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Comment by v8dev123 | Hacker News Reader

I am attracted to the Zig syntax, but I don't like Kelly

Curious why someone wouldn't like Kelley- Is it because he shoots down feature additions a lot?

I don't know much about Kelley, but if the goal is to create a "C replacement", aggressively keeping the language surface area small seems like a reasonable way to go.

And even if you don't think that's right, we already have the large-surface area systems programing language experiment in Rust. Aren't we better off with Rust and Zig exploring clearly different paths for a C replacement than both of them trying the same things?

Exactly, this is why he sometimes comes off as a jerk, because he tells people stuff like "No, you can't add your virtual function table feature to Zig, OOP programming is a bad idea in a systems language."

Indeed. In this video he explains the reason why he made those choices:

https://youtu.be/Gv2I7qTux7g?t=120

All these programming language features require a lot of machinery, complicating the binary interfaces of the resulting software and preventing code reuse.

Simple, small languages getting complicated when used in large applications while complex languages become simple and easier when used in large applications.

That mostly seems correct, but Zig will be an interesting one to watch due to the approach of having powerful compiletime execution. I.e. Zig doesn't have generics in the traditional sense, but you can get them by writing normal code which creates types for you at compiletime. The promise would be that you can get more advanced features without adding complexity to the language, i.e. like in Rust where you have to basically understand the AST in depth to be able to write macros. We'll see if it pans out.

Also for instance Go has been able to stay relevant while staying very small. Complex languages can help with complex projects if there is a good program structure, but one advantage of simple languages is there is only so much of a mess which can be made if developers go a bit off the reservation.

Yeah this is not my experience. Enterprise distributed systems are much easier in erlang and elixir, which are simple languages, over java, which is not.

They are functional languages. There is difference.

He is childish. He had record breaking flame war in HN.

What was it about? Link?

I'm assuming that he's referring to this thread, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20229632

A key feature of a "flame war" is long chains of responses. By not responding to amedvednikov, AndyKelley did not participate in a flame war on that post. It was a call-out. His criticism was quite relevant at the time, because the article was a false release announcement, and the project was garnering a lot of attention (and taking people's money) by making outlandish claims, with (at the time) nothing to show for it.

There were many posts both in HN and outside HN including Github, Reddit, Twitter.

His criticism is not constructive. He had Linus style comments.

There is no such thing as "constructive criticism" of suspected fraud -- there were a bunch of red flags, and AK was not remotely alone in sounding the alarm. Do you have constructive criticism to offer, is AK still badgering AN, or are you just airing grievances about 2 year-old drama?

For the record this was my last public statement about V, which I made nearly 2 years ago: https://twitter.com/andy_kelley/status/1142503808901308418

ends with "I'm genuinely glad it turned out this way. Good luck on your endeavor and welcome to the programming languages club."

Thank you for building Zig. It's made a huge impression on me, especially the Road to Zig presentation.

> There is no such thing as "constructive criticism" of suspected fraud

You can criticize anyone constructively. What they are today is not what they are in the future. People can change even Andrew, but if something is repeated over and over, it is a sign of their personality.

I see his act as harassment. I know that Vlang had red flags, but I feel Russophobia or Jealousy in his actions. I looked through everything, but the guy didn't let the man talk and explain himself. So, the other side of the story is hushed up. It's like asking someone to prove their worth, otherwise they'll be killed. Naive Bayes can uncover many cases of fraud, but bias can turn things upside down.

I'd hope that Mr Andrew is not an Anarchist.

> You can criticize anyone constructively

Please, show us how that's done. Otherwise, please stop. AK's last word on the matter was rather cordial, and what you're doing here is toxic.

Care to elaborate on why?

vLang

He has gone greater length to tarnish this language creator. It shows me he is up to something and I don't like that.

I pretty much don't use Vlang, but I dislike the way Kelley behaved.

Yeah, he might have come on kind of strong against the V guy, but as I understand it there are some vapor-warey aspects to VLang (or were at the time he pointed them out).

He’s a great guy!

what or who is Kelly?

Andrew Kelley, the initiator of Zig

Edit: name spelling

Kelley btw

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