving? So that would be a similar motivation as Nim versus Python, or Oberon+ versus Oberon. The feature differences in list form are helpful; but the priorities and motivation for individual features would also be interesting; e.g. why is "variable shadowing" bad and why is the V approach better, and how can smaller runtime and binaries smaller by a factor of 100 be achieved with a feature set that is at least 80% the same as Go? Does this really have to do with the language definition, or rather with the implementation?
  - amedvednikov 5y ago
    I created V because Go didn't work nicely with C for my project. So just that would be enough for me to use V. Variable shadowing makes code more bug prone and confusing. As for the size: V uses system's official API (libc), including networking. Go has their own libs that have to be statically linked in to the binary.
gus_massa 5y ago
> sets high goals The problem is that in the initial releases the "high goals" were listed as "features" of the language, not as planed improvements of the initial implementation. So even now when I read a list like in the article, I'm not sure which are already implemented and which are just wishes, but after the initial bad impression I'm not bother to check.
- Rochus 5y ago
  Problem? Is the communication not up to the author? And shouldn't people rather help out than just make demands on an open source project?
  - agumonkey 5y ago
    That is absurd. He's not saying "I have an idea, and with a bit of help we might reach extraordinary numbers", he claims "better faster leaner than everybody else".
    - ylluminate 5y ago
      Nice to see he's kept his word and following through as is the community. Really great and lovable group of folks. Sometimes there are cultural differentials, but everyone is really great and with a primary and essentially only rule of "be nice" - I think it's a breath of fresh air in this screwed up time.
    - Rochus 5y ago
      It's not uncommon and no bad practice at all to fully specify a language before it is fully implemented. There were a couple of languages where the compiler took even many years to come into existence after the language was published, or was never finished. Other people - like e.g. me - develop the language specification and compiler in parallel. Just different ways to look at it.
      - agumonkey 5y ago
        How is it related to spec'ing the language. It's just fuzzy use of terms to appear extraordinary. That's all. Btw he still didn't answer my simple question, meanwhile everybody is commenting saying how nice the community is, how people should help instead of criticizing and deflecting the actual issue people had with the project.

by Rochus 5y ago

amedvednikov 5y ago

> what is not clear to me at the moment is what are the specific innovations over the other already established languages. I'll make it more clear on the website. There's already a comparison to Go, the language V is most similar to: https://vlang.io/compare#go https://vlang.io/compare#go Quite a lot of improvements. V is basically about having the performance of C, the ease of use of Python, the simplicity of Go.

Rochus 5y ago
Thanks for the link; that's going in the direction I was looking for. So could one say that V is essentially the Go the author would have wanted, and the new language is justified by the "~20%" difference, and an independent development is necessary due to the slow pace at which Go is evolving? So that would be a similar motivation as Nim versus Python, or Oberon+ versus Oberon. The feature differences in list form are helpful; but the priorities and motivation for individual features would also be interesting; e.g. why is "variable shadowing" bad and why is the V approach better, and how can smaller runtime and binaries smaller by a factor of 100 be achieved with a feature set that is at least 80% the same as Go? Does this really have to do with the language definition, or rather with the implementation?
- amedvednikov 5y ago
  I created V because Go didn't work nicely with C for my project. So just that would be enough for me to use V. Variable shadowing makes code more bug prone and confusing. As for the size: V uses system's official API (libc), including networking. Go has their own libs that have to be statically linked in to the binary.

gus_massa 5y ago

> sets high goals The problem is that in the initial releases the "high goals" were listed as "features" of the language, not as planed improvements of the initial implementation. So even now when I read a list like in the article, I'm not sure which are already implemented and which are just wishes, but after the initial bad impression I'm not bother to check.

Rochus 5y ago
Problem? Is the communication not up to the author? And shouldn't people rather help out than just make demands on an open source project?
- agumonkey 5y ago
  That is absurd. He's not saying "I have an idea, and with a bit of help we might reach extraordinary numbers", he claims "better faster leaner than everybody else".
  - ylluminate 5y ago
    Nice to see he's kept his word and following through as is the community. Really great and lovable group of folks. Sometimes there are cultural differentials, but everyone is really great and with a primary and essentially only rule of "be nice" - I think it's a breath of fresh air in this screwed up time.
  - Rochus 5y ago
    It's not uncommon and no bad practice at all to fully specify a language before it is fully implemented. There were a couple of languages where the compiler took even many years to come into existence after the language was published, or was never finished. Other people - like e.g. me - develop the language specification and compiler in parallel. Just different ways to look at it.
    - agumonkey 5y ago
      How is it related to spec'ing the language. It's just fuzzy use of terms to appear extraordinary. That's all. Btw he still didn't answer my simple question, meanwhile everybody is commenting saying how nice the community is, how people should help instead of criticizing and deflecting the actual issue people had with the project.