Christine Dodrill's early assessment of the language might be of interest here: https://xeiaso.net/blog/v-vaporware-2019-06-23
She doesn't pull any punches, but I think she was quite prescient in capturing the vibe of the project.
She doesn't pull any punches, but I think she was quite prescient in capturing the vibe of the project.
I really don't get the purpose of someone exaggerating the capabilities of their language, to the point of outright lies.
(Also, "nowadays" must stretch out to many decades if you're including Java!)
Fearless concurrency.
Java also promised memory safety. I still get Null pointer segfaults in Java code.
> null pointer segfaults They are not segfaults and are not related to memory safety. Segfault stands for "segmentation fault", not "runtime exception". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segmentation_fault
"Fearless concurrency" is more subjective, but rust code (again with the caveat that there isn't unsafe code, or unsafe cose upholds all unvariants) dows eliminate certain classes of concurrency bugs. Although, dreadlocks are definitely possible, and certain kinds of race conditions could potentially exist. But I don't know of any claims that concurrency bugs are impossible in rust.
and looking at their compiler it's clear why. stack-allocation of vars is fine and dandy, but comparable to vlang's famous unbounded autofree system. alloca() is dangerous for a reason.
unsafe vec, really?? mutexes in threads, really?? concurrent blocking IO in this decade??
also read their docs about their unsafeties, and concurrency deficiencies. compare that to the docs of real safe languages. you won't find such chapters, because safe languages are safe, not just almost-safe.
First of all, most of those erorors are about stack overflows in the compiler not the compiled program. And secondly, stack overflow isn't a memory safety issue like, say use-after-free, uninitialized variables, data races, etc. If you allow recursive function calls, you can't really prevent stack overflows.
> alloca() is dangerous for a reason
Rust doesn't have an equivalent of alloca.
> unsafe vec, really??
I'm not sure what you are referring to here.
> mutexes in threads, really??
What does this have to do with memory safety? The only language with threads I know of that doesn't have mutexes is Erlang. And rust Mutexes are better than mutexes in most other languages because you can't access the data protected by the mutex at all, unless you have a lock. And the lock is automatically freed when it goes out of scope.
> concurrent blocking IO in this decade??
Again, what does this have to do with memory safety? And for many applications blocking IO is fine. You don't always need the performance of async I/O which adds complexity. And if you do need async i/o, rust has options there too (just not in the standard library).
> also read their docs about their unsafeties, and concurrency deficiencies.
The Rust Programming Language book has one section of one chapter on "unsafety", and that is specifically on using the `unsafe` escape hatch. Yes, there is a separate book about how to write a `unsafe` code that maintains rust's safety garantees. but that is limited to `unsafe` blocks, which in many cases you can just avoid using. As compared to c or c++, where the entire language is full of potential safety problems.
> compare that to the docs of real safe languages. you won't find such chapters, because safe languages are safe, not just almost-safe.
What "real safe languages" would those be? Can they be used in all the same domains as rust?
https://github.com/vlang/v/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+sta...
I've never had one in 3 years.
edit: ah, you meant Rust
I doubt the rust team will try to "fix" that.
Keep in mind /dev/mem is just a convention, I can just mknod it at any place in the filesystem I want. I can even put a FUSE overlay on it that would turn it into a regular file instead of a device node, so you wouldn't have any possible way of telling what you're about to do.
There is no "defense" against /dev/mem, that's just something you don't do as a sane programmer.
> Copyright 2012-2022 Xe Iaso (Christine Dodrill).
[correction] on their GitHub page I see: Please call me (order of preference): Xe/xer, They/them or She/her please.
[edit] obscure to have your pronoun also be your name (or maybe your title?). Or maybe it is all just satire, given: "I am an ordained minister with the Church of the Latter-day Dude. This allows me to officiate religious ceremonies in at least the United States." - https://dudeism.com
I'm also quite seriously an ordained minister.
The whole point of a person's name is to sufficiently differentiate them from the other persons. Using pronoun as name (or vice versa) just totally negates this goal.
At this point, all of it is basically designed to further confuse and only create a very monthly chaotic outcome for everyone.
At least stick to the current evaluation (or attack), which is more relevant, and make points from there. But, keep in mind that these attacks are on a young language that isn't 1.0 yet, so even with this we are talking about a moving target. The language is still evolving.
People are poking holes in V because its claims are unfounded, not because they've decided they're in competition with the language. A simple "work in progress" sign on the features in question would draw a lot of fire away from the language and its creator.
> Features indicated to be incomplete/work in progress/unimplemented will be mentioned as such.
Indicating on the vlang.io homepage how much of the language has yet to be realized would go a long way in my opinion.
[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20190624052507/https://vlang.io/
[2]: https://twitter.com/andy_kelley/status/1142503808901308418
Credit to both you and him for the passion and effort put in. I just think his excitement bubbles over into an unfortunate way of communicating (lets call it cute)
Communication is something you're excellent at, in a large part due to your truthfulness
I just think vlang is living in and expressing dreams and visions. Which I agree has problems, but creating a language is an aspirational endeavour
One reason that people highlight older criticism is because it's useful to examine past behavior, past promises, and contrast them to current behavior and current promises. If V is going to improve its reputation, it's going to do it by (a) making good on the promises it can, (b) coming clean on the promises it can't, and (c) offer a clear win for some distinguishing featureset. Badgering people to shut up about the past isn't on that list.
AFAIK your stated reason for the silence is not accurate. Andy’s criticisms were always based on V making claims that no one could evaluate because it was closed source/unreleased (and then used those claims to solicit money from people). Once V was made open source, those criticisms no longer applied, as things like TFA could be written.
Edit: ack, and I misspelled his name and the edit window closed
I'm not touching a language developed by folks who don't see a problem in scamming users, sorry.
This question is answered in the comment you just replied to:
> She doesn't pull any punches, but I think she was quite prescient in capturing the vibe of the project.
I also despise how many people want to shit on this new language before it even takes off. Why are so many people frothing at the chance to disparage this language and it's author? Never seen something like this.
I dont really care about the language. I've tried it a couple times and it's nothing special (to me) so I moved on, but I definitely understand where the hate comes from. The author essentially lied for at least months about his project to get financial support.
Quick edit: to actually add to the discussion, I think the weirdest thing about V is the odd support it does get. Most projects, especially compilers, with as much controversy as V would never get any support. I'm very curious what its proponents are using it for and why they choose V over pretty much any other language.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmB8ea8uLsM
no one has been scammed, whatever that means in opensource development
So, where can I download the version of V with non-nullable references, no uninitialized memory, no mutation without call-site mutability annotations, that can compile 1M loc/sec, and a functional autofree?
If I'm buying a sandwich advertised as "no cockroaches", then I think it's appropriate to be pissed off about there being bugs in my sandwich, especially when it's clear that the sandwich shop knows all about the bugs in the sandwich and they just prefer to falsely claim their absence.
I would have no complaints if the developers would just describe these things as ambitious goals they haven't actually accomplished yet, instead of declaring that they've completed work they know they have not completed.
Features are explicitly listed as working, partially done, and not yet implemented. You're really truly allowed to say "This doesn't work yet, but we're working on...", and it is legitimate to criticize people for choosing to lie instead.
> V avoids doing unnecessary allocations in the first place by using value types, string buffers, promoting a simple abstraction-free code style.
> Right now allocations are handled by a minimal and well performing GC until V's autofree engine is production ready.
It's because of all the lying. The author keeps claiming that their language has features that it definitely does not have.
Why do so many people consider "I checked several notable claims, and most of them are false" to be some kind of hateful disparaging attack?
Shouldn't be hard, if "most claims" are false according to you.
https://mawfig.github.io/2022/06/18/v-lang-in-2022.html https://xeiaso.net/blog/v-vaporware-2019-06-23
You can see that V is actually as fast as is claimed on the website:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvP6wmcl_Sc
Same with other points from the author that publicly claimed that "V has to die".
Like I said, if "most claims are false" on vlang.io, as you claim, it shouldn't be hard to list 3 of them here.
Actual quote from this comment:
Personally I think it is something that should be ignored until it dies into obscurity
There are good ideas there, but if you sell someone the moon and give them a block of cheese that's kind of a scam
This is very different from saying most of the statements on the website are false, which would be a completely absurd accusation, as you correctly point out.
The summary section is literally a list of specific claims and the author's evaluation of these specific claims: https://mawfig.github.io/2022/06/18/v-lang-in-2022.html#summ...
My comment was refuting that these posts are not "frothing at the chance to disparage this language and it's author". I stand by my refutation that these posts are appropriate, specific, relevant criticism, and that they cite specific evidence for their specific disagreements with the stated claims.
You are certainly welcome to disagree with this author's claims! That sounds like appropriate, specific, relevant criticism of this author's claim. Would you say that you are "frothing at the chance to disparage this author"? I don't.
I'll admit to some satire in my top comment on this subthread. By saying "It's because of all the lying", I was partly satirically reacting to what I saw as inappropriate hyperbole in "frothing at the mouth to disparage". I broadly agree that the V website is fine, just a little distasteful by my aesthetic.
If you think it's fine for V documentation and advocacy to overstate their case and not mention significant gaps in what they claim the language has, I can't see how you'd call it inappropriate for other people who care about the production-suitability of a language to explicitly document what they believe to be major gaps in the production-readiness of a language claiming to have important safety features people want to rely on.
For some context on my interpretation of these posts, I think about how many times over my career I've had to deal with software that claims to have "just a few bugs" on something important, but somehow the bugs never actually get fixed, and the fully general solution just never appears. These things really are genuinely difficult to design and build a fully general solution for. It takes time and engineering work, as we can see by these people finding a lot of holes as soon as they looked.
As an engineer, I've had a lot of frustration from dealing with bugs and outages and maintenance issues that can be significantly improved by a good language. That's why I care so much about really wanting these things that V claims to have, and also why I care so much about the details of how exactly the claims currently fall short. It's so easy to overpromise, so I'm skeptical of any marketing for a new still-in-development tool that just claims to have solutions, with no big disclaimers about how they're still incomplete.
Regarding your specific example, the problem that's being implied by the "setting array length on creation is a terrible idea" is that every time you're setting an array length in V, any mistake will not be caught by the compiler, and can be an exploitable memory safety violation. Memory safety vulnerabilities really truly have been and continue to be a serious ongoing source of serious computer security problems. V making various memory safety claims like no null and no reading from uninitialized memory, and then that being trivially broken on literally the most obvious possible violation, without even any safety marker to make sure it's obvious that this is a place where you can violate memory safety, means that it's just not a language I want to use.
I agree that these posts are very passionate. I assert that these posts come from a passionate interest in what V aspires to be, and they hold V to a high standard, and find it believable that V can actually hit that high standard, and so they've checked it, and here are the places where you'll need to be extremely careful if you want to really rely on this in a high-reliability setting. It is not frothing at the mouth, and it is not disparagement; it is accurate and precise and specific and appropriate feedback, along with some emotional expression that I find relatable and appropriate.
What mistake? Does this apply to literally every other language, like Go with its `make([]int, len)`.
> If you think it's fine for V documentation and advocacy to overstate their case and not mention significant gaps in what they claim the language has
Can you link to such examples in V documentation?
Honestly, from the outside reading this thread you probably shouldn’t have come here in the first place. I get you want to defend your language, but there’s a fine line between defending your creation and being argumentative with people who don’t actually mean you harm, and who aren’t trying to take you down.
Your posts here are very defensive, and your tone is argumentative to the point when someone gave you accurate info about using tcc, you refused to believe it and argued about it for several posts. Just listen instead of arguing.
Look, I get you want to defend your creation. But my advice from one lang dev to another is stop posting on hn, and do what you’re good at by working on making your claims about your language bulletproof instead. People have been giving you this advice since you started V years ago but you haven’t taken it. Let V speak for itself. Stop arguing with people on the internet.
The situation is also not as simplistic as making claims bulletproof, but also dealing with a continuous concerted effort to smear the language.
fn main() {
x := []&int { len: 10, cap: 0 }
println(x[4])
}
This does not apply to every other language. The specific problem is that V lets you directly adjust the array length without doing anything to ensure that the array capacity is at least as large as the newly-specified length. Go's `make([]int, len)` ensures that the produced array's capacity is at least len. Go does have some memory safety issues (data races), but this specific issue is not a problem that Go has.
> Can you link to such examples in V documentation?
I agree with the article we're discussing that the "Safety" section prominently displayed on https://vlang.io/ immediately after the header is significantly overstating its case. Here is the list, each item of which is discussed specifically in this blog post, with minimal source code you can run to check their work:
- No null
- No undefined values
- No undefined behavior
- No variable shadowing
- Bounds checking
- Immutable variables by default
- Immutable structs by default
- Pure functions by default -- This has since been removed from the list, but was present when the author started this review: https://web.archive.org/web/20220305171852/https://vlang.io/
- Option/Result and mandatory error checks
- Sum types
- Generics
- Immutable function args by default, mutable args have to be marked on call
- No global variables
"No Undefined Values" is misleading because the compiler does not actually prevent reading uninitialized memory.
"No Undefined Behaviour" is misleading because the C code generated by the V compiler does include behaviour that is undefined according to the C language standard.
"No Variable Shadowing" is correct; the V compiler rejects programs that would shadow variables. I don't actually see this as a benefit, as I use shadowing all the time, but it's an accurate statement about the current V compiler.
"Bounds Checking" is mostly correct, but slightly misleading because the bounds are exposed to your code, and it's up to you to make sure you manipulate them correctly.
"Immutable variables by default" and the other immutability points are misleading because functions that accept immutable arguments can still mutate those arguments.
Compared to languages with real mutability tracking, this is far less helpful in designing misuse-resistant APIs, and avoiding hard-to-diagnose bugs caused by unexpected mutation.
"Pure functions by default" is misleading because the V developer has chosen to use their own special nonstandard meaning for "Pure" that includes IO, and because of the mutability tracking not actually being effective.
"Option/Result and mandatory error checks" is correct and fine; I have no problems with this.
"Sum Types" is kind of okay, but they look kinda janky and limited. This article's example of sum types not being able to hold references is pretty concerning.
"Generics" is kind of okay, but it similarly is a very early very limited implementation.
"No global variables" is just false. V has "constants", which are just "immutable" global variables, and as we've already seen, V's "immutability" is very mutable.
This blog post also addresses the "Performance", "Fast Compilation", and "Innovative memory management" sections of https://vlang.io/.
Broadly speaking, https://vlang.io/ seems to very clearly present the language as one that is suitable for use today. I don't see anything on the main page of https://vlang.io/ that says anything even vaguely similar to "This is a very early language, these features are aspirational but still very much under serious development, and there are many known gaps we have not built solutions to yet".
By my personal standards of epistemic integrity, the front page of https://vlang.io/ is misleading and dishonest. I recognize that many people consider this kind of "marketing" to be acceptable, and I'm fine with letting people do that as long as they're not complaining about people actually checking their claims.
I really love the ambition of V, and I would be very happy to use it if it were actually production-ready. I have sometimes used early-development tools in production when I've had a good understanding of what the actual gaps and deficiencies and defects in the under-development software are. V's aggressive marketing that goes out of its way to avoid discussing its weaknesses means that I can't actually rely on what I read from them about the language's suitability for high-reliability use. When someone shows me that they're happy and willing and eager to mislead people about the flaws in something, then I believe them!
To me, these posts seem to be written from a perspective of eagerly wanting to use the language that seems to be advertised, and being disappointed at the big gap between the marketing and reality. The two big messages I see in these blog posts are "Here are problems I found that make me concerned about using V" and also, separately, "V appears to be marketed as if it were a polished product suitable for production use, and that's concerning, given the problems found."
Notice the end of this post: "At this time, I would not recommend spending time on V. I would also be very cautious when taking claims made by the authors at face value."
This author explicitly says "At this time" they don't think V is suitable to rely on or will be soon, and they encourage skepticism when interpreting claims made by the author. This does not read at all like someone hateful to me. This very much reads like someone who really wants a production-quality V language to use, and hopes that the project someday succeeds.
This is false.
1) It is the author of the blog, that also created this thread on HN.
It shows the intent to disseminate his negative review as far and as wide as possible. And to do so outside of the V community.
2) If the OP was as eager to use the language as you believe, and was disappointed, he could have brought those issues to the V GitHub.
Who is going to the fix those issues that the OP (or anyone else) believes is a problem? It is going to be the V developers. So if the OP wanted those things that he believes are a problem fixed, that's who he has to bring them to.
Just outright mounting a smear campaign or crapping on the V language wherever possible, will never get any of the issues fixed on its own. Instead, as has been shown (by other places linking to the OP's blog), it will only invite more smearing and attacks.
3) The OP starts the review by linking to a number of very contentious posts from competitors and detractors of V, to include those that smear the author and language.
To do such will clearly set off drama, and makes the negative review part of the past drama. It now links them all together. This is not the intent of a person that wishes to "come in peace" or be helpful, this comes across as one having the purpose to set off a blazing fire of more drama.
4) The OP has shown no interest in working with V developers, and that's prior to publishing the review and spreading links to it.
The OP has demonstrated no intent to modify his review for correctness, fairness, or language version. This then puts "at this time", in the context that the review can stay as it is, indefinitely, regardless.
Add to that, the OP is purposely using a throwaway account on GitHub. He simply can disappear, without ever making changes to the review. We all know who the creator of V is and a number of its developers, they are all held accountable, as you are trying to do now. The OP on the other hand, has no accountability nor any "skin in the game".
5) The OP's review is without the necessary context and highly opinionated.
Without feedback or the opinions of the V developers, this is a one-sided negative review full of many debatable points about the claims made. The many gray areas can only gain context, when compared with what the V developers are showing their intentions are and in their responses to what are believed to be issues.
For more clarity at what I'm getting at, I'm not saying there are no issues with various claims or marketing, but rather what is claimed can be a matter of opinion. Because a person or reviewer disagrees with a claim, does not make them or their review 100% right either. Readers are left with a situation as to what percentage of either side is correct.
And no matter at what percentage either side is correct, who is going to fix any discovered issues? Right, it will be the V developers. So if the point was not to do any harm and help create production-quality V, then that's who needed/needs to be informed and worked with. If the OP is not interested in working with V developers, and rather produce and disseminate drama or facilitate smearing, then that's a reflection of their real intent.
Go write your own blog post. Submit it to hn. Refute all the points in the blog with evidence and code. Then we can have a follow up discussion with more substance.
At this point, you’ve made your position clear and you’re talking in circles. The way you combat a negative story is with a positive story. Whining about how unfair everyone is being to your favorite new language is a perfect way to limit its growth.
As such a small community, your personal behavior on public forums defines the tone of the entire V community for outsiders. You should critically analyze your posts here and ask yourself if they leave the impression of a community people would want to join.
It also appears you prefer to see negative opinions or commentary about V, and are getting overly upset or obsessed with those you believe are defending the language in any way. I'm simply responding to a thread on HN (as you are), that was not made by me, and calling out things that I see or believe to be unfair.
The V community has open discussions that anybody can join and make comments on. You can also freely create an appropriate discussion at the V GitHub. This is something that it appears you don't know about (and what the OP purposely avoided), as you're "talking in circles" with me and giving your opinions about "whining". The link to it is below.
What don't you like about V / what would you like to be changed? (https://github.com/vlang/v/discussions/7610)
You can also interact with the V community on discord as well. (https://discord.com/invite/vlang)
You are free to go there and submit your many opinions about what the members of the V community should or should not be doing. Even better, as you seem to describe yourself as very technical and knowledgeable. You would be commenting directly to them. In general, they are very receptive, open, and friendly.
Unfortunately for you, the V community is small and you tend to come here on HN, so you are who we see as an ambassador for V. You are a defacto representative of the community even if you do t see yourself as such. The way you comport yourself here reflects on the entire community. Fair? No. But if you read the comments here and in other threads, you’re definitely leaving an impression as to the entire V community.
> You are free to go there and submit your many opinions about what the members of the V community should or should not be doing.
I don’t have many opinions, I have one opinion and I have given it to you. Stop arguing on the internet and just make your claims bulletproof.
There is no "we", everybody on here does not think as you do. Better to clearly speak for yourself.
> ...defacto representative of the community...
If you bothered to read and pay attention, the creator of V posted on this thread. This includes other V contributors (that debated some technical points), and long time proud paying supporters of V (who have identified themselves as such).
I have also clearly (and now repeatedly) told you that I'm not the V community nor do my personal opinions represent them. I'm expressing my opinions on HN, as you are, which refer to the actions of the OP and the topic of this thread. Anybody with common sense should understand that. Stop being so upset that there are people with different opinions about V and are supportive, not everybody gets off on smearing others or clings to negativity.
> ...make your claims bulletproof
It is not my position nor place to make any claims bulletproof, in reference to V, to your personal satisfaction. If anybody wants to actually address the V community, and tell them their opinions about what they could be doing or share their technical knowledgeable on the subject, then instead of just trying to argue me down specifically, they can go over to where they are at (V Github or discord).
Based on submitted link, they don't.