Comment by crazywulf
3 years ago
I do not understand the hatred, reminds me of the last article of this kind. This language is in alpha. I've been in the Discord community since 2020 and no one would think of recommending the language for production use because it's WIP. Sure the goals are high and a lot of things don't work yet or are shaky but that's the way it is ATM. The wording of the article is simply not appropriate for the fact that the language is not even published. The community is small, active and also very friendly. I had a very good experience with Vlang in 2020 when I used it for Advent of Code and actually always got help when I got stuck with some bug.
I don't think this article contains any hatred. There is absolutely nothing wrong with an unfinished language - take a look at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31775216 (2 days ago) for an example.
This article criticises V for presenting itself as a usable language, when it definitely isn't, with all these features which don't work.
I don't think it is fair to criticize the language like that without having "0.2 ALPHA" in the title of the ycombinator title and the article. In fact the hole article does not contain the word "alpha" or explaining the state once. It reads like that the language is expected to be ready and that all features need to work now, but they don't.
"At this time, I would not recommend spending time on V. I would also be very cautious when taking claims made by the authors at face value."
Also this point. Why does he recommend people to avoid the language. These people need contributors which help them to improve their language. It is open source. Maybe it is because I'm not native, maybe you are right.
I'm also curious if the author even tried to interact with the community/developers to get his examples to work. I'm not that good of a developer to rate the things he is claiming, so I don't know.
Hopefully he created some bugs on github so the developers have at least the chance to fix the issues he is talking about.
I don't really care that they don't write "unfinished alpha" in big letters (although it would be nice if they did).
I care that they claim it has "no undefined behaviour", "as fast as C", "has generics", when these things are simply not true.
To use Ante as an example again, they literally have a checklist in the README, listing what is and isn't implemented yet.
> Why does he recommend people to avoid the language. These people need contributors which help them to improve their language. It is open source.
This is why the "critic" can also be interpreted (or misinterpreted) as another attack. It's one thing if this was a blog evaluating the claims of multiple programming languages, but it being a very specific and dedicated critic of V, looks strange.
To include it uses the term "we" a lot in the summary, as if it was a collaboration effort by a group of programmers directed at V. It is unknown who are the "we" being referred to.
"We’re able to create a null pointer (V reference) with no compiler errors or warnings."
"We weren’t able to shadow local variables."
If the evaluation was in the spirit of improving the language (as it is still alpha) or pointing out things that need to be addressed, then one would expect it to be presented as various issues or bugs on V's GitHub. There would not be any blindsiding or surprise, but an exchange between the evaluator(s) and V's developers and contributors.
Parts of the evaluation and summary are debatably subjective. The categories of purity, sum types, generics, speed, and compiling are among them. So getting direct feedback from the developers and contributors of V would have been much more fair and helpful.
> I'm also curious if the author even tried to interact with the community > Hopefully he created some bugs on github
He didn't.
But I understand what you are saying. Back when I tried the language I expected an unfinshed state because of the version number, but I guess they should make more clear that the features are the goal and not the state what is working currently.
Funny, I've never had any misgivings or unfulfilled expectations so far. I suppose my "defaults" are a bit different than others. Very disheartening to see the world in such a state as people feel its necessary to waste times with negative activities vs trying to build and uplift.
This is strong point that is conveniently overlooked. That the language is alpha and 0.2.4, should be clue enough that it is a WIP by default (at this point), by those that have actually tried it.
Valid criticisms of the language should arguably be more directed towards its issues on GitHub (https://github.com/vlang/v/issues), in addition to any blog or article, where the contributors and developers can address them.
When approached correctly, and not in an adversarial and combative way, I've seen the V community be very friendly and helpful.
I speak English proficiently I speak Chinese with no mistakes I can bend pipes with my bare hands.
Then when you speak to me you hear me speak Chinese well, then you see I can’t bend pipes nor speak English proficiently.
I presented myself to you and two of my self introduction claims were lies or half lies.
If you then feel like I lied to you then my answer is that I’m studying (Alpha)
This is what V was like 3 years ago and doesn’t seem like it has changed.
By the way, the collection of snippets of V (Vlang) examples on Rosetta Code has become quite significant. People are demonstrating how to use it over there as well.
https://rosettacode.org/wiki/Category:Vlang
I'd be curious to see your AoC solutions in V, if you have them kicking around?
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