When comparing Ceylon vs V, the Slant community recommends V for most people. In the question“What is the best programming language to learn first?” V is ranked 4th while Ceylon is ranked 42nd. 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 Try it out in the browser
It has a Web IDE: http://try.ceylon-lang.org/ with impressive demos: http://try.ceylon-lang.org/?gist=bd41b47f325b6d32514a so you can try it without installing anything, and see the JS generation / interop in action.
Pro Strong static typing, null safe and flexible, almost dynamic type system
The compiler prevents you from using a potentially null variable, unless you check it is not null. Ie. it forces you to check a potentially null value before using it.
The type system is strict, but flexible, allowing union and intersection of types, covariant and contravariant types, reified types, etc.
Type inference and union types allows a dynamic programming style, close of JS spirit.
Pro Designed from the start to generate JavaScript
It brings type safety to JS, allowing to define interfaces to existing JS APIs, yet using the dynamic
keyword for flexible calls in the JS ecosystem.
Pro Excellent IDE support
Ceylon has reified generics, so it doesn't loose the type of collections at runtime. This makes autocompletion, debugging, etc. first-class. The Eclipse plugin makes it a full-fledged Ceylon IDE, and an IntelliJ IDEA plugin is in the works.
Pro Great tutorial
Gavin King, main author of the language, has a great, clear technical writing style, making understandable difficult concepts like variance or sound type system.
Pro Excellent documentation
The language specification is very complete and up to date; also, the language module is very well documented.
Pro Javascript interoperability
Ceylon has special language-level support for interoperation with dynamically typed languages like JavaScript, and its module system even interoperates with npm.
Pro Easy to learn even if you don't have prior programming experience
Ceylon is indeed fairly easy and readable. Of course those ones who know OOP and a bit of functional programming concepts will feel almost at home right from the start.
Pro Generate HTML
HTML generation is supported right in the SDK.
Pro Same code in backend and frontend
If you don't use platform-specific features, you can reuse the same code in your backend server (be it in Java or JavaScript) and in your client-side browser code, for example for storing data, validating input etc.
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 Lack of physical or electronic books
We should hope Red Hat or anyone interested would take the time and write one. That would strengthen the maturity of the language, but Ceylon is rapidly developing which can make the author's efforts futile because his or hers work will become obsolete soon.
The second hindrance is, of course, popularity of the language which can't give much to the pockets of the author (however, Dart's unpopularity at start didn't prevent it to have a lot of printed material, but that's Google's child, we know).
Con Currently has large runtime
Ceylon 1.2 needs a language runtime of 1.55 MiB, and the Collection library adds another 370 KiB. That's a lot for the Web...
Now, this has to be put in perspective: if you use Ceylon to make a web application, these files will be loaded once, then cached by the browser (that's not casual browsing).
Moreover, most servers compress such resource, and the numbers become respectively 234 KiB and 54 KiB, which is more reasonable...
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.
