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Ladybird browser to start using Swift language this fall

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Re: Ladybird browser to start using Swift language this fall

#191
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can you please substantiate in which points and how right he is? do you have experience with complex object graphs in Rust, direct or indirect experience about the community? thanks!

This huge blog post goes over some of the challenges of using Rust. https://loglog.games/blog/leaving-rust-gamedev/ For the community I'll pluck out this paragraph > That being said, there is an overwhelming force in the Rust community that when anyone mentions they're having problems with Rust the language on a fundamental level, the answer is "you just don't get it yet, I promise once you get good enough things wil…

Thanks!

I think the loglog post is great and the community (as I perceived it) basically unanimously agreed that there are sharp corners and lots of room for improvement, especially in ergonomics.

Yep, communication is hard, and it's ... not an easy problem to be a volunteer based project, with a disavowed subreddit where most people get their first contact with the community.

I personally have no experience with Bevy or anything Rust 3D (well or any 3D really except for some tinkering with GLEW 10y ago :D), but the GUI problems are real. Documentation is scarce (no, vomiting types into a HTML page is not documentation, thx).

Re: Ladybird browser to start using Swift language this fall

#192
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most are just ignorant of what .NET is today vs 10-15 years ago. From my own personal findings, most on HN and general online dev space think it's Windows only and that hasn't been true for ~8 years or so. Microsoft has shifted to an open source approach for almost everything and Linux & Mac are first class citizens.

Are there any relatively well known non-Windows apps written in .NET? I guess Discord? Any others?

Discord uses electron/React native. Where did you hear it uses .NET?

Re: Ladybird browser to start using Swift language this fall

#193
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any relatively well known non-Windows apps written in .NET? I guess Discord? Any others?

Discord uses electron/React native. Where did you hear it uses .NET?

Apparently I guessed wrong. Not sure where I heard it, should have checked first.

Re: Ladybird browser to start using Swift language this fall

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, Swift seems like such a nice language. Most of the performance and power, great interop, but more directed at application development than Rust (with e.g. refcounting being the default). But as they say, you choose a language for its ecosystem, not for the language itself. It would be great if Swift’s open source ecosystem for stuff other than app development grew. It does indeed seem like Apple is pushing…

> you choose a language for its ecosystem, not for the language itself. Given that this is Ladybird, which came out of the Serenity OS project (which didn't allow any external code at all), it's not surprising that they didn't prioritize ecosystem when picking a language. I believe they're planning on being less strict about that with Ladybird, but the culture of independence is likely still there.

Totally agreed on that. What I hope will happen is that they will be part of building that ecosystem.

Re: Ladybird browser to start using Swift language this fall

#195
post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Understood as such by those that don't grok CS. What is relevant is if one is actually skilled in using their tools, or should be doing something else instead.

A definition can’t be right or wrong, it can only be popular or unpopular. The definition of GC encompassing RC has fallen out of favour because it doesn’t capture the essential distinctions that people want to make: firstly, are cycles broken automatically? secondly, is there any tracing process happening behind the scenes? Most people are happy to accept that CPython is GC because it does RC and cycle collection so…

> The definition of GC encompassing RC has fallen out of favour because it doesn’t capture the essential distinctions that people want to make: firstly, are cycles broken automatically? secondly, is there any tracing process happening behind the scenes?

"Yes" and secondly "no". Here's two different RC algorithms with cycle collection without tracing:

1. Concurrent Cycle Collection in Reference Counted Systems (Bacon & Rajan. 2001) [1]. Note it has no "global tracing" - which is what's meant by "tracing" in popular usage (right?).

2. Trial deletion, like as actually usable in Nim with "--gc:orc" [2].

If the definition of GC encompassing RC has fallen out of favour in popular usage, it's not because of RC having or not having these two particular properties.

[1]: https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~cymen/misc/interests/Bacon01Concu...

[2]: https://nim-works.github.io/nimskull/gc.html

Re: Ladybird browser to start using Swift language this fall

#196
post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Understood as such by those that don't grok CS. What is relevant is if one is actually skilled in using their tools, or should be doing something else instead.

A definition can’t be right or wrong, it can only be popular or unpopular. The definition of GC encompassing RC has fallen out of favour because it doesn’t capture the essential distinctions that people want to make: firstly, are cycles broken automatically? secondly, is there any tracing process happening behind the scenes? Most people are happy to accept that CPython is GC because it does RC and cycle collection so…

Many people also wrongly call themselves "engineers" after a six weeks bootcamp.

Re: Ladybird browser to start using Swift language this fall

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Servo was never usable as a "real browser", and it's been revived since last year by Igalia. Looks like you should refresh your view on the project overall.

> Servo was never usable as a "real browser" I had a 2018 (or 2017?) build on my Mac that was a native app using Cocoa/AppKit, which had a URL bar and could do most things in a functional capacity (like using Google services). AFAIK I tried a newer build back in 2020 or 2021 which had stripped out all of the browser chrome (like URL bar). Maybe they had intended to add it back in the future, but didn't get to do that…

You are absolutely wrong about Servo being revived just a continuation of the webrender project. Igalia has been leading the effort for about 18 months now, focusing mostly on the layout engine (which is not webrender).

Re: Ladybird browser to start using Swift language this fall

#198
post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The degree to which GC issues in the context of deterministic memory management apply to C# is incomparably lower to pretty much every other language that offers GC (especially JVM family) or a similar automatic memory management capability (except Swift or D). However, D's GC is very rudimentary, and Swift pays very hefty performance price imposed by ARC for lower memory footprint and somewhat more predictable memor…

Until Zig has a good story for use after free, I wouldn't be considering it. Regarding C#, there was some research work at MSR for improving escape analysis and IDispose usage via lifetime analysis, but seems to never have moved beyond proof of concept. By the way, Midori internal presentation from 2013 is doing the rounds on twittersphere.

Probably last line refers to https://x.com/funcOfJoe/status/1821718414186127710

Re: Ladybird browser to start using Swift language this fall

#199
I don't know how and why people still take this guy seriously, let alone throw money at his projects.

Andreas has demonstrated time and time again that he can't keep his word. He says one thing and does things differently.

That wouldn't be too much of a problem if he didn't accuse others of what he is guilty of, toxicity.

He is also known for bashing other projects to promote his own. I would go help Servo instead. Ladybird isn't going anywhere, same as SerenityOS.

Re: Ladybird browser to start using Swift language this fall

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"They" as a gender neutral singular pronoun has never been bad grammar, and has been accepted in common use for many hundreds of years.

A fun fact I learned just recently is that even Shakespeare used singular "they": http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002748.h... (and even singular "themselves" !) which puts to rest approximately every argument I've ever seen against it.

Because this often ends up with people talking past each other, never until a few years ago did anyone use singular they for a known, specific person. Shakespeare used it for unknown or nonspecific people.
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