8 ms·

Hello V-Lang

69 points by hackersreboot 4y ago

ReleaseCandidat 4y ago
Interesting definition of 'pure functions': Pure functions by default V functions are pure by default, meaning that their return values are a function of their arguments only, and their evaluation has no side effects (besides I/O). https://github.com/vlang/v/blob/master/doc/docs.md#pure-functions-by-default https://github.com/vlang/v/blob/master/doc/docs.md#pure-func...
- WithinReason 4y ago
  You mean the "besides I/O" part?
  - ReleaseCandidat 4y ago
    Yes. A 'system language' with pure functions would be, well, unusual.
Normille 4y ago
What a piss-poor excuse for an article! Reads like a press release; all puff and no down sides. Anyone with any familiarity with the V project will know it's been mired in controversy from day 1, thanks to the [often hyperbolic] claims of its inventor. All of which seems to have passed the author of this article by, as he just gushingly repeats them unquestioningly. Mind you, he does describe V as "all new", so maybe he missed all that previous discussion.
- amedvednikov 4y ago
  Can you list the hyperbolic claims here please?
  - pxeger1 4y ago
    Here's an article from around the time, "V is for Vaporware": https://christine.website/blog/v-vaporware-2019-06-23 https://christine.website/blog/v-vaporware-2019-06-23 (and discussion of that on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20258485 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20258485) I imagine things have improved since 2019, though.
    - amedvednikov 4y ago
      It's a very biased and old list of articles from an author who openly claimed that "V should die". For example, the performance of V is measured on a debug build, without vlib cached, without vfmt disabled, with a 10x slower backend. Here's V compiling itself in 0.3 seconds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvP6wmcl_Sc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvP6wmcl_Sc Also complaining about not running on all Linux flavors on day 1. Right now V runs on literally everything. And so on. That's why I asked to list the specific claims the poster had in mind here in the comments.
      - pwdisswordfish9 4y ago
        > an author who openly claimed that "V should die". Citation needed. Or is the source for that claim the same as that for V benchmarks?
        amedvednikov 4y ago
        https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27442724 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27442724 > I think it is something that should be ignored until it dies into obscurity
  - Normille 4y ago
    Well, for a start there's the "Translating DOOM from C to V and building it in 0.7 seconds" which is still on your front page. In spite of being a 'WIP' for as long as I can remember. Then there's; vweb, vorum, volt and ved [all of which feature prominently on the front page too] which have been little more than alpha quality proofs of concept for a similarly long time. Don't get me wrong; I was actually interested in V when I first heard about it a few years back. And I was prepared for there to be a lot of 'WIP' since the language was so new. But I lost interest as the years passed and nothing more polished ever seemed to emerge. In fact the whole ethos of the V community seems to be to take the maxim "Move fast and break stuff" and stretch it to breaking point. Instead of anything actually being worked on, polished and finished, you just keep throwing out new headline grabbing 'projects' which, as per the examples above are barely functional and seem to be abandoned almost as soon as they are announced. One week it'll be a new game engine [naturally, because it's V, better, stronger faster than anything already out there], the next week a web framework [better, stronger, faster...etc], the week after that it'll be a new 3D engine [better, stronger, faster...] I even remember a while back someone[s] in the V community announced they were building an OS in V. [presumably better, stronger, faster than Linux, OSX, Windows, etc] That's why you get so much negative press. It's not because people want to hate V. A hell of a lot of people [especially in the HN demographic] were genuinely interested in the project. But the endless hyperbole just ends up making you sound like a snake oil salesman and your crowd loses interest and drifts away.
- Micoloth 4y ago
  > thanks to the [often hyperbolic] claims of its inventor To be fair.. I always see this in HN comments about V, and at this point it sounds just as a non-objective and prejudiced evaluation as the article is. I agree that the article should have presented some downsides. But to start a discussion, how about presenting some valid criticisms? Clearly people have worked on this project for a while. Have they completely failed to implement the “hyperbolic” claims? Or are they doing something good? I’ve been intrigued about V for a while, i haven’t had the time to look into it yet. I wish we had an objective discussion about it..
  - _andrei_ 4y ago
    There's people that have what it takes to build something like V, and then there's the rest of us, that spend our time ranting online.
    - coldtea 4y ago
      And there are also people who have built even harder projects than V, but can still criticize projects with issues and rant with the best of them! The absolute dichotomy being "doers" and "criticizers" is false. Linus could criticize things just fine.
      - scns 4y ago
        Have seen Linus giving the finger to Nvidia, but not ranting on a forum about a new language.
        dmytrish 4y ago
        Here you go: http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/c++/linus http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/c++/linus
        delian66 4y ago
        I did not know that C++ is new in 2007 ...
- ibraheemdev 4y ago
  The article seems to have been written by: > a 15 year old student who likes to code and blog for some perspective :)
  - throwaway4good 4y ago
    It is a new generation: sales, hype and marketing first. We all could learn from this.
    - WithinReason 4y ago
      I think we were all more susceptible to hype when we were 15
      - The_rationalist 4y ago
      - throwamon 4y ago
        Maybe, but I can tell you when I was 15 I didn't have instant worldwide reach and the on-the-Internet-nobody-knows-you're-a-dog effect at my disposal, and neither did my readers.
        throwaway4good 4y ago
        I grew up with if you build people will come. I don’t think it is like that anymore …
        Normille 4y ago
        Now it's "tell people you're thinking of building it and they will come" [see Kickstarter et al.]
        delian66 4y ago
        I think/hope that it is still like that, just that haters are a subset of people, whose opinions are currently disproportionately magnified.
- sieste 4y ago
  HN is usually an incredibly welcoming and encouraging community. Any criticisms are honest, sometimes harsh and maybe on the overly sceptical side, but mostly decent and civilised ... Unless Vlang comes up. > What a piss-poor excuse for an article! The article is no different from many new-sexy-js-framework blog posts I see here, but these never get that amount of hate. Why is that?
  - ylluminate 4y ago
    Yeah some jealous "communities" poisoned the water. It's really sad.
  - dmytrish 4y ago
    Because nobody wants to deal with another PHP in the unlikely case V takes off.
    - amedvednikov 4y ago
      It's hard to find a language farther away from V than PHP.
      - pwdisswordfish9 4y ago
        I dunno, the design philosophy seems ripped out of their (former, to their credit!) playbook. https://twitter.com/woketopus/status/1447150924846313475 https://twitter.com/woketopus/status/1447150924846313475
        amedvednikov 4y ago
        V's design is completely opposite.
        bvrmn 4y ago
        Early PHP lack of any design is the same of V.
- ylluminate 4y ago
  You'd probably enjoy this one better from a major magazine then: https://linuxformat.com/ https://linuxformat.com/ - see page 94 in the May 2022 volume. Screenshot of ToC: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/592106336838352923/963892293285339226/2022-04-13_1600482x.jpg https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/592106336838352923/96...
tony-allan 4y ago
An interesting language that’s worth a look https://vlang.io/ https://vlang.io/ https://github.com/vlang/awesome-v https://github.com/vlang/awesome-v
- Rochus 4y ago
  It is indeed very astonishing why many people here have such a negative attitude towards this language.
  - agumonkey 4y ago
    Because author kinda twisted terms to make it seems he achieved the impossible. Felt like he did better than rust+ada+haskell, all without using memory and faster than an eyeblink.
    - amedvednikov 4y ago
      Can you elaborate? There was never a claim it doesn't use memory (although it does use a lot less memory than most compilers). The language is indeed fast, V compiles itself in 0.3 seconds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvP6wmcl_Sc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvP6wmcl_Sc
      - agumonkey 4y ago
        Are you the V designer ? is V compiled to native code or transpiled to C (then an actual compiler will make the work to emit native) ?
    - Rochus 4y 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.
taylorius 4y ago
That is a weird site. It's as if they're about to try to charge you for the actual info. on VLang. A real air of scamminess pervades - even though AFAIK it's entirely legit, of course.
pxeger1 4y ago
Previous discussons: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24481883 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24481883 (144 points, 191 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19403271 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19403271 (191 points, 182 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19526924 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19526924 (61 points, 101 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20229632 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20229632 (146 points, 137 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21296855 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21296855 (123 points, 91 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20250990 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20250990 (180 points, 155 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20258485 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20258485 (63 points, 33 comments)
- Tozen 4y ago
  You chose threads primarily from 2019. We are now in 2022. So threads and comments from 3 years ago are mostly not relevant. Some threads are even prior to Vlang ever being released (March 2019 comments versus release date of language in June 2019). To include persistently claiming Vlang is vaporware, despite it now having over 90 releases (at nearly a new one per week pace) and being well documented in terms of language and modules. https://github.com/vlang/v/releases https://github.com/vlang/v/releases (releases) https://modules.vlang.io/ https://modules.vlang.io/ (modules) https://github.com/vlang/v/blob/master/doc/docs.md https://github.com/vlang/v/blob/master/doc/docs.md (documentation)
amedvednikov 4y ago
If you'd like to check out more about V, here's the GitHub repo: https://github.com/vlang/v https://github.com/vlang/v Very thorough documentation: https://github.com/vlang/v/blob/master/doc/docs.md https://github.com/vlang/v/blob/master/doc/docs.md One of the coolest latest projects is the Vinix OS, written fully in V: https://github.com/vlang/vinix https://github.com/vlang/vinix It's a POSIX OS that already runs libc, bash, GCC, g++, and Doom.
- richbell 4y ago
  For anyone not aware, this is the creator of V. It would be nice if you were upfront about this in your posts or profile, especially when you jump in to dismiss people's complaints about your project. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25512003 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25512003
  - ylluminate 4y ago
    Yes, Alex is awesome - sincerely. I hate it with jackarses run around spewing crap about people without chatting or getting to know people by spending some time in the community.
- hackersreboot 4y ago
  I actually did. I analysed as much as I could with major exams over my head. I am planning to try the os later. Also I would love if you could contact me at arpan@hackersreboot.tech for some talk.
bheadmaster 4y ago
Here are the summarized V features for anyone who dislikes salestalk: - small binaries and fast compilation - cross-platform support - cross-compilation - cross-platform drawing library (GDI+/Cocoa Drawing, OpenGL) - native GUI toolkits (V-UI) - value types - auto-free engine that adds necessary free() commands - C transpilation (both ways, allegedly emits human-readable C) - C foreign function interface ("V can call C Code and any language with C-interop can call V Code") - hot-code reloading (not mentioned how, but probably dynamic library hot swapping) - package manager - autoformatter - profiler - documentation-from-source generator - V-to-JavaScript/WASM transpilation - built-in testing framework - built-in web framework (vweb) - ORM ("you can just write V instead of SQL while interacting with databases") Some tools in pure V: Vinix - An open-source Operating System that can already run GCC, Bash, V etc. Volt - A 300Kb native desktop client for Slack, Discord, Skype, Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, and more. (only supports MacOS at the moment) VSQL - A single-file SQL database written in pure V with no dependencies. Gitly - Open-source light and fast alternative to GitHub/GitLab, written entirely in V. Vorum - Right now it's a very basic forum/blogging software, but in the future, it will be a full-featured light alternative to Discourse. The V forum runs on Vorum. Vgram - A bot library for Telegram Bot API.
- lawl 4y ago
  i'm pretty sure that half of these features don't work. Such as the famous "autofree" where everyone doubted it could work and the solution now was.... to drop in boehm-gc. for anyone unfamiliar with v, take everything on that list with a giant spoon full of salt.
  - amedvednikov 4y ago
    autofree demo: V's compile time memory management demo. Running the Ved editor on an 8 MB file with 0 leaks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmB8ea8uLsM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmB8ea8uLsM
    - lawl 4y ago
kgeist 4y ago
Last time I checked V-Lang looked amazing on paper but on closer evaluation many of the claimed features were only planned, crashed the compiler on trivial inputs, or simply were half-baked and didn't deliver on the promises (things like syntax errors from the underlying C backend, memory leaks etc. because transpilation was straightforward and lacked proper checks, hence the fast compilation speed). A few months ago I superficially skimmed through their GitHub repo and it left an impression that it's still a toy language with same problems as back in 2020, although with some improvements (but it's just my impression), many ideas being borrowed from Go and Rust. From what I also found odd is that the author is overly fixated on their transpilation speed for some reason (i.e. IIRC citing V -> C translation only, without the C -> binary part), they have a few repos written in V and one of the main selling points there is compilation speed as well - probably at the expense of other features, because they don't do deep analysis (hence C compiler errors on trivial inputs). It struck me as something odd because I find memory safety, thread safety and overall stability more important than a few saved seconds of compilation. I will be more than happy to learn that I am wrong and the situation has considerably improved, but other than that infamous GitHub issue "The language is not what is promised", I haven't seen a more recent (as of 2022) objective, skeptical analysis of the language by someone from outside their community. Maybe someone has links?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- amedvednikov 4y ago
  > citing V -> C translation only, without the C -> binary part Not really, here's a benchmark of V compiling itself in 0.3 seconds that includes all steps (including the C -> binary part) and results in the compiler binary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvP6wmcl_Sc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvP6wmcl_Sc This video is linked on the home page. > crashed the compiler on trivial inputs We have thousands of tests, lots of big projects written in V (V itself is 220k loc, Vinix OS, Ved editor, Gitly, vsql etc), and they all work fine, no compiler errors. Can you give an example of a trivial input resulting in a crash/C error? The infamous "The language is not what is promised" you referenced has claims like "there's no way V is written in V", and "there's no way to do json serialization without an AST". These things are simply not true.
sgt 4y ago
Great. We rewrote our backend into D, then Arc, then into Go, and most recently into Rust. If V-lang is as good as it sounds, we'll need to ditch thousands of lines of pristine Rust code. HN-driven development methodology really has no mercy. /s
- hackersreboot 4y ago
  I personally think Rust is one of the best and the most unique language in its form and will grow to play a far greater role in the dev world. I am just beginning to learn it and am most fascinated by it. Just published about "V" because new and independent ones like it also need our love and support to grow and mature as others have.
goy 4y ago
Will give a try once more ... Last time wasn't so great though.
Tozen 4y ago
Why was this misspelled? Shouldn't it be Vlang (https://vlang.io/ https://vlang.io/), not V-Lang?
- hackersreboot 4y ago
  Ok, so I am the author of the article and I wanted to put it as "V" but wasn't differentiating for example in search and "Vlang" just didn't feel good.
  - Tozen 4y ago
    I kind of get what you mean, but the common practice is to spell it as Vlang, which other languages that are referred to by short names do too. Like Go, becomes Golang as oppose to Go-lang. But, we all have our preferences. Who knows, it might catch on to refer to it as V-Lang. It's your prerogative to do as you like, and it was great that you created the article and are into programming.
    - hackersreboot 4y ago
      Yeah, still very new to all this, also it was my first posting on HN and I haven't actually received any meaningful comments on any platform or any guidance about the conventions and stuff. If you check out the article there is only 1 comments there while here it is about 170 now so I am learning a lot.
hackersreboot 4y ago
Hey Guys, So I am the author of the article and it is about time I address the comments here. I just want to say that I just got to know about it, I used it and it felt good. I tested a lot of the features but ofc couldn't get them all. I know nothing of any controversies surrounding the language. Also, I am just starting out in writing so I might've not included some details or it might've looked like a "sales talk" but in all honesty I had written a section in the draft versions but forgot to include it. I am planning to write another post to address the issues of the language and my writing about it. Thanks for reading and commenting. I appreciate it and hope to use these comments to improve myself as both a researcher and a writer. Thanks again!
- bheadmaster 4y ago
  If I may offer a suggestion: Focus on what information you're trying to convey and try to say it in the minimum amount of words. Prefer sentences that convey information ("V is has a 10MB compiler" - we learned the size of V compiler) to sentences that don't ("V-lang is an extraordinarily powerful language that can help you create a variety of applications" - we learned nothing, since "powerful" is subjective, and all languages can be used to write applications). That will help you focus on communicating your ideas clearly and tersely, which will make your articles much more attractive to technical readers. Good luck with your research and writing!
  - hackersreboot 4y ago
    Thanks for the tip! Will use it.

69 points by hackersreboot 4y ago

Interesting definition of 'pure functions': Pure functions by default V functions are pure by default, meaning that their return values are a function of their arguments only, and their evaluation has no side effects (besides I/O). https://github.com/vlang/v/blob/master/doc/docs.md#pure-functions-by-default https://github.com/vlang/v/blob/master/doc/docs.md#pure-func...

WithinReason 4y ago
You mean the "besides I/O" part?
- ReleaseCandidat 4y ago
  Yes. A 'system language' with pure functions would be, well, unusual.

Normille 4y ago

What a piss-poor excuse for an article! Reads like a press release; all puff and no down sides. Anyone with any familiarity with the V project will know it's been mired in controversy from day 1, thanks to the [often hyperbolic] claims of its inventor. All of which seems to have passed the author of this article by, as he just gushingly repeats them unquestioningly. Mind you, he does describe V as "all new", so maybe he missed all that previous discussion.

amedvednikov 4y ago
Can you list the hyperbolic claims here please?
- pxeger1 4y ago
  Here's an article from around the time, "V is for Vaporware": https://christine.website/blog/v-vaporware-2019-06-23 https://christine.website/blog/v-vaporware-2019-06-23 (and discussion of that on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20258485 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20258485) I imagine things have improved since 2019, though.
  - amedvednikov 4y ago
    It's a very biased and old list of articles from an author who openly claimed that "V should die". For example, the performance of V is measured on a debug build, without vlib cached, without vfmt disabled, with a 10x slower backend. Here's V compiling itself in 0.3 seconds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvP6wmcl_Sc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvP6wmcl_Sc Also complaining about not running on all Linux flavors on day 1. Right now V runs on literally everything. And so on. That's why I asked to list the specific claims the poster had in mind here in the comments.
    - pwdisswordfish9 4y ago
      > an author who openly claimed that "V should die". Citation needed. Or is the source for that claim the same as that for V benchmarks?
      - amedvednikov 4y ago
        https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27442724 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27442724 > I think it is something that should be ignored until it dies into obscurity
- Normille 4y ago
  Well, for a start there's the "Translating DOOM from C to V and building it in 0.7 seconds" which is still on your front page. In spite of being a 'WIP' for as long as I can remember. Then there's; vweb, vorum, volt and ved [all of which feature prominently on the front page too] which have been little more than alpha quality proofs of concept for a similarly long time. Don't get me wrong; I was actually interested in V when I first heard about it a few years back. And I was prepared for there to be a lot of 'WIP' since the language was so new. But I lost interest as the years passed and nothing more polished ever seemed to emerge. In fact the whole ethos of the V community seems to be to take the maxim "Move fast and break stuff" and stretch it to breaking point. Instead of anything actually being worked on, polished and finished, you just keep throwing out new headline grabbing 'projects' which, as per the examples above are barely functional and seem to be abandoned almost as soon as they are announced. One week it'll be a new game engine [naturally, because it's V, better, stronger faster than anything already out there], the next week a web framework [better, stronger, faster...etc], the week after that it'll be a new 3D engine [better, stronger, faster...] I even remember a while back someone[s] in the V community announced they were building an OS in V. [presumably better, stronger, faster than Linux, OSX, Windows, etc] That's why you get so much negative press. It's not because people want to hate V. A hell of a lot of people [especially in the HN demographic] were genuinely interested in the project. But the endless hyperbole just ends up making you sound like a snake oil salesman and your crowd loses interest and drifts away.
Micoloth 4y ago
> thanks to the [often hyperbolic] claims of its inventor To be fair.. I always see this in HN comments about V, and at this point it sounds just as a non-objective and prejudiced evaluation as the article is. I agree that the article should have presented some downsides. But to start a discussion, how about presenting some valid criticisms? Clearly people have worked on this project for a while. Have they completely failed to implement the “hyperbolic” claims? Or are they doing something good? I’ve been intrigued about V for a while, i haven’t had the time to look into it yet. I wish we had an objective discussion about it..
- _andrei_ 4y ago
  There's people that have what it takes to build something like V, and then there's the rest of us, that spend our time ranting online.
  - coldtea 4y ago
    And there are also people who have built even harder projects than V, but can still criticize projects with issues and rant with the best of them! The absolute dichotomy being "doers" and "criticizers" is false. Linus could criticize things just fine.
    - scns 4y ago
      Have seen Linus giving the finger to Nvidia, but not ranting on a forum about a new language.
      - dmytrish 4y ago
        Here you go: http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/c++/linus http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/c++/linus
        delian66 4y ago
        I did not know that C++ is new in 2007 ...
ibraheemdev 4y ago
The article seems to have been written by: > a 15 year old student who likes to code and blog for some perspective :)
- throwaway4good 4y ago
  It is a new generation: sales, hype and marketing first. We all could learn from this.
  - WithinReason 4y ago
    I think we were all more susceptible to hype when we were 15
    - The_rationalist 4y ago
    - throwamon 4y ago
      Maybe, but I can tell you when I was 15 I didn't have instant worldwide reach and the on-the-Internet-nobody-knows-you're-a-dog effect at my disposal, and neither did my readers.
      - throwaway4good 4y ago
        I grew up with if you build people will come. I don’t think it is like that anymore …
        Normille 4y ago
        Now it's "tell people you're thinking of building it and they will come" [see Kickstarter et al.]
        delian66 4y ago
        I think/hope that it is still like that, just that haters are a subset of people, whose opinions are currently disproportionately magnified.
sieste 4y ago
HN is usually an incredibly welcoming and encouraging community. Any criticisms are honest, sometimes harsh and maybe on the overly sceptical side, but mostly decent and civilised ... Unless Vlang comes up. > What a piss-poor excuse for an article! The article is no different from many new-sexy-js-framework blog posts I see here, but these never get that amount of hate. Why is that?
- ylluminate 4y ago
  Yeah some jealous "communities" poisoned the water. It's really sad.
- dmytrish 4y ago
  Because nobody wants to deal with another PHP in the unlikely case V takes off.
  - amedvednikov 4y ago
    It's hard to find a language farther away from V than PHP.
    - pwdisswordfish9 4y ago
      I dunno, the design philosophy seems ripped out of their (former, to their credit!) playbook. https://twitter.com/woketopus/status/1447150924846313475 https://twitter.com/woketopus/status/1447150924846313475
      - amedvednikov 4y ago
        V's design is completely opposite.
        bvrmn 4y ago
        Early PHP lack of any design is the same of V.
ylluminate 4y ago
You'd probably enjoy this one better from a major magazine then: https://linuxformat.com/ https://linuxformat.com/ - see page 94 in the May 2022 volume. Screenshot of ToC: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/592106336838352923/963892293285339226/2022-04-13_1600482x.jpg https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/592106336838352923/96...

tony-allan 4y ago

An interesting language that’s worth a look https://vlang.io/ https://vlang.io/ https://github.com/vlang/awesome-v https://github.com/vlang/awesome-v

Rochus 4y ago
It is indeed very astonishing why many people here have such a negative attitude towards this language.
- agumonkey 4y ago
  Because author kinda twisted terms to make it seems he achieved the impossible. Felt like he did better than rust+ada+haskell, all without using memory and faster than an eyeblink.
  - amedvednikov 4y ago
    Can you elaborate? There was never a claim it doesn't use memory (although it does use a lot less memory than most compilers). The language is indeed fast, V compiles itself in 0.3 seconds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvP6wmcl_Sc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvP6wmcl_Sc
    - agumonkey 4y ago
      Are you the V designer ? is V compiled to native code or transpiled to C (then an actual compiler will make the work to emit native) ?
  - Rochus 4y 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.

taylorius 4y ago

That is a weird site. It's as if they're about to try to charge you for the actual info. on VLang. A real air of scamminess pervades - even though AFAIK it's entirely legit, of course.

pxeger1 4y ago

Previous discussons: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24481883 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24481883 (144 points, 191 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19403271 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19403271 (191 points, 182 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19526924 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19526924 (61 points, 101 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20229632 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20229632 (146 points, 137 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21296855 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21296855 (123 points, 91 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20250990 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20250990 (180 points, 155 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20258485 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20258485 (63 points, 33 comments)

Tozen 4y ago
You chose threads primarily from 2019. We are now in 2022. So threads and comments from 3 years ago are mostly not relevant. Some threads are even prior to Vlang ever being released (March 2019 comments versus release date of language in June 2019). To include persistently claiming Vlang is vaporware, despite it now having over 90 releases (at nearly a new one per week pace) and being well documented in terms of language and modules. https://github.com/vlang/v/releases https://github.com/vlang/v/releases (releases) https://modules.vlang.io/ https://modules.vlang.io/ (modules) https://github.com/vlang/v/blob/master/doc/docs.md https://github.com/vlang/v/blob/master/doc/docs.md (documentation)

amedvednikov 4y ago

If you'd like to check out more about V, here's the GitHub repo: https://github.com/vlang/v https://github.com/vlang/v Very thorough documentation: https://github.com/vlang/v/blob/master/doc/docs.md https://github.com/vlang/v/blob/master/doc/docs.md One of the coolest latest projects is the Vinix OS, written fully in V: https://github.com/vlang/vinix https://github.com/vlang/vinix It's a POSIX OS that already runs libc, bash, GCC, g++, and Doom.

richbell 4y ago
For anyone not aware, this is the creator of V. It would be nice if you were upfront about this in your posts or profile, especially when you jump in to dismiss people's complaints about your project. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25512003 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25512003
- ylluminate 4y ago
  Yes, Alex is awesome - sincerely. I hate it with jackarses run around spewing crap about people without chatting or getting to know people by spending some time in the community.
hackersreboot 4y ago
I actually did. I analysed as much as I could with major exams over my head. I am planning to try the os later. Also I would love if you could contact me at arpan@hackersreboot.tech for some talk.

bheadmaster 4y ago

Here are the summarized V features for anyone who dislikes salestalk: - small binaries and fast compilation - cross-platform support - cross-compilation - cross-platform drawing library (GDI+/Cocoa Drawing, OpenGL) - native GUI toolkits (V-UI) - value types - auto-free engine that adds necessary free() commands - C transpilation (both ways, allegedly emits human-readable C) - C foreign function interface ("V can call C Code and any language with C-interop can call V Code") - hot-code reloading (not mentioned how, but probably dynamic library hot swapping) - package manager - autoformatter - profiler - documentation-from-source generator - V-to-JavaScript/WASM transpilation - built-in testing framework - built-in web framework (vweb) - ORM ("you can just write V instead of SQL while interacting with databases") Some tools in pure V: Vinix - An open-source Operating System that can already run GCC, Bash, V etc. Volt - A 300Kb native desktop client for Slack, Discord, Skype, Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, and more. (only supports MacOS at the moment) VSQL - A single-file SQL database written in pure V with no dependencies. Gitly - Open-source light and fast alternative to GitHub/GitLab, written entirely in V. Vorum - Right now it's a very basic forum/blogging software, but in the future, it will be a full-featured light alternative to Discourse. The V forum runs on Vorum. Vgram - A bot library for Telegram Bot API.

lawl 4y ago
i'm pretty sure that half of these features don't work. Such as the famous "autofree" where everyone doubted it could work and the solution now was.... to drop in boehm-gc. for anyone unfamiliar with v, take everything on that list with a giant spoon full of salt.
- amedvednikov 4y ago
  autofree demo: V's compile time memory management demo. Running the Ved editor on an 8 MB file with 0 leaks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmB8ea8uLsM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmB8ea8uLsM
  - lawl 4y ago

kgeist 4y ago

Last time I checked V-Lang looked amazing on paper but on closer evaluation many of the claimed features were only planned, crashed the compiler on trivial inputs, or simply were half-baked and didn't deliver on the promises (things like syntax errors from the underlying C backend, memory leaks etc. because transpilation was straightforward and lacked proper checks, hence the fast compilation speed). A few months ago I superficially skimmed through their GitHub repo and it left an impression that it's still a toy language with same problems as back in 2020, although with some improvements (but it's just my impression), many ideas being borrowed from Go and Rust. From what I also found odd is that the author is overly fixated on their transpilation speed for some reason (i.e. IIRC citing V -> C translation only, without the C -> binary part), they have a few repos written in V and one of the main selling points there is compilation speed as well - probably at the expense of other features, because they don't do deep analysis (hence C compiler errors on trivial inputs). It struck me as something odd because I find memory safety, thread safety and overall stability more important than a few saved seconds of compilation. I will be more than happy to learn that I am wrong and the situation has considerably improved, but other than that infamous GitHub issue "The language is not what is promised", I haven't seen a more recent (as of 2022) objective, skeptical analysis of the language by someone from outside their community. Maybe someone has links?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
amedvednikov 4y ago
> citing V -> C translation only, without the C -> binary part Not really, here's a benchmark of V compiling itself in 0.3 seconds that includes all steps (including the C -> binary part) and results in the compiler binary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvP6wmcl_Sc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvP6wmcl_Sc This video is linked on the home page. > crashed the compiler on trivial inputs We have thousands of tests, lots of big projects written in V (V itself is 220k loc, Vinix OS, Ved editor, Gitly, vsql etc), and they all work fine, no compiler errors. Can you give an example of a trivial input resulting in a crash/C error? The infamous "The language is not what is promised" you referenced has claims like "there's no way V is written in V", and "there's no way to do json serialization without an AST". These things are simply not true.

sgt 4y ago

Great. We rewrote our backend into D, then Arc, then into Go, and most recently into Rust. If V-lang is as good as it sounds, we'll need to ditch thousands of lines of pristine Rust code. HN-driven development methodology really has no mercy. /s

hackersreboot 4y ago
I personally think Rust is one of the best and the most unique language in its form and will grow to play a far greater role in the dev world. I am just beginning to learn it and am most fascinated by it. Just published about "V" because new and independent ones like it also need our love and support to grow and mature as others have.

goy 4y ago

Will give a try once more ... Last time wasn't so great though.

Tozen 4y ago

Why was this misspelled? Shouldn't it be Vlang (https://vlang.io/ https://vlang.io/), not V-Lang?

hackersreboot 4y ago
Ok, so I am the author of the article and I wanted to put it as "V" but wasn't differentiating for example in search and "Vlang" just didn't feel good.
- Tozen 4y ago
  I kind of get what you mean, but the common practice is to spell it as Vlang, which other languages that are referred to by short names do too. Like Go, becomes Golang as oppose to Go-lang. But, we all have our preferences. Who knows, it might catch on to refer to it as V-Lang. It's your prerogative to do as you like, and it was great that you created the article and are into programming.
  - hackersreboot 4y ago
    Yeah, still very new to all this, also it was my first posting on HN and I haven't actually received any meaningful comments on any platform or any guidance about the conventions and stuff. If you check out the article there is only 1 comments there while here it is about 170 now so I am learning a lot.

hackersreboot 4y ago

Hey Guys, So I am the author of the article and it is about time I address the comments here. I just want to say that I just got to know about it, I used it and it felt good. I tested a lot of the features but ofc couldn't get them all. I know nothing of any controversies surrounding the language. Also, I am just starting out in writing so I might've not included some details or it might've looked like a "sales talk" but in all honesty I had written a section in the draft versions but forgot to include it. I am planning to write another post to address the issues of the language and my writing about it. Thanks for reading and commenting. I appreciate it and hope to use these comments to improve myself as both a researcher and a writer. Thanks again!

bheadmaster 4y ago
If I may offer a suggestion: Focus on what information you're trying to convey and try to say it in the minimum amount of words. Prefer sentences that convey information ("V is has a 10MB compiler" - we learned the size of V compiler) to sentences that don't ("V-lang is an extraordinarily powerful language that can help you create a variety of applications" - we learned nothing, since "powerful" is subjective, and all languages can be used to write applications). That will help you focus on communicating your ideas clearly and tersely, which will make your articles much more attractive to technical readers. Good luck with your research and writing!
- hackersreboot 4y ago
  Thanks for the tip! Will use it.