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Comment by shakna | Hacker News Reader

V [0] aims for something along those lines, but I've had a few issues with the safety aspects of the language. Breaking through the checker isn't that difficult.

I absolutely adore Ada [1], but the Pascal-syntax isn't for everyone.

I haven't used it yet, but have been hearing rumblings about Odin [2] a fair bit in these kinds of discussions. I tend to avoid too many symbol-heavy langs, but it's probably still less than Rust (I use a screenreader half the time).

[0] https://vlang.io/

[1] https://ada-lang.io/

[2] https://odin-lang.org/

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I just so happened to use Odin a bit this week, and I hit several different problems: two compiler bugs and a stdlib bug. I'm not having a go at the Odin people, just pointing out it's very much an "in development" language with some fairly sharp edges.

That's going to be the case with any of these languages which are still in beta (Zig, Odin, Jai, Vlang, C3, etc...).

Not saying you in particular, but it's weird, how too many won't tolerate running into some problems when they knowingly chose something still in beta. "Oh my, there was an issue with the beta software I'm using".

Maybe why JBlow refuses to release his beta to the public. Actually, it can be a good thing for the language, by people filing bug reports (so they can get fixed) or to do a PR (if they are at that level). That way, the language has more vetting, from more eyes on it.

There are degrees of things. I've had my issues with Zig, mostly relating to things changing, but I've never had these types of issues. "Beta" can mean many things. Gmail was "beta" for over a decade. Just pointing out what, in my limited experience, "beta" means for Odin.

I see so much controversy every time V comes up; can someone explain why, without devolving into name calling and personal attacks? What specific design choices or implementation details are contentious, and what legitimate concerns exist beyond interpersonal conflicts?

Having only watched the discussion: The main problem seems to be grossly inflated claims about its capabilities. As in, the docs say it already does X Y and Z, and when you try them they plainly don't work. And then the creator starts with the personal attacks when you point this out.

V... Overpromised, and underdelivered, on what it could do. Promised complete Type Safety, before the type checker was even implemented, for example.

As for concerns... The main developer is a concern. Hard to trust them to support the language well, with some of the... Well, tantrums. This isn't aimed at a personal attack. But it is very hard to describe their responses in another manner.

This [0] thread on HN covers some of all of the above.

But, probably also important to point out that V and its drama have had dang threaten to ban the topic altogether [1]. There's a lot of drama.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39492680

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37335249

Oh. I fear that I have unwittingly summoned HN demons.

Yes, you seem to have done so.

If, of course, by "demons" you mean people who write nicely formatted, polite, well-written responses attempting to answer your question fully, including links to further reading.

I was referring specifically to dang's post in the linked thread. I realized I had accidentally stumbled onto a topic with such a controversial history on this site that it might have been banned outright. As in, HN's personal demons; unresolved controversy.

The comment wasn't about anyone in particular.

When it launched it proudly claimed to do a lot of things, some of which most people would consider still open research questions. Unsurprisingly, it didn't actually do these things or have a concrete plan of achieving them, and they didn't handle people pointing that out very well. Some other language developers were unhappy about the support V gathered based on these claims vs languages that were further along but honest about what they actually had.

(I have no idea what the current state is)

> they didn't handle people pointing that out very well

I think that's a fair thing to say. But in all honesty, the people pointing that out were not exactly polite about it, to put it mildly.

I never really looked at V myself and have no opinion, but I do know unpleasant behaviour when I see it and quite a few of the people "pointing out" some of the shortcomings of V were engaging in it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39492680

See this article and the discussions, and if you’re so inclined follow along links in that thread from last time that show folks from the vlang team flaming all over HN.

Most of it looks like unprofessionalism among language creators, throwing haymakers at a competitor. Of course languages have significant technical differences, but that also pertains to their different goals, purposes, and users.

V looks exactly like one of the languages I was talking about. Some controversy about the project, it seems like, but very cool nonetheless. Even if it doesn't actually work like described, the description seems quite interesting.

> But I've had a few issues with the safety aspects of the language. Breaking through the checker isn't that difficult.

What do you mean? Can you "break through the checker" outside of unsafe blocks?

Its... Buggy. For example, fmt can currently break mutable handles. [0] Or you can modify immutable structures [1].

But there was a time where autofree was just a compiler flag and wasn't actually implemented, even though the author claimed that it was.

[0] https://github.com/vlang/v/issues/24271

[1] https://github.com/vlang/v/issues/23509

It's a language in beta and larger project (so more users). Take Zig for instance (also in beta), it has over 3,000 issues[0], and that's 3X more than Vlang. People run into problems using Zig all of the time. Any language can be claimed to be buggy or minor issues taken out of context.

[0] https://github.com/ziglang/zig/issues

At least as of 2024 [1], V relies heavily on a GC for memory management, so I wouldn't really call it low-level.

[1]: https://justinas.org/the-bizarre-world-of-v#memory-unmanagem...

V's GC can be turned off. V's libraries do not rely on the GC. Check out their Vinix[0] project (where they built an OS). They have other such projects.

Better to review more balanced and neutral takes on V[1][2], where the reviewers are not just stirring up drama with their community or funneling traffic to their site.

[0] https://github.com/vlang/vinix

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puy77WfM1Tg (Anthony GG reviews Vlang)

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmVKerNY-fQ (Mike Shah reviews Vlang)

If you turn off the GC you need to manage memory manually, like in C. That is not "Memory safe".

> Better to review more balanced and neutral takes on V

Is anything I said factually wrong?

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