15 ms·

I am thrilled to see so much progress on V! I remember being excited about this language and seeing an immense amount of hatred, skepticism and doubt, and unfor

I am thrilled to see so much progress on V! I remember being excited about this language and seeing an immense amount of hatred, skepticism and doubt, and unfortunately being taken in by it. Is this hatred still present? Has anyone used the language extensively that can comment on its usability?

darthrupert 3y ago
They overpromised, which is quite frowned upon in foss circles where there's usually no incentive to do that. Personally, I'm quite happy that any attempts to normalize a culture of lying gets a strong reaction.
- colejohnson66 3y ago
  The response by the creator and others against the critics was also frowned upon. I'm interested in how this language will go, but those actions a year or so ago still leave a bad taste.
  - sebastianconcpt 3y ago
    And yet, all that would be nothing but temporary noise if the resulting artifact that delivers gets made. I'm more of a dynamic tech guy but I see this language as something that needs to exist.
  - amedvednikov 3y ago
    What response?
    - pwdisswordfishc 3y ago
      Typical example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37293919 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37293919
      - amedvednikov 3y ago
        > If you've been dreaming about a language like this, give it a try. Spend 20 minutes on it, and form your opinion. > I'm sure you'll like it! And what's wrong with this comment?
        lifthrasiir 3y ago
        > There are no false or misleading claims, only in the articles from authors who say "V must die". I'd like you to elaborate on this instead. Were there many articles with explicit death threats?
        amedvednikov 3y ago
        You consider the phrase "[lang] must die" a death threat? Only the author of the vaporware articles said that, AFAIK.
        lifthrasiir 3y ago
        If that article hasn't been changed since the publication, the strongest statement is "as it stands I recommend against using it for anything" AFIAK, and it is far from saying "it must die". She even gave many suggestions for improvement, some of which are shared with mine. I think you are reading too much from those criticisms.
        amedvednikov 3y ago
        The author said "V must die" in an HN comment here long after posting the articles.
        lifthrasiir 3y ago
        I failed to locate such a comment. And even if there was one and got removed later, the last known position is that she regret to write an article that can be perceived as toxic, no matter her intent [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31954082 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31954082
- manofmanysmiles 3y ago
  In the last 15 minutes I’ve read a few blog posts and reddit threads and am saddened. It does seem there are many false or misleading claims, though there does appear to be steady progress, or at least the appearance of it. I hope the language or another like it eventually can fill this niche. I’ve been dreaming of a similar language myself..
  - amedvednikov 3y ago
    Don't trust everything you read on reddit. There are no false or misleading claims, only in the articles from authors who say "V must die". Like complaining that V depends on OpenGl, Git, libc, and electricity! If you've been dreaming about a language like this, give it a try. Spend 20 minutes on it, and form your opinion. I'm sure you'll like it!
  - bakul 3y ago
    Ignore all the pro/con noise. git clone its repo, compile it locally and play with it. Write some code. You’ll be pleasantly surprised (at least I was). Its progress is pretty good (few tests break now and then and once in a while the self-compile breaks and I have to run make). If you know Go, it is very easy to pick up but don’t expect it to be exactly like go and it has its own idioms. Note: I’m interested in V but not involved in V development.
  - Tozen 3y ago
    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.
kubb 3y ago
They have cool vision, cool features, talented contributors, but bad PR, particularly around what stage the various features are at. A bunch of people attacked them based on that, calling out the inaccurate statements. The group included the creator of Odin, a competing language.
- RetroTechie 3y ago
  Imho features are non-features until they work. As described. Reliably.
  - kubb 3y ago
    I believe you that as a user you don't care, but for the community that implements the features, they exist in the imagination of the devs, design, planning and early implementation attempts for a long time before you can use them.
    - oblio 3y ago
      You're both right and wrong. Right in the sense that it can take a really long time to release a work in progress feature. Wrong that some of the claims made initially were phantasmagorical and also debunked very quickly. Also, vaporware is a a thing. I'm perfectly willing to stay by the claim that GNU Hurd will be useless to me until the day I die. For reference GNU Hurd has been in "dev, design, planning and early implementation attempts" for 33 years, and I imagine I'll live 50 more years (fingers crossed!).
      - kubb 3y ago
        It feels like an enthusiast project, where the developers didn't know some things are hard or impossible, and they claimed their language will solve them (or that it already solves them). Looks like they've learned something now :)
- kaba0 3y ago
  There used to be claims that are literally impossible as per the whole field of CS, that were later silently removed. That’s not a good look.
isaiahg 3y ago
It became one of those hate memes. A target of irrational fervor among anyone caught in between. If you ask those angered they pull out a list of petty grievances a mile long composed of misleading or highly interpretive wrongs. I haven’t had the pleasure to try out V yet but I hope this discussion can rise above. Endless bickering leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
- richbell 3y ago
  > If you ask those angered they pull out a list of petty grievances a mile long composed of misleading or highly interpretive wrongs. What, in your opinion, are legitimate reasons for someone to be upset with V?
- kbknapp 3y ago
  > If you ask those angered they pull out a list of petty grievances a mile long composed of misleading or highly interpretive wrongs. How can you assert that they're misleading or highly interpretive wrongs if you haven't dug into them yourself and actually used V? All the negative press I've seen on V has been highly detailed and reproducible.
  - amedvednikov 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - isaiahg 3y ago
    You don’t need to have touch it to see. Just browse this thread. A big one mentioned is over promising, which is pretty interpretive for a language only on version 0.4 of its development cycle. Most other complaints are slight variations of this. Promising magic performance or magic features without a good explanation, is another variation. This would be well and good for a fully released language, which this is not. All that tells me is the creator is overly ambitious for their own good and possibly naive, which I hardly classify as a sin. Whenever this topic comes up I’m at a loss to understand why anyone would waste so much energy mud slinging over some personal language project. It only makes sense if it’s become a hate meme. My pocket word for an event that’s a sort of social singularity. It occurs when enough popular voices have directed the entirety of a community to shame a target based on some perceived wrong, real or otherwise. Wherever it comes up I’m pretty taken aback by how tribal and ego focused we can be, even among the smartest of us. And that thought isn’t meant be taken as condescending. After all, we’re only human. And for a larger span of human history, that word has meant “hairless ape” more than anything else.
pityJuke 3y ago
I'll always be skeptical of the claims. Much less of a trust but verify, but a "you have to verify every little thing" [1]. The analogy that came to my head is how Elon always says self-driving is coming right around the corner [2]. Sure, some progress is made towards it, and maybe it'll come true one day... but don't take any of the claims at face value. [1]: https://mawfig.github.io/2022/06/18/v-lang-in-2022.html https://mawfig.github.io/2022/06/18/v-lang-in-2022.html [2]: https://jalopnik.com/elon-musk-tesla-self-driving-cars-anniversary-autopilot-1850432357 https://jalopnik.com/elon-musk-tesla-self-driving-cars-anniv...
- amedvednikov 3y ago
  None of the bugs in the first article are relevant today.
  - pityJuke 3y ago
    All I'll add is that whether or not that specific example holds up today matters little to the wider point: which is, that the language makes promises, and you need to verify each claim due to the repeated [0] ambiguity/inaccuracies about them. [0]: Across the span of the 2019-2022.
    - delian66 3y ago
      It is very easy to verify. Just have a working C compiler + git + make: git clone https://github.com/vlang/v cd v make ./v your_program.v On a modern machine with good network, it will take you under a minute, to have your own copy of latest V, and less than 200MB, including the .git/ folders. You can also download .zip releases from https://github.com/vlang/v/releases https://github.com/vlang/v/releases , without needing git. The .zips there are <15MB, and contain a prebuilt V executable, so you do not even need make to use it.
- bakul 3y ago
  You should always verify every little thing for any new language you’re thinking of using, if only to understand its behavior in details, warts and all. I did the same when I first learned C, C++, Go etc. etc. But one must separate (what I consider) marketing fluff from reality. Evaluate for yourself whether the new language is worth learning, whether its development is going in the direction you can mostly agree with, whether it has promise, whether it is developing an ecosystem etc.
ceronman 3y ago
I'm not sure if "hatred" is the correct word here. Yes, there has been a ton of skepticism and doubt about V here in HN, but this is very different from hatred. In my opinion, skepticism is not only okay, but desirable in a community like HN. Skepticism is also a core principle in science. Skepticism can be respectful and encouraging. I count myself among the skeptics of V. Mostly because in the initial communications about it, some of the claims were hard to believe. For example, they used to claim that V was memory safe without GC, but also without borrow checker, and it was never explained how they achieved such thing. Now I see that they claim that the language is very similar to Go, so I assume that they went with a GC. That's really cool, I actually think that GCs are a massive boon for language ergonomics. But there remain some unexplained topics, for example, how is that they achieve being "free of data races" [1]. It's nice to see a new language in the area and I hope the language succeed. But I'll continue to be skeptical until I see proper explanation of some of their claims. [1] https://vlang.io/compare#go https://vlang.io/compare#go
oblio 3y ago
Hatred? There were solid arguments that the thing was a scam, at least big parts of it. Maybe "scam" is a harsh claim, but "outrageous and frequently false claims made by devs lacking solid credentials to match them". And there were several comments and articles debunking these claims.
- kbknapp 3y ago
  I think the reason the word "scam" became attached is because those outrageous and frequent claims were attached to receiving large sums of money.
  - oblio 3y ago
    I actually forgot about that, what did they do? Ask for Patreon contributions?
    - kbknapp 3y ago
      It was a combination between Patreon and Github Sponsors for solo the lead developer at the time making several thousand USD per month. Those campaigns are still ongoing AFAIK, but the contribution amounts are now private.
      - amedvednikov 3y ago
        [flagged]
        ta20230828 3y ago
        > To quote the HN mod: the language is fine, and there's no need in these flame wars Really? In trying to counter claims about V misrepresenting things, you ... misrepresent what dang said? Hint: "I'm sure your language is fine" in no way implies that dang said "the language is fine".
        3y ago
amedvednikov 3y ago
[flagged]
- richbell 3y ago
  For context, this is the lead developer of V. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31061295 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31061295
- ModernMech 3y ago
  Dang said this to you to placate you and to stop you from stoking a flame war, which is what's happening again. He wasn't endorsing your project. He was saying there is no need for a flame war not because your language is fine, but because flame wars are not fine on HN.
  - riku_iki 3y ago
    I think lang author is asking to not start flame wars, but there are bunch of people (you included) attacking him first in this topic, and he can't respond?
    - ModernMech 3y ago
      He can't respond if he doesn't want to engage in a flame war. I'm a dog on the internet, he's the dev of a project he's pushing that is trying and failing to build a reputation as someone trustworthy.
      - riku_iki 3y ago
        or he just became a target of some salty internet mob which is now following him everywhere, and many other people(me included) actually find his work interesting.
        ModernMech 3y ago
        You're free to find his work interesting. Others are free to find his continual prevaricating shady.

darthrupert 3y ago

They overpromised, which is quite frowned upon in foss circles where there's usually no incentive to do that. Personally, I'm quite happy that any attempts to normalize a culture of lying gets a strong reaction.

colejohnson66 3y ago
The response by the creator and others against the critics was also frowned upon. I'm interested in how this language will go, but those actions a year or so ago still leave a bad taste.
- sebastianconcpt 3y ago
  And yet, all that would be nothing but temporary noise if the resulting artifact that delivers gets made. I'm more of a dynamic tech guy but I see this language as something that needs to exist.
- amedvednikov 3y ago
  What response?
  - pwdisswordfishc 3y ago
    Typical example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37293919 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37293919
    - amedvednikov 3y ago
      > If you've been dreaming about a language like this, give it a try. Spend 20 minutes on it, and form your opinion. > I'm sure you'll like it! And what's wrong with this comment?
      - lifthrasiir 3y ago
        > There are no false or misleading claims, only in the articles from authors who say "V must die". I'd like you to elaborate on this instead. Were there many articles with explicit death threats?
        amedvednikov 3y ago
        You consider the phrase "[lang] must die" a death threat? Only the author of the vaporware articles said that, AFAIK.
        lifthrasiir 3y ago
        If that article hasn't been changed since the publication, the strongest statement is "as it stands I recommend against using it for anything" AFIAK, and it is far from saying "it must die". She even gave many suggestions for improvement, some of which are shared with mine. I think you are reading too much from those criticisms.
        amedvednikov 3y ago
        The author said "V must die" in an HN comment here long after posting the articles.
        lifthrasiir 3y ago
        I failed to locate such a comment. And even if there was one and got removed later, the last known position is that she regret to write an article that can be perceived as toxic, no matter her intent [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31954082 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31954082
manofmanysmiles 3y ago
In the last 15 minutes I’ve read a few blog posts and reddit threads and am saddened. It does seem there are many false or misleading claims, though there does appear to be steady progress, or at least the appearance of it. I hope the language or another like it eventually can fill this niche. I’ve been dreaming of a similar language myself..
- amedvednikov 3y ago
  Don't trust everything you read on reddit. There are no false or misleading claims, only in the articles from authors who say "V must die". Like complaining that V depends on OpenGl, Git, libc, and electricity! If you've been dreaming about a language like this, give it a try. Spend 20 minutes on it, and form your opinion. I'm sure you'll like it!
- bakul 3y ago
  Ignore all the pro/con noise. git clone its repo, compile it locally and play with it. Write some code. You’ll be pleasantly surprised (at least I was). Its progress is pretty good (few tests break now and then and once in a while the self-compile breaks and I have to run make). If you know Go, it is very easy to pick up but don’t expect it to be exactly like go and it has its own idioms. Note: I’m interested in V but not involved in V development.
- Tozen 3y ago
  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.

kubb 3y ago

They have cool vision, cool features, talented contributors, but bad PR, particularly around what stage the various features are at. A bunch of people attacked them based on that, calling out the inaccurate statements. The group included the creator of Odin, a competing language.

RetroTechie 3y ago
Imho features are non-features until they work. As described. Reliably.
- kubb 3y ago
  I believe you that as a user you don't care, but for the community that implements the features, they exist in the imagination of the devs, design, planning and early implementation attempts for a long time before you can use them.
  - oblio 3y ago
    You're both right and wrong. Right in the sense that it can take a really long time to release a work in progress feature. Wrong that some of the claims made initially were phantasmagorical and also debunked very quickly. Also, vaporware is a a thing. I'm perfectly willing to stay by the claim that GNU Hurd will be useless to me until the day I die. For reference GNU Hurd has been in "dev, design, planning and early implementation attempts" for 33 years, and I imagine I'll live 50 more years (fingers crossed!).
    - kubb 3y ago
      It feels like an enthusiast project, where the developers didn't know some things are hard or impossible, and they claimed their language will solve them (or that it already solves them). Looks like they've learned something now :)
kaba0 3y ago
There used to be claims that are literally impossible as per the whole field of CS, that were later silently removed. That’s not a good look.

isaiahg 3y ago

It became one of those hate memes. A target of irrational fervor among anyone caught in between. If you ask those angered they pull out a list of petty grievances a mile long composed of misleading or highly interpretive wrongs. I haven’t had the pleasure to try out V yet but I hope this discussion can rise above. Endless bickering leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

richbell 3y ago
> If you ask those angered they pull out a list of petty grievances a mile long composed of misleading or highly interpretive wrongs. What, in your opinion, are legitimate reasons for someone to be upset with V?
kbknapp 3y ago
> If you ask those angered they pull out a list of petty grievances a mile long composed of misleading or highly interpretive wrongs. How can you assert that they're misleading or highly interpretive wrongs if you haven't dug into them yourself and actually used V? All the negative press I've seen on V has been highly detailed and reproducible.
- amedvednikov 3y ago
  [flagged]
- isaiahg 3y ago
  You don’t need to have touch it to see. Just browse this thread. A big one mentioned is over promising, which is pretty interpretive for a language only on version 0.4 of its development cycle. Most other complaints are slight variations of this. Promising magic performance or magic features without a good explanation, is another variation. This would be well and good for a fully released language, which this is not. All that tells me is the creator is overly ambitious for their own good and possibly naive, which I hardly classify as a sin. Whenever this topic comes up I’m at a loss to understand why anyone would waste so much energy mud slinging over some personal language project. It only makes sense if it’s become a hate meme. My pocket word for an event that’s a sort of social singularity. It occurs when enough popular voices have directed the entirety of a community to shame a target based on some perceived wrong, real or otherwise. Wherever it comes up I’m pretty taken aback by how tribal and ego focused we can be, even among the smartest of us. And that thought isn’t meant be taken as condescending. After all, we’re only human. And for a larger span of human history, that word has meant “hairless ape” more than anything else.

pityJuke 3y ago

I'll always be skeptical of the claims. Much less of a trust but verify, but a "you have to verify every little thing" [1]. The analogy that came to my head is how Elon always says self-driving is coming right around the corner [2]. Sure, some progress is made towards it, and maybe it'll come true one day... but don't take any of the claims at face value. [1]: https://mawfig.github.io/2022/06/18/v-lang-in-2022.html https://mawfig.github.io/2022/06/18/v-lang-in-2022.html [2]: https://jalopnik.com/elon-musk-tesla-self-driving-cars-anniversary-autopilot-1850432357 https://jalopnik.com/elon-musk-tesla-self-driving-cars-anniv...

amedvednikov 3y ago
None of the bugs in the first article are relevant today.
- pityJuke 3y ago
  All I'll add is that whether or not that specific example holds up today matters little to the wider point: which is, that the language makes promises, and you need to verify each claim due to the repeated [0] ambiguity/inaccuracies about them. [0]: Across the span of the 2019-2022.
  - delian66 3y ago
    It is very easy to verify. Just have a working C compiler + git + make: git clone https://github.com/vlang/v cd v make ./v your_program.v On a modern machine with good network, it will take you under a minute, to have your own copy of latest V, and less than 200MB, including the .git/ folders. You can also download .zip releases from https://github.com/vlang/v/releases https://github.com/vlang/v/releases , without needing git. The .zips there are <15MB, and contain a prebuilt V executable, so you do not even need make to use it.
bakul 3y ago
You should always verify every little thing for any new language you’re thinking of using, if only to understand its behavior in details, warts and all. I did the same when I first learned C, C++, Go etc. etc. But one must separate (what I consider) marketing fluff from reality. Evaluate for yourself whether the new language is worth learning, whether its development is going in the direction you can mostly agree with, whether it has promise, whether it is developing an ecosystem etc.

ceronman 3y ago

I'm not sure if "hatred" is the correct word here. Yes, there has been a ton of skepticism and doubt about V here in HN, but this is very different from hatred. In my opinion, skepticism is not only okay, but desirable in a community like HN. Skepticism is also a core principle in science. Skepticism can be respectful and encouraging. I count myself among the skeptics of V. Mostly because in the initial communications about it, some of the claims were hard to believe. For example, they used to claim that V was memory safe without GC, but also without borrow checker, and it was never explained how they achieved such thing. Now I see that they claim that the language is very similar to Go, so I assume that they went with a GC. That's really cool, I actually think that GCs are a massive boon for language ergonomics. But there remain some unexplained topics, for example, how is that they achieve being "free of data races" [1]. It's nice to see a new language in the area and I hope the language succeed. But I'll continue to be skeptical until I see proper explanation of some of their claims. [1] https://vlang.io/compare#go https://vlang.io/compare#go

oblio 3y ago

Hatred? There were solid arguments that the thing was a scam, at least big parts of it. Maybe "scam" is a harsh claim, but "outrageous and frequently false claims made by devs lacking solid credentials to match them". And there were several comments and articles debunking these claims.

kbknapp 3y ago
I think the reason the word "scam" became attached is because those outrageous and frequent claims were attached to receiving large sums of money.
- oblio 3y ago
  I actually forgot about that, what did they do? Ask for Patreon contributions?
  - kbknapp 3y ago
    It was a combination between Patreon and Github Sponsors for solo the lead developer at the time making several thousand USD per month. Those campaigns are still ongoing AFAIK, but the contribution amounts are now private.
    - amedvednikov 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - ta20230828 3y ago
        > To quote the HN mod: the language is fine, and there's no need in these flame wars Really? In trying to counter claims about V misrepresenting things, you ... misrepresent what dang said? Hint: "I'm sure your language is fine" in no way implies that dang said "the language is fine".
        3y ago

amedvednikov 3y ago

[flagged]

richbell 3y ago
For context, this is the lead developer of V. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31061295 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31061295
ModernMech 3y ago
Dang said this to you to placate you and to stop you from stoking a flame war, which is what's happening again. He wasn't endorsing your project. He was saying there is no need for a flame war not because your language is fine, but because flame wars are not fine on HN.
- riku_iki 3y ago
  I think lang author is asking to not start flame wars, but there are bunch of people (you included) attacking him first in this topic, and he can't respond?
  - ModernMech 3y ago
    He can't respond if he doesn't want to engage in a flame war. I'm a dog on the internet, he's the dev of a project he's pushing that is trying and failing to build a reputation as someone trustworthy.
    - riku_iki 3y ago
      or he just became a target of some salty internet mob which is now following him everywhere, and many other people(me included) actually find his work interesting.
      - ModernMech 3y ago
        You're free to find his work interesting. Others are free to find his continual prevaricating shady.