Item — HN Reader

Odin isn’t as well known as Zig, true. But what you seemed to argue was that this was a deliberate choice by the Odin community: to look for hype on Hacker News rather than doing the leg work of getting a Wikipedia article about the language.

This idea is what I criticize.

Not to mention that Wikipedia’s notability criteria is increasingly harder to live up to as tech news gets more and more decentralized.

It is not enough for notability that the Odin author is interviewed in various podcasts. It’s not enough for the language to be used in a leading visual effects tool and so on. These are not valid references for Wikipedia.

So how did Vlang achieve it? By commissioning books on the language(!). Once there was a book on V (nevermind no one bought it) it fulfilled the Wikipedia criteria. There are discussions about this on various V forums.

So let go of the idea that Wikipedia is proving anything.

1 comments

First, for clarification, V developers can not control who writes books on the language. To say otherwise, looks to be about projection, as to what competitors have done or plan to do.

The first book written about V (5 years ago), looks to have been a total surprise to the community and its creator, because it was written in Japanese[1]. The 2nd book written about V has clearly sold well and received very good reviews[2]. It's author had no connection with V development and there are interviews about him. A 3rd book[3], which was for academic circles, is not primarily about V. It, however, uses the programming language for random number generation and explanations on the subject.

The point I'm getting at, is marketing one's self on HN or podcasts as a viable alternative versus being an actual viable alternative used by the general public. It's one thing to act like or say your popular, it's another thing to be popular. There is a qualitative difference, that is even picked up on by Wikipedia, which is arguably why Odin or C3 don't have a page or the numbers on GitHub.

Despite any misdirected anger or envy, that problem has nothing to do with other languages like V or even Zig. It's up to fans and interested third parties of that language to show and report widespread usage.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08BKJDRFR (Book about V (Vlang) in 2020 and in Japanese)

[2] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09FKK3JL7 (Book about V (Vlang) in 2021, highly rated, and sold well)

[3] https://doi.org/10.52305%2FCVCN5241 (Book is part of an academic series, 2023, and uses V (Vlang))