Comment by manofmanysmiles
2 years ago
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?
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
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
[2]: https://jalopnik.com/elon-musk-tesla-self-driving-cars-anniv...
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.
The claims, and the ways V implemented them (as of the 2022 article), feel very much like the famous HTML regex answer on Stack Overflow.
None of the bugs in the first article are relevant today.
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.
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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.
I think the reason the word "scam" became attached is because those outrageous and frequent claims were attached to receiving large sums of money.
That particular word was used back when V was not yet really open-sourced and only the playground and prebuilt binary was available [1]. The author falsely stated (among others) that it was already open-sourced, and while I believe it was a simple misunderstanding the reaction was not really far-fetched back then. That specific claim was retracted once the compiler was properly open-sourced [2].
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20251706
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I actually forgot about that, what did they do? Ask for Patreon contributions?
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All open-source programming languages are allowed to get or ask for donations and have sponsors, not just the languages that one is a fan of.
It's also ethically wrong to engage in falsely labeling or making false accusations, such as "scam" or "vaporware". Particularly, when the actual intent or agenda is that such persons are detractors or competitors from rival languages.
Lastly, various financial supporters of the V language have even come on HN to tell and explain how proud they are of the language and the progress it has made. Despite detractors and competitors, V is still making fantastic progress, and that's great to see.
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There were no solid arguments this was a scam, whatever that means.
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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.
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.
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.
What response?
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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..
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.
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.
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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!
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.
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.
So they are young and foolish but motivated and talented.
I can live with that.
It makes the project look less professional, or legitimate, but that's about it.
There were no impossible claims.
Imho features are non-features until they work. As described. Reliably.
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.
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For context, this is the lead developer of V.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31061295
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.
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?
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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.
> 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.
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.
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They got lot of push back because what the core devs were describing Vlang to be was technically close to impossible, and their implementation was missing lot of properties they were advertising. If you would look at their sources or try out V when they released it you would have seen how outrageous their claims were.
There were no close to impossible/missing features.
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> 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
How can you know that the wrongs are misleading if you've never even tried the language?
> 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?
> Endless bickering leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
Fair enough. But then, you should know false advertising by the language maintainer leaves an even bitterer one.
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