Re: candidate of add. language in src (not rust)

On Sep 20, 2025, at 9:00 AM, Vadim Goncharov <vadimnuclight@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 16 Sep 2025 13:59:53 +0300
> Anthony Pankov <anthony.pankov@yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
>> Just for note.
>> 
>> XLibre developer(s) is trying to (automatically) convert X server sources to
>> V language.
>> 
>> (below opinion is not related to XLibre people)
>> 
>> V language is a transpiler. May be it has a good ratio of cost of
>> maintaining in the src codebase to increasing src audience/contributors. 
>> 
>> V is aimed to be a "simple language for building maintainable programs".
>> This claim make it theoretically suitable for developing none performance
>> critical programs in an operating system base.
>> 
>> 
>> As for XLibre I think they would like to express (part of) a long lived and
>> rarely touched C-codebase in a more maintainable and understandable way.
>> Which allow them to touch a code with a more confidence when it is a
>> necessarity for.
> 
> While good compilation speed and small size is a plus, in my opinion, a new
> language in base system must offer simplicity in writing scripts which offer
> scripting languages. A quick look at V shows it has e.g. immutable strings so
> it is not very free from boilerplates. After Perl axed out, we have only
> awkward /bin/sh as alternative which often lacks features, and going down (to
> low-level) is bad option, we need to go up.
> 
> May be I'm missing something and V is more friendly and high-level?

You can write scripts in V (will be compiled on the fly and run). But it
is a compiled language, better to use in place of C for new code (& so
competes with rust, zig, etc.).

V is higher level than C. See vlang.io or its wikipedia page. It is much
like Go (but GC is optional). It does allow potentially unsafe behavior
provided you wrap it in "unsafe{ .. }".

But it is still at version 0.4.12 & there will likely be breaking changes
until it reaches 1.0.

> it has e.g. immutable strings so it is not very free from boilerplates.

Not sure why you think so.