For what it's worth, there has been some progress on the language and the author has responded to past criticism. I've been following developments of the language for a few years now, and I'd love it if all the claims came to fruition. Since it's a work in progress, past criticism doesn't necessarily apply -- leaving me to wonder "is it not bullshit yet?" Since the author has a habit of overpromising and even declaring things finished before even starting on them, and newcomers might not know what to think, his claims warrant regular scrutiny. It appears that V is still for vapor.

> Since the author has a habit of overpromising and even declaring things finished before even starting on them

Do you have any examples?

TFA has plenty. Don't let yourself get mired in fights on the orange site. Instead, spend the energy fixing bugs and you'll meet less criticism in the future.

I think that V developers and contributors are well within their rights to address criticisms of their work by detractors. Additionally, the OP has ran away from engaging in debate about various errors and opinions from their review, in an apparent attempt to leave an arguably underhanded one-sided negative impression (which includes suggesting not to use).

So we have a situation where the OP created a hit piece with no feedback from V developers or its community, and detractors are elaborating on it, that leaves few other public options to address it.

> I think that V developers and contributors are well within their rights to address criticisms of their work by detractors.

Indeed you are, but realize that you are also ambassadors for your language, and engaging in petty language war nonsense on public forums doesn’t leave anyone looking great. That’s a problem for V moreso than your detractors, because you are the ones building a reputation for yourselves, while your detractors are relatively anonymous and fungible. They can act anyway they want and it won’t follow them around.

On the other hand, everything said here by Vlangers will stick to V and will be brought up on the next thread. You don’t want the reputation of being fanboys who will descend on any thread about V and zealously argue about it for days. But that’s the reputation you’re building here, and it has nothing to do with the behavior or actions of anyone else. That’s something you are actively choosing to do, and it doesn’t make you or your community look good.

Again, no one looks great in threads like these, but most people here aren’t building a reputation. V is building a reputation. What do the posts by Vlangers here say about V? It’s not exactly a shining advertisement for your community.

Yeah, because V supporters should stay silent, and allow detractors free rein to say anything and continuously smear the language and its developers at will.

Funny, I notice the supporters of other languages don't seem to follow such advice. They make strong defenses and advocate for the languages they like, anywhere and everywhere, including on even this thread.

If anything, V supporters might want to be more vocal and show their support (which can be done in various ways), to counter what's going on. It doesn't work to stay quiet and let bullies keep slapping a person around. They incorrectly interpret it as a sign to continue.

Listen, you do you. I’m just letting you know how you come across to others. Maybe you think you’re defending V here but you’re doing the language and community a grave disservice, IMO. Others have given the V community the same advice, and have been for years, so it’s not just me.

But as long as you’re here on HN could you please at least follow this community’s guidelines? Several of your posts have been flagged for containing personal attacks, and accusations of bad faith and gaslighting are not well-received here. If you’re going to continue commenting, please just make your comments substantive. A strong defense of V would not include accusing others of bad faith because they didn’t file a bug report of GitHub.

Listen, you do you, as well.

Those people who are open-minded about programming languages, can make up their own minds about V. I'm quite sure their decisions will not be solely dependent on HN or me, if they even come by here.

And sure, I will heed the warning to watch my back on HN, to include the downvoting and flagging.

OP made a good faith effort hoping to find a sweet and working language, and the current implementation fell short of its long-advertised promises and accomplishments. That you're calling it a "hit piece" is telling. Y'all are well within your rights to waste your time arguing. I'm just saying that it's a waste of time.

Mostly all this post has is some type checker bugs that have already been fixed (of course the article will never be updated now that they're fixed) and using -prod for measuring compiler speed, when it's explicitly mentioned on the website it's for non optimized builds only.

And nonsense like setting array length on creation is a terrible idea. Go with its `make([]int, 5)` must be a terrible scam language as well.

If he had a good faith, he'd report these issues via GitHub, and they'd get fixed within a week.

So, regarding your claim that I have "a habit of overpromising and even declaring things finished before even starting on them".

Please, list them here. 1.2.3.

Must be easy if there's a habit.

> Mostly all this post has is some type checker bugs that have already been fixed (of course the article will never be updated now that they're fixed)

Alex, all of these are still open right not and are not fixed:

- "No mut m := x mutability check" https://github.com/vlang/v/issues/14803

- "closure capture names are not checked for uniqueness with the closure parameter names" https://github.com/vlang/v/issues/14787

- "segfault in auto string method generated for []&int{len:1} (does not check for 0 pointers)" https://github.com/vlang/v/issues/14786

> using -prod for measuring compiler speed

My article does not do that. I included all the steps used and the 1,000,000 line tests use tcc and not -prod.

> And nonsense like setting array length on creation is a terrible idea. Go with its `make([]int, 5)` must be a terrible scam language as well.

V allows the user to override length field which is used in bounds-checking with no validation. That's the problem.

Please stop lying and just be honest about the state of V.

Given the behavior of you, Tozen and ylluminate on this thread, I have zero interest in interacting with the V "community" again.

> V allows the user to override length field which is used in bounds-checking with no validation. That's the problem.

No it doesn't, it can only be set on init.

Please stop lying and just be honest about the state of V.

You never interacted with the community, never reported the bugs, never discussed these issues on Discord. Gotta create a new account and spread disinfo.

Seriously? Talk to me privately if you have any actual demonstrable problems with me. It's not like I don't know who you are, but I'm not directly calling you out here for your desire to remain anonymous.

If the bugs are fixed, put 'em in your CI and blog about it. Taking my own advice here, I've got better things to do than argue with you.

So you're going to slander me, make a very strong accusation, call V (the work of hundreds of contributors) a "vapor", and when asked for a single proof you just say "I don't have time for this"?

What a nice character you are.

I've been arguing on the internet longer than you've been alive. I don't claim to be nice, but here is a gift: in time, either you'll learn not to waste your time in this manner and let your results speak for themselves, or you'll fade away to insignificance. (here I am, insignificant, and breaking my own rule)

Again, you slander me and hundreds of contributors, make strong accusations without any proofs, and now you're saying some crap about being old and that's who you are.

Like I said, it's already pretty clear what kind of character you are.

Nowhere did the OP state he came upon V in good faith to be helpful or seeking improvements, but rather starts with the position of whether or not it is worth it (setting up a position to dissuade). Then blasts the language in his summary and opinion (and who is he?), with a non recommendation. Never consults with the V community or opens any bug reports. He uses a throwaway name and account, then runs away from any attempt to be engaged by the V developers over errors and opinions in his review. Looks like a hit piece to me.

Tozen, since no one has spelled it out for you: I am not obligated to sit at my keyboard refreshing the page constantly, waiting for your latest comment. I was here for 6 hours after posting and responded to many comments including multiple of yours where you continuously insinuated ill intent from me because I didn't give your pet programming language a recommendation.

The V project should feel free to pull any bug reports they want out of my blog post (I see they've already done so multiple times). From the votes on the comment section here, I can it's obvious to everyone how dysfunctional the V community is which explains a lot about the state of the project. I will not be interacting with you again.

You create a new account here to post your newly created "blog" with this attack on V 0.2 (a pre 1.0 language which you forget to mention) which is mostly based on some type checker bugs (that could've been reported in fixed within a week) and nonsense like "setting array length on creation is a terrible idea". (Go with its `make([]int, 5)` must be a terrible scam language as well.)

And you have the audacity to call the V community dysfunctional.

I believe I know who the OP is and it's a very sad situation of simple hurt feelings from largely misunderstanding. It's a sad situation actually, but such is life and differences of cultures and human interaction. I feel bad for the OP to have had to have felt so badly that they felt the necessity to post this hit piece vs trying to really address the issues that other community members have gathered from it as actual issues to resolve. So sad.

You made a very strong accusation.

Please list the things that were declared finished before even starting on them.

I think everyone wants a "Rust but better" language to exist, and that very well might be V in 5 years, but Rust wasn't advertising features as 'completed' years before they were implemented/stable and neither should V. Continuing to point out the design issues will either get the marketing claims removed (just throw up a roadmap!) or articles like this will be used to show V's progress in a distant future.

I wouldn't bet a single dollar on V improving to any qualitative level. It's been a surprisingly large transpiling hack. Graydon Hoare had some PLT knowledge before going on doing Rust, it's not just feature names and potential impl.

What are the qualitative levels in your opinion?

The V compiler is self hosting for example, there are useful examples done in the main repo, people are using it for writing web servers.

What it should do, to "qualify", and to qualify in what?

Formal semantics

> wants a "Rust but better" language to exist, and that very well might be V in 5 years . . .

How can anyone possibly believe this?? What is the motivation?? V is a `README` full of desires, and a source tree full of incompetence. There is no concrete or technical evidence that can support this optimism. Zig is a serious project. Go is a serious project. Rust is a serious project. V is, obviously, an un-serious project.

I assure you, that V is a very serious project, and its README is not full of desires, whatever that means.

As for the source tree full of incompetence - that may be so, if you can help, you are welcome to make PRs to improve it.

As incompetently written as it is, it is capable of compiling itself, and quickly, unlike some others.

Everyone wants that? Not even everyone wants something like Rust. But I doubt that everyone who programs in Rust (and like it somewhat) want Rust-but-better (when that entails learning a completely different language, at least).

A lot of people want it which is why V is so popular despite not really working well

A lot of people want to go to Heaven.

There’s some value to people that don’t refresh the front page 10 times a day. I’ve only ever seen the language mentioned in passing and saw the shiny website, but not that it’s all utterly bs. Also as the author said apparently there’s been claims of improvement since the last debunking post, and it seems like it’s still vapourware.

I have no horse in the race, and having never seen the controversy, it does seem suspicious that the language author is making money off of claims that simply aren’t true. The amount of stars on GitHub compared to actual activity on comparable repos does indicate that the marketing is working though, the claims being made are taken at face value, not the WIPs that they actually are.

I too can dream of a perfect language, but it doesn’t mean I should put up a website claiming that I’ve actually made it and it’s real.

I'm personally holding out some hope that it'll eventually live up to its marketing claims - which means that I'm interested in seeing whether or not it has progressed in that direction in the last 3 years.

Have a look at the GitHub repo, it’s very active and there are clearly some passionate people putting a lot of work into it. So it’s worth looking at the language again every now and then.

Cryptocurrencies are also full of ‘passionate’ people. Doesn’t change that it’s all a bigger-fool scam.