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Closing this as we are no longer pursuing Swift adoption

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Re: Closing this as we are no longer pursuing Swift adoption

#131
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's just too many defense mechanisms on popular websites that would simply make Ladybird flagged as a bot and render the website unusable. I wouldn't mind a toggle to switch between this and normal behavior but having that as a default would be bad for wider adoption.

If those "popular websites" are the likes of Facebook and Instagram, I don't see that as a big loss. That being said, I find that most of the Web works just fine on Tor, so it's certainly possible. Most of the issues seem related to the (known) the exit IP being overused or identified as Tor.

> If those "popular websites" are the likes of Facebook and Instagram, I don't see that as a big loss.

Personally I wouldn't mind either but my point is that they probably want to cater to the average person, and not just security conscious tech savvy people, and if that's the case, then you really can't exclude FB/IG/YT and others from working properly in your browser.

Re: Closing this as we are no longer pursuing Swift adoption

#133
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How could browsers not be on his mind when his job was to contribute to Firefox as a dev?

Do your hobbies revolve around the benefits for your employer? I don't mean it in a snarky way either, but given that Rust was initially written in OCaml, you could see how it could go like "I like programming, I like type systems but I want something procedural over functional so let me give it a go".

It can be described as a hobby project only in the sense that his employer would probably prefer that he spend all his time working on Firefox.

Tools to do X better are often designed by people who get paid a lot to do X and worry about losing their job if they are not good enough at X.

If he were to tell me that he didn't imagine Rust's helping with browser dev when he designed Rust, then I'd believe him, but the "circumstantial" evidence points strongly in the other direction.

Re: Closing this as we are no longer pursuing Swift adoption

#134
post #59
post #43

There's no way to say this without sounding mean: Everything Chris Lattner has done has been a "successful mess". He's obviously smart, but a horrible engineer. No one should allow him to design anything. Edit: I explained my position better below.

You don't explain or support your position, you are calling Lattner names. That's not helpful to me or anyone else if we are trying to evaluate his work. Swift has millions of users as does Mojo and Modular in general. These are not trivial accomplishments.

Mojo and Modular have millions of users?

Re: Closing this as we are no longer pursuing Swift adoption

#135
post #114

Regardless of the language it is written in, one thing that I hope Ladybird will focus on when the time comes is a user-respecting Javascript implementation. Regardless of what the Web standards say, it is unacceptable that websites can (ab)use JS against the users for things such as monitoring presence/activity, disabling paste, and extracting device information beyond what is strictly necessary for an acceptably fo…

There's just too many defense mechanisms on popular websites that would simply make Ladybird flagged as a bot and render the website unusable. I wouldn't mind a toggle to switch between this and normal behavior but having that as a default would be bad for wider adoption.

Only if there is not widespread adoption.

Re: Closing this as we are no longer pursuing Swift adoption

#136
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rust has straightforward support for every part of OOP other than implementation inheritance, and even implementation inheritance can be rephrased elegantly as the generic typestate pattern. (The two are effectively one and the same; if anything, generic typestate is likely more general.)

I think we have seen enough since the best example of a Rust browser that is Servo, has taken them 14 years to reach v0.0.1. So the approach of having a new language that requires a full rewrite (even with an LLM) is still a bad approach. Fil-C likely can do the job without a massive rewrite and achieving safety for C and C++. Job done. EDIT: The authors of Ladybird have already dismissed using Rust, and with Servo p…

> Fil-C likely can do the job

> Job done.

Seems like you forgot a few stops in your train of thought, Speed Racer.

Re: Closing this as we are no longer pursuing Swift adoption

#137
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Andreas Kling said Rust lacks OO, which he says is useful for GUI coding. He even made an attempt at creating his own language, Jakt, under SerenityOS, but perhaps felt that C++ (earlier with, now without Swift) were the pragmatic choice for Ladybird.

But wasn’t Rust designed specifically for being a language for developing a rendering engine / web browser?

Might not be the best choice for browser chrome, where an OOP paradigm for GUIs might make sense.

Re: Closing this as we are no longer pursuing Swift adoption

#138
post #129
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably okay to solve one problem at a time: first solve the "free open source browser, developed from the Web standard specs" problem in an established language (C++), and then the "reimplement all of part of it in a more suitable (safer, higher productivity) language - yet to be devised - problem. And Andreas Kling already proved the naysayers wrong when he showd that a new operating system and Web browser ca…

Maybe? I feel like there's been lots of efforts to migrate large C++ codebases over the years, and few actually complete the migration. Heck, Google is even making Carbon to try to solve this.

migrating any large project is going to be billions of dollars worth of labor. Language isn't a large factor in that cost, you can save few tens of millions at most with a better language.

Re: Closing this as we are no longer pursuing Swift adoption

#139
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But wasn’t Rust designed specifically for being a language for developing a rendering engine / web browser?

Rust initially started as a hobby project of a person who happened to be a Mozilla employee and later got sponsored by the foundation however it was not a language that was specifically designed with browsers in mind.

a lot of early rust design was driven by Servo - an internal mozilla project, and firefox component prototypes

Re: Closing this as we are no longer pursuing Swift adoption

#140
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> some teams are just not permitted to contribute to OSS in any way My understanding is that by default you are not allowed to contribute to open-source even if its your own project. Exceptions are made for teams whose function is to work on those open-source project e.g. Swift/LLVM/etc...

I talked to an apple engineer at a bar years ago and he said they aren’t allowed to work on _anything_ including side projects without getting approval first. Seemed like a total wtf moment to me.

This is interesting, I knew a workplace where open source contributions are fine as long as its not on company PC and network.
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