TUI editor and Vim/Neovim alternative
62 comments
·March 24, 2025tauraamui
baranul
Great project. Something else, that needs to be said, is that you should not allow others to make you feel ashamed for using programming languages that you like. No reason to succumb to others who are trying to force switching to what they are pushing. It's your project and your time, not theirs.
tauraamui
I certainly did feel some of that in the past, but not anymore. I started using V for this project fully expecting it to go wrong, experience no end of issues, bugs, memory weirdness, edge cases etc., based on the many articles targeting V. But like with everything, I also tried to stay as objective and unbiased as possible, and that just... Never happened. If anything as my experience and exposure with the language increased, so did my enjoyment, and confidence that V was just the right choice for the project, and for me.
I'm in a weird position, where I have no personal bias or stake towards V, I just like using it, but I frequently get attacked or questioned for making a choice that people find offensive or incomprehensible. It's almost like they see my not choosing something they like, like Rust, or Zig, etc., is my way of attacking them for choosing it for their own projects. No, not at all. In my opinion, the more languages that exist the better, the better the range of choice. This isn't a war guys, holy or otherwise. Let's just try and stay in our lane. There is work to do, we just need to get it done.
baranul
> If anything as my experience and exposure with the language increased, so did my enjoyment, and confidence that V was just the right choice for the project, and for me.
Your right and freedom to choose V (Vlang) or any other should be respected. Many, including myself, find using it enjoyable too.
> It's almost like they see my not choosing something they like, like Rust, or Zig, etc., is my way of attacking them for choosing it for their own projects.
It has gotten almost out of control, where evangelists or rivals think they can force or shame others into not using a language or choosing their language. Some of us need to accept that others can want to use different things, for different reasons, and that's good too.
fragmede
Where it's going is a valid question though. If I'm building something on top of it, am I building on top of sand or stone? At which point, looking at its past isn't totally unreasonable.
pwdisswordfishz
[flagged]
bsnnkv
I have had some positive interactions with the author in the past and did a little Lilly / NixOS / V crossover video a while ago.[1] It's nice to see this project posted here and that it's still making steady progress!
square_usual
The AI generated README isn't really selling me, but I guess the point is that it's like helix but with standard vim keybinds?
tauraamui
Yes pretty much. Admittedly that's all the README needs to say. When I first wrote the project README LLMs were still relatively new for public use, it was much harder to detect back then. Thanks for the feedback.
princevegeta89
Have been using Micro wherever possible and I'm happy that I can simply forget all the vim and vi commands without a worry.
arunc
It would be good to share a link to what you claim to use.
osmsucks
Haven't tried it, but it looks nice. Well done to the authors.
Reminds me of Flow Control (https://flow-control.dev/), which is really nice and comfortable to use! It looks and feels more mature than a 0.x release.
tauraamui
Haven't heard of this, thanks! I'll definitely be taking a peak at their buffer implementation. Zig was a no go for this project for me due to the lack of concurrency.
attentive
I'm not familiar with zig but was surprised by the claim that it lacks concurrency.
Looking into it, it seems to have Async/Await, std.threads and channels.
tauraamui
It's in the docs but apparently doesn't work/isn't there any more. https://ziggit.dev/t/my-thoughts-about-async/4515
xmonkee
nice, V lang. How come I don't hear about this as much as zyg/odin/jai etc?
dharmab
V is pre-1.0, and you have to install it by compiling it from source. I'm very excited about V. It's the language I wish Go was.
imiric
V has good ideas on paper, but most of its claimed features are aspirational. Actually using it for any real world project is an exercise in frustration and confusion, since you're never sure if the weird behavior is intentional or a bug. The documentation is outdated, missing or wrong. The implementation is a mess, even in its pre-1.0 state. Most projects written in it[1] are either demos or abandonware.
Much has been discussed about it, and every few years someone writes a "V Language Review" with the same findings. I gave it a try a few months ago and ran into many of the same issues. I'd stay away, and stick with Go, or Zig, Odin or Nim if you're interested in similar alternatives.
baranul
Many would argue those aren't real reviewers. It has been mentioned that these persons behind the "V Language Review" series don't review other programming languages and are very specifically targeting V.
It is easy to check and see that Zig, Go, etc... Have thousands of open issues. That, or are lesser known languages like Odin, with less contributors, stars, and vetting. Anybody can take several open issues from any language and create a blog post that pretends the sky is falling.
Real reviewers, would have reviewed multiple other languages and preferably are recognized for doing so. Below are examples of fair and real reviewers of the V language, along with others:
[1] Is V Lang Better Than Go And Rust? Let's Find Out
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puy77WfM1Tg
[2] V - Best Programming Language to Learn in 2023?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jr1EBaLkjfc
[3] First Impression - V programming language
amedvednikov
Can you list any weird behavior/bugs that lead to frustration and confusion?
And examples of the documentation being outdated/wrong?
tauraamui
I've not found any issues with using v for this project, please try and be unbiased and objective and I urge you to try and write a non trivial program and let the results speak for themselves. Up to you!
amedvednikov
There are prebuilt packages you can install from the home page and from the github repo.
For example
https://github.com/vlang/v/releases/latest/download/v_linux....
dharmab
Oh, I didn't see it in Homebrew, so I searched for "install V" and found the documentation which only has compiling from source.
devnull3
I don't know V but mostly what I have read about V is that it is vaporware [1]. Is there truth to this impression?
[1] https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&channel=ent...
fayten
I have seen this thrown around a lot, but I do not think it is true anymore.
V lang had a rough launch from what I can tell, with the author overselling and mistakenly underestimating the amount of work needed to fulfill their vision.
V still has a ways to go, but it is in constant heavy development with lots of contributors. It also has a wide gambit of interesting hobby projects using it.
I'd recommend taking a look at the the examples here:https://github.com/vlang/v/tree/master/examples
I think the language has a lot of potential.
dharmab
Go look at the commit log and tell me if it looks like abandonware.
pmarreck
keep looking and you’ll see why.
chaotic-neutral dictator/chief dev categorizes any criticism (regardless of merit) as trolling and bans; language design far exceeds technical merit of implementation details; basically, things only look good on paper, but fall apart once you get past the shallow end of the pool.
I went to Nim instead for similar use-cases.
amedvednikov
Hm V literally has a big discussion called
"What don't you like about V / what would you like to be changed?"
https://github.com/vlang/v/discussions/7610
What exactly do you think only looks good on paper?
pmarreck
https://chatgpt.com/share/67e29912-bc64-8004-be75-3d0df11d07...
I have a toddler demanding 99% of my free time so I apologize in advance for the LLM shortcut but this looks correct based on my experience
tauraamui
So it begins...
tauraamui
I've been finding it perfectly suitable for this and other projects. Have you updated your point of view after recently attempting to write and profile a non trivial program?
pmarreck
https://chatgpt.com/share/67e29912-bc64-8004-be75-3d0df11d07...
I have a toddler demanding 99% of my free time so I apologize in advance for the LLM shortcut but this looks correct based on my experience
johnisgood
There has been drama about V and its creator perhaps? I do not remember what exactly. Could anyone remind me what it was all about?
Oh, the vaporware thing?
BTW I checked the Patreon page. It says "V 1.0 release is planned for 2020". Might want to change that. :D
hiccuphippo
I remember looking at their code years ago and the network library was calling the curl cli. I didn't pay attention to it since then.
amedvednikov
The network library doesn't use curl:
square_usual
V overpromised and underdelivered, and the creator is pretty abrasive and went to war with anyone who criticized it, so most people stopped paying attention to it until it fulfills what was promised.
baranul
It would be fair to say that many would disagree or have different opinions about the language and the creator. V's creator has an open discussion for criticism[1], which many other languages don't have.
After reading various related threads, the strange abrasiveness and negativity often seems to be from others, not the other way around.
Clearly, many people are paying attention to V. It is quite popular at GitHub with over 36.2k stars, 2.2k forks, and 775 contributors.
nickandbro
If anyone's interested in learning vim fundamentals, right now I am building vimgolf.ai which is a site where you can linearly learn new vim motions by trying to beat a bot's score.
layer8
Maybe replace “Inclusive Functionality” by something like “Batteries Included”. I had to do a double-take. ;)
tauraamui
Thanks.
mvp0999
there's no alternative for nvim, nvim is superior !
Imustaskforhelp
I disagree because you just provide no context and it feels rage bait
Thank you everyone for commenting and sharing your thoughts regarding my project! I'm aware of the history of V and it's less than stellar reputation in the beginning. I really hope this comment section doesn't devolve into yet another stream of people regurgitating blog posts from over 5 years ago. I evaluate languages and their suitability for projects by just my personal experience using them. Does it do what I need, and does it do it now? That's it.