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+---
+title: "My Experience With V"
+date: 2022-06-26
+draft: true
+---
+
+For the last half a year or so, I've written code nearly exclusively in the V
+programming language (excluding college projects). In this time, I've learned a
+lot about the language, as well as being an active member of the community.
+
+I don't recall exactly how I discovered V. being the kind of nerd that has a
+list of languages they wanna try, I probably saw it somewhere & added it.
+Luckily, V was the one I wanted to try out the most. After visiting
+[vlang.io](https://vlang.io/), I joined the Discord server & that's where the
+fun began!
+
+Before I talk about the language itself, I would like to take a moment to
+appreciate the community. I felt welcome the moment I joined, and everyone
+(especially the V developers) was very helpful with any questions I had. If it
+wasn't for their help, [Vieter](https://git.rustybever.be/vieter-v/vieter)
+probably wouldn't be as far along as it is today!
+
+## What's V?
+
+While I'm not interested in giving a full description of the language, a short
+introduction is in order. V is a compiled programming language with a syntax
+very similar to Go. The main compiler backend transpiles V to C, providing
+interopt with C code without any effort. This also gives the compilation phase
+access to all optimisations that C compilers have to offer, resulting in very
+fast & optimized binaries. I'd list more things, but then it wouldn't be short
+anymore!
+
+## Developing in V
+
+Now for the relevant part of this post, the actual developing!
+
+Developing locally in V is pretty straightforward. Write some code, run `v .`,
+blink, see if you made a mistake, repeat. For me, this is a very important
+feature of V. Not only does the compiler handle the "build system" for you;
+it's also incredibly fast. This is accomplished by using the tcc compiler, a
+small & extremely fast C compiler, for development builds. Thanks to this,
+compiling my code doesn't take me out of "the flow"; a problem that I've faced
+when working with Rust code, as I'm very sensitive to losing focus.
+
+Building optimized binaries is equally simple; just run `v -prod .`. This will
+use either gcc or clang to compile your code using the max optimisation levels.
+
+Due to the rapidly developing nature of V, it is possible that old code no
+longer compiles on a newer compiler. This won't happen once the language is
+stabilized, but as of today, changes can occur. I don't actually know how
+others handle this, but I personally maintain a mirror of the compiler that I
+update regularly. This way, I decide when code might break, meaning I can react
+quickly to make sure nothing stays broken for long. This brings me to my CI
+setup!
+
+Because overengineering is fun, I have my own CI server that I use to test &
+deploy basically everything I create; V software is no exception! Using Docker
+buildx, I create multi-architecture Alpine-based images containing my compiler
+fork & any C library dependencies that I use. These images are then used in my
+CI to build statically compiled binaries that I can use to create the actual
+Docker images! Due to V compiling to C, compiling static binaries is quite
+simple; just build using a musl-based OS such as Alpine Linux.
+
+Enough drooling over my CI, back to V! Yes, when I was writing code in V, I
+encountered some bugs in the compiler. While a bit inconvenient at times, they
+definitely weren't a showstopper for me. V is still a developing language; I'm
+not gonna try to advertise that it isn't. The thing is though, I was able to
+report these compiler bugs to the community immediately, many of which being
+fixed within 24 hours by one of the V developers! V might still be in
+development, but it's definitely already ready for developing projects. My
+[vieter](https://git.rustybever.be/vieter-v/vieter) project has nearly 4k SLoC
+and still compiles just as quickly as when I started it. The resulting binaries
+are rock-solid; my personal Vieter instance has been running for months without
+issues.
+
+## Conclusion?
+
+It's clear from this post that I've taken a liking to V. The amount of
+evolution I've seen in the months that I've been using it is impressive, and
+I'm certain that V will reach its goal of being a stable language. I'm fine
+tagging along until that day comes :)
+
+In the context of developing Vieter, I've written a multitude of software
+pieces, ranging from a cron daemon to a rewrite of Arch Linux's `repo-add`
+command. This variety gives me confidence that V can already be used to develop
+varied & complex software.
+
+Besides developing Vieter, I'd like to enrich the ecosystem with packages that
+I think will be useful for everyone. To this end, I've started splitting off
+modules of the Vieter codebase & developing them independently. My first goal
+will be writing a Docker client
+[library](https://git.rustybever.be/vieter-v/docker), as I find this to be very
+useful for any language to have (and also I need it myself of course).
+
+Now, I know using these new and/or developing languages is not for everyone.
+Some just prefer sticking to the proven titans of the industry, and that's
+fine. However, for those like me that love using these new langs, I really do
+recommend checking out V. It's fast, it's of course free and open-source, and
+using a language is one of the best ways of helping it move forward. Perhaps
+when you join, you'll see a Chewing Bever babbling on ;)