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