User:SWinxy/V (programming language)

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V

The V logo
Paradigms	Multi-paradigm concurrent structured imperative procedural
Designed by	Alexander Medvednikov
Developer	Alexander Medvednikov & Other open source contributors
First appeared	2019 (2019)
Stable release	V 0.1.24 / January 8, 2020 (2020-01-08)
Typing discipline	Inferred static strong structural manifest nominal
Platform	x86-64 x86 arm64 arm
OS	Linux, macOS, Windows, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, Android
License	MIT
Filename extensions	.v, .vh, .vsh
Website	www.vlang.io
Major implementations
GCC, Clang, MSVC
Dialects
Good Ol' Fashioned V
Influenced by
: AMPL, AWK, csh, C++, C#, Objective-C, D, Go, JavaScript, Julia, Limbo, LPC, Perl, PHP, Pike, Processing, Python, Ring, Rust, Seed7

V (/viː/, as in the letter v), also known as Vlang, is a general-purpose, procedural computer programming language designed and maintained by Russian programmer Alex Medvednikov. V is very similar to Go, ghosting its syntax and concurrency system, but implements a memory management scheme and other safety features similar to Rust. The first release of the V compiler was originally written in Go, but is now self-hosting and can further transpile to Javascript and C. V was written to specifically focus on being easy to learn, fast, and safe. A consistent claim of the language is its ability to compile up to 1.2 million lines of code per second, with the resulting binary performing within 3% of an equivalent C program, and that it can as such compile its own compiler in under a second.

History

The V programming language was first documented in March 2019, after a period of being listed as a new language used specifically to create Volt, a social networking app created by V designer Alex Medvednikov. Until June, no source code for V was released; the website simply hosted the specification for the language, its features, and an online 'playground' to test V code. on 22 June, the V GitHub repository received its first commit, version 0.0.12. It was created with the intent of having a very small memory footprint, small binary sizes, fast compilation, and of being safe, with features such as checking for type-errors at compile-time, lacking null pointers, and defaulting to immutable objects. At launch, V only supported Linux and macOS, but now supports many others.

As of November, V is considered to be in alpha, as many of its claims are still a work in progress. According to V's official website and GitHub repository, the first stable release, version 0.2, is due late January 2020, and release 1.0 is due 2020.

Design

V is influenced by Go , Python, C++ and Rust; but aims on being self contained and still achieve greater simplicity, security, and fast compilation.

The key design goals are:

• Simplicity: A "one-way" system similar to Python's "There's Only One Way To Do It"
• Safety: No null variables or pointers, no global variables, no undefined behavior, and variable immutability by default
• Memory management similar to lobster with no garbage collection
• A Read-Eval-Print-Loop environment
• Hot reloading
• A modular but powerful standard library, notably implementing a cross-platform, native graphics library

Comparison and performance

V's first appearance in the Web Framework Benchmark in January 2020 ranked V's alpha release second place.

Criticism

V has received criticism across sources, generally questioning its claims to performance, safety, and lack of dependencies. It has, especially prior to the source code's release, been considered vaporware.

On 22 June, Alex stated in the release announcement for V's source code release that there are "lots of hacks I'm really embarrassed about" and that it contains "a lot of ugly C code", but that it will be "quickly cleaned up in the coming weeks".

Examples

Hello world

A V hello world appears similar to a Rust equivalent, but lacks semi-colon line endings and allowing the use of single quotes to denote strings:

fn main() {
    println('Hello World!')
}

A simple website

A simple website using V's standard library web framework, vweb:

module main

import vweb

pub struct App {
mut:
	vweb vweb.Context
}

fn main() {
	vweb.run<App>(8080)
}

fn (app mut App) index() {
	app.vweb.text('Hello, world from vweb!')
}

pub fn (app &App) init() {}
pub fn (app &App) reset() {}