GemStone/S vs V
When comparing GemStone/S vs V, the Slant community recommends V for most people. In the question“What are the best server side programming languages?” V is ranked 7th while GemStone/S is ranked 28th. The most important reason people chose V is:
V is easier than C and fast like C.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Scalable object-oriented persistence
Gemstone/S is a persistent object environment, capable of high performance database tasks.
Pro Free version even for commercial use
GemStone/S has very capable licenses for no cost that allow businesses to use it commercially for no cost.
Pro Extreme robustness, performance and flexibility
This product has a long line of evolution, guaranteeing all these qualities
Pro Smalltalk
Smalltalk is one of the most productive environments, which makes the hard things easy and the difficult, practical.
Pro Tightly related to Pharo Smalltalk
You can develop your Smalltalk projects on friendly Pharo and run them on the rock solid GemStone environment.
Pro Live debugging production errors
Never debug from textual traces anymore: do live debugging of saved stack traces for production errors
Pro Fast like C
V is easier than C and fast like C.
Pro C Interop
Can import C libraries, structs, and headers.
Pro Cross-platform
Compile to many OSes.
Pro Simplicity
V is simple and powerful.
Pro Can create multi-OS GUIs
Multi-OS GUI creation is more integrated into the language than others.
Pro Clear syntax
Highly understandable language.
Pro Sum types
V has Sum Types.
Pro Generics
V has generics.
Pro Closures
V has closures, which gives the user additional options and usefulness.
Pro Safety
V is very safe.
Pro Single paradigm
Follows the philosophy that there should be only one way to do something, as opposed to multi-paradigm languages like C++.
Pro Supports concurrency and channels
Can run functions concurrently that communicate over channels.
Pro Fast compile times
Compiles programs fast, less waiting around, so more productive and fun.
Pro Friendly and helpful community
Just check the V Discord channel or their GitHub Discussions and you will see by yourself.
Pro Inline assembly
Can add Assembly code.
Cons
Con Vendor lock-in
The environment is unique and you easily become very dependent on what it has to offer, while there is no alternative vendor to switch to.
Con The runtime environment is essentially free, but not open source.
Con Rapid changes in a language syntax/features
Since V language under a continuous development and core syntax and features will be "frozen" in a version 1.0.0, updating from older version of a language can cause a code rewrite of previously working program.
Con V 1.0 release was planned for December 2019
The first version of the language was publicly released in June of 2019, version 0.1.x. First beta version of the language was released June of 2022, version 0.3. x. Language has progressed faster than most. Welcomes contributors to join the project.