Every language designer takes things they like about some languages and leaves things they don't like.
I think there's a difference between a critical generalization of a community and the mindset behind it and how that relates to the language (without weighing in on how legitimate that criticism is), and a direct accusation that one individual did a specific bad thing.
That's why I said "communities" and not "languages". Every programming language has a wide set of people who use it. You can always find some people who constantly say bad things about other languages. You can also find people who are interested in the different trade offs of the language. I use languages which are technically interesting, and then I engage with the parts of the community which are interested in finding the best solutions to actual problems.
And guess what? Most of the Zig and Rust community are, in my experience, way more focused on solving real problems than to push their language at all cost. Both /r/rust and /r/zig will often recommend different languages. I mean, this was the most upvoted comment around how to convince someone's boss to use Rust over Python: https://old.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/14a7vgo/how_to_convin....
Nobody said they do that
That was truly foul. On top of that, begged readers to give their money to Zig. Clearly some have no limits on what to say and do against other languages or to sell their language.
That's why whatever bad things a creator or evangelist says about another language, people shouldn't just swallow, and instead take with a grain of salt and some skepticism.
Is it because, as the leader of a language, he shouldn't be making "attacks" against other languages? Because, as far as V being a fraud, he was 100% correct.
Actually, yes. Not only from the angle of common decency or adhering to a code of conduct, but as a matter of professionalism and setting the example for followers.
> as far as V being a fraud...
That is a provably false claim from competitors, who should not be engaging in such activity.
Paying supporters[1][2][3] (ylluminate, gompertz, etc...) of the V language have even gone on record at HN, to clearly state such competitor or evangelist claims are false, and that they are happy with the language.
Not only can such competitor generated claims be seen as false, through direct V supporter refutation, but by the visible progress of the project as a whole. Over the years, the V language repo continually amasses thousands of stars and hundreds of contributors, that can be plainly seen on GitHub. It is a significantly large and successful project. To pretend or argue otherwise, is very disingenuous. People are there, because they like using Vlang[4].
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31801287
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31801262
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27441848
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39503446
Many links paint a picture of constant false advertising, even deception.
I don't find this an unfair judgment but rather an observation.
I think this naturally arises from the language claiming to be "a programming language designed for robustness, optimality, and clarity" (See for instance https://www.recurse.com/events/localhost-andrew-kelley)
If you feel that this is an optimal programming language that gives more robustness and clarity than other languages, then it's natural to be preachy about it.
This is similar to Rust being sold as safe language, where similarly the proponents of Rust feel that the advantages of Rust need to be spread.
As a contrast, Odin focuses on "joy of programming" as its main goal, and the author does not make any claims of the language having killer features to choose it over something else.
However, it seems to be successful in that new users tend to remark how pleasant and fun it is to program in the language.
Edit: Someone already asked: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43572190
> Also, there is a lot of "I discovered Zig and it's finally showing me how to program" echoed as well.
So, did you try Zig? How did you find it? Did it show you a new way to program? Or were you already aware of this way? Or do you think it's not a good way? What did you find interesting? What features did you steal because they were good? What do you think is overrated? These are the questions I'm interested in from other programming language designers!
> As a contrast, Odin focuses on "joy of programming" as its main goal, and the author does not make any claims of the language having killer features to choose it over something else.
And that's a fair thing to say! You can say that C3 is just a slightly better C and doesn't have any other killer feature. I'm just not sure why you need to talk negatively about other languages.
However, my impression was obviously coloured by being around 45 at the time and I was used to program in many different programming languages. Plus I grew up with BASIC, Pascal and C.
There's going to be quite a different experience for someone coming from Go/JS/Java and venturing into low level programming for the first time!
That is not to say that all of the people being enthusiastic about Zig is coming from those particular languages, but I think that C is considered a scary language for many people, so C alternatives tend to attract people from higher level languages to a higher degree than C itself.
When I eventually started on C3, I incorporated some features from Zig. I ended up removing all of them as I found them to be problematic: untyped literals combined with implicit widening, unsigned error on overflow, special arithmetic operators for wrap, saturation.
However, I am very grateful that Zig explored these designs.
From Odin I ended up including its array programming, but for vectors only. I also adopted Odin's use of distinct types.
But most of the C3 features are GCC C extensions plus ASTEC inspired macros.
Indeed, Zig has interesting features that make you think in ways you won't make when using C, like an ability to offload large amount of computation to comptime code, or using different allocators at different times (super simple arena allocation per a game frame, for instance).
"A language that's not changing the way you think about programming is not worth knowing."
As for both C3 and Odin, they've been around for many years, yet don't even have a Wikipedia page and have relatively low numbers on GitHub. That comes across as more time spent pushing or hyping on HN, than those languages being considered a truly viable alternative by the general public. Just weird, because you would think it should be the other way around.
Talking about GitHub numbers, we can look at VLang, which had an astronomical trajectory initially due to overpromising and selling a language that would solve long standing issues such as no manual memory management but no GC needed etc.
Such viral popularity creates a different trajectory from organically growing word of mouth such as in the Odin case.
Vlang also has a Wikipedia page.
Is this then proof that it is a viable alternative to the general public? This is what you argue.
The use of negative catch phrases and envious put downs by competitors of Vlang has no bearing on the Wikipedia process. They will not care about any competition or politics among programming languages. The language either meets their standard and proves its case, that it should have a page, or not. Just like Zig, Nim, Rust, etc... have done.
This idea is what I criticize.
Not to mention that Wikipedia’s notability criteria is increasingly harder to live up to as tech news gets more and more decentralized.
It is not enough for notability that the Odin author is interviewed in various podcasts. It’s not enough for the language to be used in a leading visual effects tool and so on. These are not valid references for Wikipedia.
So how did Vlang achieve it? By commissioning books on the language(!). Once there was a book on V (nevermind no one bought it) it fulfilled the Wikipedia criteria. There are discussions about this on various V forums.
So let go of the idea that Wikipedia is proving anything.
The first book written about V (5 years ago), looks to have been a total surprise to the community and its creator, because it was written in Japanese[1]. The 2nd book written about V has clearly sold well and received very good reviews[2]. It's author had no connection with V development and there are interviews about him. A 3rd book[3], which was for academic circles, is not primarily about V. It, however, uses the programming language for random number generation and explanations on the subject.
The point I'm getting at, is marketing one's self on HN or podcasts as a viable alternative versus being an actual viable alternative used by the general public. It's one thing to act like or say your popular, it's another thing to be popular. There is a qualitative difference, that is even picked up on by Wikipedia, which is arguably why Odin or C3 don't have a page or the numbers on GitHub.
Despite any misdirected anger or envy, that problem has nothing to do with other languages like V or even Zig. It's up to fans and interested third parties of that language to show and report widespread usage.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08BKJDRFR (Book about V (Vlang) in 2020 and in Japanese)
[2] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09FKK3JL7 (Book about V (Vlang) in 2021, highly rated, and sold well)
[3] https://doi.org/10.52305%2FCVCN5241 (Book is part of an academic series, 2023, and uses V (Vlang))
First, "future prospect", is a claim almost any language can try to make. Unless it is a language created by a well known corporation (Carbon for example) or famous programmer (Jai or Mojo), such claims lack a foundation. A new language can really only make the argument of truly being a future prospect, if it comes from something already successful or famous.
Thus, for most newer languages, GitHub is a valid metric. Not just stars, but the number of contributors and activity associated with the repo. Other things like books on Amazon by third parties or articles about the language in well known magazines, would clearly count too. These things are measurables, beyond just hype.
This is very much not productive and you’re now part of spreding this narrative. There’s plenty of people out there who has «figured out» and appreciate both Zig and Rust without becoming attached to it.
I’m interested in communities which looks towards other languages for inspiration and admiration, not judgements and alienation.