The V pitch was a bunch of features that seemed implausible like automatic C++ translation and near-GC ergonomics with near-manual-memory behavior, without Rust-style explicit lifetime annotations or pervasive reference counting. so basically the pitch was the holy grail of systems, which caused drama as the project was met with extreme skepticism.

That was 7 years ago and since then the project has not delivered the grail, instead settling to be more of a mashup between go and C.

Bend is completely different it was just announced last week. It doesn’t have any users and has a weird ai integration so I done see how it’s relevant as a contender in the systems space at all.

Also the creator of Bend is... lets just say he doesn't stick to projects for long.