v

V (pronounced like the letter "V") is a compiled programming language designed to be simple to learn, extremely fast to compile, and as performant as C. The problem it addresses is the gap between languages that are safe and readable (Go, Swift) and those that are fast and low-level (C, C++): V aims to give you C-level speed with a cleaner, safer syntax that a developer can learn over a weekend.

The language compiles to human-readable C code as its primary backend, which means you get near-C performance without writing C. It can also compile to JavaScript. One of its defining features is compilation speed: the compiler can compile itself in under one second, with throughput of around 500,000 lines of code per second using its native backend. Safety is built in — there are no null pointers, no global mutable state, and behavior is immutable by default. Memory management is flexible: the default is a garbage collector, but you can opt into manual control, arena allocation, or an experimental autofree system. V also ships with batteries included: a built-in web framework, an ORM (object-relational mapper for database queries), a cross-platform UI library, and a built-in graphics library, all without needing external dependencies.

You would use V when you want to write systems-level software, command-line tools, or web services, and you want compilation to be nearly instant during development while still producing fast production binaries. It also has a C-to-V translation tool, which makes it useful for porting existing C codebases. The tech stack is V itself (a self-hosted compiler), with C as the compilation target. It runs on Linux, macOS, Windows, BSD, and Android.