Navule Pavan Kumar Rao - Getting Started with V Programming: An end-to-end guide to adopting the V language from basic variables and modules to advanced concurrency

Copyright 2021 Packt Publishing

This is an Early Access product. Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the content and extracts of this book may evolve as it is being developed to ensure it is up-to-date.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, ortransmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher,except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

The information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author nor Packt Publishing or its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to have been caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

Early Access Publication: Getting Started with V Programming

Early Access Production Reference: B15555

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

Livery Place

35 Livery Street

Birmingham

B3 2PB, UK

ISBN: 978-1-83921-343-4

Welcome to Packt Early Access. Were giving you an exclusive preview of this book before it goes on sale. It can take many months to write a book, but our authors have cutting-edge information to share with you today. Early Access gives you an insight into the latest developments by making chapter drafts available. The chapters may be a little rough around the edges right now, but our authors will update them over time. Youll be notified when a new version is ready.

This title is in development, with more chapters still to be written, which means you have the opportunity to have your say about the content. We want to publish books that provide useful information to you and other customers, so well send questionnaires out to you regularly. All feedback is helpful, so please be open about your thoughts and opinions. Our editors will work their magic on the text of the book, so wed like your input on the technical elements and your experience as a reader. Well also provide frequent updates on how our authors have changed their chapters based on your feedback.

You can dip in and out ofthis bookorfollow alongfrom start to finish; Early Access is designed to be flexible.We hope you enjoy getting to know more about the process of writing a Packt book. Join the exploration of new topics by contributing your ideas and see them come to life in print.

1. Introduction to V Programming
2. Installing V Programming
3. Variables, Constants and Code Comments
4. Primitive data types
5. Arrays and Maps
6. Conditionals and Iterative Statements
7. Functions
8. Structs
9. Modules
10. Concurrency
11. Channels: An advanced concurrency pattern
12. Testing
13. Introduction to JSON and ORM
14. Project: Building a Microservice

The V programming language is a statically typed compiled programming language thats used to build maintainable and robust software applications. It comes with high performance and simplicity, which allows software programmers to do rapid prototyping of applications that scale. You can write simple and clean code with minimal abstraction using V. V comes with the performance as fast as C. V is not derived from any other programming language and is written in V itself and compiles itself in under 1 second.

The design of V has been influenced by programming languages such as Go, Rust, Oberon, Swift, Kotlin, and Python. V lang has almost similar syntax compared to the popular Go programming language. V lang is a simple, fast, safe, and compiled programming language. V offers all safety features by default, such as immutable variables, immutable structs, and pure functions. V offers great support for concurrency that is on par with Go programming.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

• The past, present, and future of V
• V is a statically typed and compiled programming language
• Simple and maintainable syntax
• Backward compatibility, stability, and easy to upgrade to future versions
• Features of V programming
• V as a framework
• Operating systems V supports

By the end of this chapter, you will have learned about the V language and its features. You will also understand Vinix, an operating system written completely in V.

Lets begin our journey by understanding how V came into existence, who created it, and what its future is.

V is a new programming language created in early 2019 by Alexander Medvednikov. The creator has come up with an extensive vision for the V language and the features it offers. Therefore, the V language and its various features are undergoing heavy development. The official website is https://vlang.io/. The V programming language is open sourced and licensed under MIT. You can refer to the entire source code of V on its official GitHub repository at https://github.com/vlang/v.

V has an active community of developers and contributors. The community is highly active and responsive to issues raised on GitHub. You can participate in discussions at https://github.com/vlang/v/discussions and the team is also available on Discord: https://discord.gg/vlang.

V comes with a lot of performance optimizations that are on par with C compared to any other programming language, such as Go, Java, or Python to mention a few.

A programming language is designed to have certain typing and execution phenomena. Typing could refer to either statically typed or dynamically typed, while the execution phenomena could be referred to as compiled or interpreted. Lets look at these terms in more detail.

A programming language is referred to as statically typed when the type checking of the variables happens during compile time instead of runtime.

In a dynamically typed programming language, the types are determined during the runtime based on the values assigned to the variables. The advantage of dynamically typed programming languages is that the programmers do not have to explicitly mention the type of variables while they code. This capability eases and speeds up development times.

A programming language is said to be compiled when the code is directly translated into machine code or byte code. This phenomenon makes the resulting program run significantly faster in contrast to interpreted languages. V compiles ~1.2 million lines of code (LOC) per CPU per second.

On the other hand, the term interpreted refers to the programming languages where the interpreter runs the program by executing the commands line by line. And this phenomenon makes interpreted languages significantly slower than compiled languages.