[HN Gopher] Vinix - An effort to write a modern, fast, and inter...
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Vinix - An effort to write a modern, fast, and interesting
operating system in V
Author : letientai299
Score : 93 points
Date : 2021-06-08 10:06 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| davtur19 wrote:
| Have you bought github stars from a click farm again and then
| show how many stars you have compared to other langs?
| adamrezich wrote:
| did this happen? is there proof somewhere?
| edoceo wrote:
| This might be real star history.
|
| https://star-history.t9t.io/#vlang/v
|
| Or, it's better than a meme that needs mOaR jPeG!
| davtur19 wrote:
| https://t.me/vlang_memes/460
| adamrezich wrote:
| for anyone who doesn't use Telegram: the image shows that
| most of the stars came in short bursts of time, from China.
| kinda weird that one can't click the image in their browser
| to enlarge it
| ylluminate wrote:
| You may be curious to see how many people in China are
| actually contributing and doing stuff in V. That's
| actually surprising and cool.
| spicybright wrote:
| I'm always interested to hear about people developing OS's. Hope
| they implement some stuff other ones don't have.
|
| I never heard of V so I looked it up:
|
| https://vlang.io/
|
| An implementation of 2048:
|
| https://github.com/vlang/v/blob/master/examples/2048/2048.v in V
| ylluminate wrote:
| The Linux source (!binary) compatibility target is exciting.
| Will be nice to carry over Linux modules/drivers + software.
| The initial PS/2 keyboard support just landed
| (https://twitter.com/v_language/status/1402193052941312002).
| ylluminate wrote:
| Oh also, mintsuki's (limine, lyre, echfs, qword, some things
| with managarm, etc) comments about V vs C/Rust/Odin/Zig are
| really interesting in #vinix-os:
| https://discordapp.com/channels/592103645835821068/645024404...
| monocasa wrote:
| Can you copy those comments here by chance?
| mintsuki wrote:
| I basically said that V lends itself better to this kind of
| development; and the modular, headerless structure gets
| less messy than C codebases.
|
| I also said that while I was skeptical of V (I have read
| all the criticism many times and I was also critical of the
| language for the longest time), it lends itself relatively
| well to kernel development and I am generally having a good
| time developing Vinix, only encountering minor compiler-
| related issues here and there, mostly with inline assembly.
|
| I also said that the language, by virtue of it currently
| being a relatively thin wrapper over plain C, resonates
| with me more as a C developer than somewhat similar
| alternatives like Zig or Rust.
|
| Matter of opinions, really.
| mro_name wrote:
| an interesting language. Thanks for sharing.
| mintsuki wrote:
| Hello, I am the maintainer of Vinix and main contributor. Feel
| free to ask me anything about the project!
| [deleted]
| mintsuki wrote:
| No problem!
| noobermin wrote:
| You mentioned this in another comment but how do you feel about
| the other new systems level programming languages and how they
| compare to V like nim, zig, rust etc.
| mintsuki wrote:
| I don't know much about nim but I have seen my fair share of
| Rust and Zig code. Out of these 2, I'd personally pick Zig if
| I had to choose. Rust's syntax doesn't resonate with me very
| much and I feel like it tries to hand hold too much at times.
|
| That said I am a programmer and as such I am more into what I
| can get done with these tools rather than the tools
| themselves. Whatever I feel can get the job done for whatever
| I need to do is okay with me. In Vinix's case, I can confirm
| from personal experience that V has been able to get the job
| done so far effortlessly.
| programmer_dude wrote:
| V is shady AF. Steer clear of it.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Either that's slander, or it needs some explanation and,
| preferably, documentation.
| crthpl wrote:
| There is documentation:
| https://github.com/vlang/v/blob/master/doc/docs.md
| adamdusty wrote:
| The initial alpha (beta?) release of the project was
| scheduled for public review, but the developer was accepting
| payments for early access. I won't comment on the state of
| the release that some people paid for.
|
| The devs seem to have made a few enemies. Devs of other small
| projects, specifically Nim and Zig aren't fans of V to say
| the least. Nim devs allege that the V project has made
| defamatory remarks about their project. Zig developer, Andrew
| Kelly, also had some things to say about V. [0],[1]
|
| There have been numerous occasions of the V dev deleting
| criticism.
|
| There are claims that the V project has been buying stars on
| github.
|
| The project makes very bold claims about the feature set
| while not having actually implemented said features.
|
| There is a popular set of blog posts that dives into the
| issues with claims vs reality [2],[3],[4]
|
| My opinion is that I do find it disingenuous, and borderline
| scammy, to accept donations and at the same time claim V can
| do the things it claims. Ultimately, I think the dev is just
| not great at managing expectations. I highly doubt any of it
| is malicious intent. Also, somewhere in one of these, Andrew
| retracts his accusation of fraud, due to the V devs updating
| the advertised capabilities of the project.
|
| [0] https://github.com/vlang/v/issues/292
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20230351
|
| [2] https://christine.website/blog/v-vaporware-2019-06-23
|
| [3] https://christine.website/blog/v-vvork-in-
| progress-2020-01-0...
|
| [4] https://christine.website/blog/vlang-update-2020-06-17
| dnautics wrote:
| I imagine quite a bit of the dustup might be language
| issues and cultural issues around what is and isn't okay /
| how to differentiate between planned feature and existing
| feature.
| ylluminate wrote:
| It has been somewhat sad in that I have seen cultural /
| communication problems. There are a lot of folks who just
| don't talk or comport the same from different regions
| around the world and it has been easily misinterpreted as
| negative vs simply not functioning the same socially.
| ylluminate wrote:
| All of this has been addressed and/and resolved elsewhere.
| Not sure of references of the top of my head, but check
| Discord (and/or maybe GH).
| kaba0 wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27440032
|
| But feel free to look up any older thread on the language.
| It's the musk of PLs.
| maccam912 wrote:
| I remember shenanigans when V was first announced (release date
| for public preview, but for a little money you get early access),
| people being upset that it was half-baked, etc. and wrote it off,
| but I've heard that it has since changed a ton and is nothing
| like the early days.
|
| Can someone familiar with recent V developments comment on this?
| It makes bold promises that would be awesome to see realized, but
| I got the feeling there was just a lot of smoke and mirrors going
| on in the early days.
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| It's still smoke and mirrors from a dreadfully unstable
| language. Criticism from https://christine.website/blog/vlang-
| update-2020-06-17 still holds to this day.
| ylluminate wrote:
| FALSE. Look at the date and check out:
| https://github.com/vlang/v
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| Just saying "FALSE" doesn't address the big issue:
| Christine was blocked for asking questions.
| ylluminate wrote:
| I think, if that happened, perceived trolling is the more
| appropriate interpretation of what happened there to
| Christine. You're acting angry and critical whereas in
| reality we should be focused on solving problems and
| building community to make things good for everyone.
| klyrs wrote:
| > You're acting angry and critical whereas in reality we
| should be focused on solving problems and building
| community to make things good for everyone.
|
| Sorry, but you can't flip a critic into a productive
| community member by calling them angry. If you want help
| building community, you need to inspire trust with a
| kickass product that meets or exceeds your promises
|
| Critics fall away when they can't find valid criticism;
| browbeating and blocking them will only amplify the
| criticism. I see crap like this on almost all vlang-
| related posts. Y'all won't beat the drama with your
| current approach.
| vlang1dot0 wrote:
| Things have improved but it's not clear the author realizes the
| magnitude of what he's trying to do.
|
| The big ticket item is the autofree memory management system
| which promises near C/Rust performance and minimal overhead
| without the complexity of borrowing and ownership. To date,
| this system does not work and is "wip" as the vlang community
| likes to say. There are also no clear explanations of how it
| works beyond just "it inserts calls to free() when you are no
| longer using a variable" which is ... extremely obvious. The
| more interesting question of how the compiler determines
| something is no longer being used in the face of aliasing and
| no borrowing system is completely unanswered. No one working on
| the project understands how complex that problem is. Initially
| the goal was that this system would manage all memory for the
| programmer automatically, this goal has since moved to "manage
| 90% of objects in memory and use GC for the rest". I suspect we
| will see that number continue to drop as the author realizes
| this is intractable without whole program analysis (which they
| can't do and still hit their compilation time targets).
|
| Other items are very much in an alpha state if they work at
| all. Only in the last month have you been able to create a
| generic function with more than one type parameter, although V
| has been claiming support for generics since at least last
| year. There's still no ability to constrain the type parameter
| to something that implements an interface/trait/protocol.
|
| C2V, another wildly ambitious project that could literally be a
| PhD project in automatic language translation, was supposed to
| be released "this week" 5 weeks ago. It's currently in a very
| private alpha and no source has been released.
|
| Which is basically the state of most of the author's projects:
| huge promises in terms of features and performance with most of
| them little more than demos. I've come to believe this is an
| intentional strategy by the author to maximize his Patreon
| revenue. He makes big promises on social media and then
| delivers the easy 20% of the project to his followers before
| switching to another project. It would make far more sense to
| release a finished project before starting another massive one
| and yet he can't sit down and finish a project because he knows
| he can't actually deliver what's been promised.
| amedvednikov wrote:
| > Initially the goal was that this system would manage all
| memory for the programmer automatically, this goal has since
| moved to "manage 90% of objects in memory and use GC for the
| rest". I suspect we will see that number continue to drop as
| the author realizes this is intractable without whole program
| analysis (which they can't do and still hit their compilation
| time targets).
|
| A demo of autofree with zero GC/RC:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmB8ea8uLsM
|
| > Other items are very much in an alpha state if they work at
| all.
|
| Can you list items that don't work at all or are in alpha
| state?
|
| Generics missing some advanced features like protocols
| doesn't mean they don't work.
|
| And no I don't live in Sweden. You seem to get a lot of
| things about V wrong.
| vlang1dot0 wrote:
| You solved the memory management for one particular program
| written in exactly the style necessary to avoid leaks for
| the demo. You'll find as you fix other programs, you'll
| introduce UAFs into this one which is, I suspect, one
| reason your commit activity around autofree has basically
| dropped to 0 recently.
| creata wrote:
| Reminds me of this line by tom_mellior[0]:
|
| > I wish people stopped approaching language design from the
| point of view that the people who have been working on
| garbage collection for the last 60 years are all idiots who
| don't see how simple it all is.
|
| [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26765369
| noobermin wrote:
| I remember the hubbub a year (or longer? another covid
| timewarp) ago when this first came out. It looks like now the
| dev of V is just pulling under 1K a month so it's not like
| he's making bank so if they're still just grifting it's not
| really working.
| ylluminate wrote:
| No grifting going on. We have a vibrant awesome community
| that feels very Ruby-like in many ways. Good people.
| vlang1dot0 wrote:
| He lives in Sweden where the cost of living is quite a bit
| lower than most of the US and also has people contributing
| to him on GitHub. A quick Google search suggests it's quite
| possible to live on $1k a month in Sweden for one person
| but I admit I have no personal experience in that point.
|
| Edit: I was wrong about the location but that does not
| change my opinion.
| ylluminate wrote:
| No, he does not live in Sweden.
| eberkund wrote:
| The cost of living in Sweden is not quite a bit lower
| than most of the US. It may be less than Manhattan or SF
| but it's certainly not cheap, especially compared to most
| of the US. I visited Sweden a few years back and found
| most things to be very expensive and I just did a quick
| Google search now to confirm before writing this comment.
| ylluminate wrote:
| These issues should / could all be addressed - if you're in
| Discord already, which it sounds like you probably are, feel
| free to talk about each point. The C2V source IS in fact,
| already available to many folks (v devs specifically, of
| which there are many).
| vlang1dot0 wrote:
| The last time I asked about how the memory management would
| work, the conversation was quickly shut down by a vlang dev
| (not Alex) who grilled on me on why I wanted to know how
| the language worked. I've seen this same reaction to other
| newcomers who dare to ask reasonable questions instead of
| simply drinking the Kool aide.
| ylluminate wrote:
| Strange, I'll mention it. There have been a lot of crazy
| trolls so a few folks are a bit thin on the patience
| front - especially a few who are crazy hard at work all
| the time on the language. I do have sympathy for them and
| they're great folks if you just try to understand the
| history and their own context a bit.
| vlang1dot0 wrote:
| I think it would be more productive to direct the
| attention to https://github.com/vlang/v/issues/1247 which
| catalogues a number of issues with the proposed approach
| and yet hasn't had any activity in 9 months.
| agumonkey wrote:
| who inspired who here ? musk or v-author ?
| dom96 wrote:
| Not only did this project make a lot of false claims about
| itself but also other existing programming languages. This
| included Nim (which I am one of the core devs on).
|
| It's rather sad to see people get roped in by these claims.
| This project is a true example of how far pushing false
| promises and lies can get you and it makes me a bit sad about
| the world.
| sim_card_map wrote:
| Do you have links to false claims about Nim?
| edoceo wrote:
| I think they meant V-lang is making false claims about
| itself.
| dom96 wrote:
| I meant both V-lang making false claims about itself and
| making false claims about Nim.
| ylluminate wrote:
| Please get specific - not sure what you're talking about.
| I've only ever seen other folks coming in and attacking V
| really quite baselessly.
| dom96 wrote:
| I don't and to be fair, from what I recall, these were
| dropped from the V website as soon as the Nim community
| challenged them.
| ylluminate wrote:
| Things are going great, stop in for a chat:
| https://discord.gg/vlang
| jeromenerf wrote:
| This reads as a bit more ambitious than the usual HelloWorld or
| http framework example project.
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