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Comment by n42

1 day ago

I see so much controversy every time V comes up; can someone explain why, without devolving into name calling and personal attacks? What specific design choices or implementation details are contentious, and what legitimate concerns exist beyond interpersonal conflicts?

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n42

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andrewflnr  1 day ago

Having only watched the discussion: The main problem seems to be grossly inflated claims about its capabilities. As in, the docs say it already does X Y and Z, and when you try them they plainly don't work. And then the creator starts with the personal attacks when you point this out.

detaro  1 day ago

When it launched it proudly claimed to do a lot of things, some of which most people would consider still open research questions. Unsurprisingly, it didn't actually do these things or have a concrete plan of achieving them, and they didn't handle people pointing that out very well. Some other language developers were unhappy about the support V gathered based on these claims vs languages that were further along but honest about what they actually had.

(I have no idea what the current state is)

  • arp242  20 hours ago

    > they didn't handle people pointing that out very well

    I think that's a fair thing to say. But in all honesty, the people pointing that out were not exactly polite about it, to put it mildly.

    I never really looked at V myself and have no opinion, but I do know unpleasant behaviour when I see it and quite a few of the people "pointing out" some of the shortcomings of V were engaging in it.

baranul  3 hours ago

Most of it looks like unprofessionalism among language creators, throwing haymakers at a competitor. Of course languages have significant technical differences, but that also pertains to their different goals, purposes, and users.

shakna  1 day ago

V... Overpromised, and underdelivered, on what it could do. Promised complete Type Safety, before the type checker was even implemented, for example.

As for concerns... The main developer is a concern. Hard to trust them to support the language well, with some of the... Well, tantrums. This isn't aimed at a personal attack. But it is very hard to describe their responses in another manner.

This [0] thread on HN covers some of all of the above.

But, probably also important to point out that V and its drama have had dang threaten to ban the topic altogether [1]. There's a lot of drama.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37335249

  • n42  1 day ago

    Oh. I fear that I have unwittingly summoned HN demons.

    • -__---____-ZXyw  1 day ago

      Yes, you seem to have done so.

      If, of course, by "demons" you mean people who write nicely formatted, polite, well-written responses attempting to answer your question fully, including links to further reading.

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