> What about it was hostile? It was written in a very neutral tone and was almost exclusively fact based, with just a couple of summative comments...
The review started out hostile by links to blogs and posts that smear V and the author from outright competitors and detractors! Completely unnecessary, if the purpose of the review was to stand on its own merits. It also sets the tone, of not being neutral, from the very start. And, links itself with other attack blogs and threads from the past.
It made itself the newest link in the chain of attacks.
The review is highly opinionated. It's an evaluation of claims, where the author gives his opinions on their validity. The author never gives readers his qualifications for even being able to properly evaluate the language, and uses a throwaway account, where he can easily run away. The V developers are held accountable for their opinions, but not the reviewer. You can never hold the author of the review accountable for anything he got wrong, was mistaken about, or is missing.
It's also not a fair or objective evaluation, where he sought to get any input from V developers to clarify their positions about claims made. So it's his own one-sided perspective. He is going to be one-man judge, jury, and executioner. And that one-man judge's sentence is, "...I would not recommend spending time on V". Which is clearly very negative. It is also very presumptuous, that readers should come to his same negative conclusions, versus do their own evaluation, check out what the V community has to say, or check out the latest version of V.
> I see, reviews are only okay if they are positive. Otherwise they must be github issues.
Nobody said that reviews must only be positive. What is being conveyed is that if the reviewer really had a problem with using V, wanted it to become production-ready, or wanted something fixed then the way to do it is to submit issues or discussions to V's GitHub.
Otherwise, it shows the intention that one's purpose is not to fix anything, but to spread drama and smear. The reviewer has a throwaway GitHub account, where it would have been easy for them to verify various conclusions with developers, submit issues, or create a discussion at V's GitHub site.