Mozilla Welcomes the Rust Foundation • Hacker News Board

Re: Mozilla Welcomes the Rust Foundation

#181

Post by forgetfulness » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 1:33 PM UTC

skohan wrote: post #180

ygjb wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are absolutely welcome to dispute it, but the fact of the matter is that an engineering team with the expertise, history and resources to write at least two iterations of a CSS processor did their homework and chose to rewrite it in Rust, realizing significant performance gains across a smaller code-base. The advantage to that team being Mozilla is that alot of the discussions that lead to these implementations a…

The fact that Mozilla used Rust for Stylo is not evidence that C++ is not usable to solve this problem.

If you give a C++ programmer infinite tape they will be able to write this program in finite time, is that all you're saying?

Re: Mozilla Welcomes the Rust Foundation

#182

Post by skohan » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 4:43 PM UTC

forgetfulness wrote: post #181

skohan wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that Mozilla used Rust for Stylo is not evidence that C++ is not usable to solve this problem.

If you give a C++ programmer infinite tape they will be able to write this program in finite time, is that all you're saying?

No, I am saying there is nothing intrinsic to the problem of a CSS engine that makes it intractable in C++. C++ is the most used language for highly parallel, HPC applications. I don't see why there is anything magical about CSS which would prevent a c++ solution from also existing here.

I'm not arguing that Rust was not the best choice here for Mozilla. I personally would also rather work with Rust than C++ in almost all cases. But to claim that C++ is not usable to solve this problem, based on the fact that Mozilla decided to use Rust instead is not a sound argument.

Re: Mozilla Welcomes the Rust Foundation

#183

Post by forgetfulness » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 8:18 PM UTC

skohan wrote: post #182

forgetfulness wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you give a C++ programmer infinite tape they will be able to write this program in finite time, is that all you're saying?

No, I am saying there is nothing intrinsic to the problem of a CSS engine that makes it intractable in C++. C++ is the most used language for highly parallel, HPC applications. I don't see why there is anything magical about CSS which would prevent a c++ solution from also existing here. I'm not arguing that Rust was not the best choice here for Mozilla. I personally would also rather work with Rust than C++ in almos…

Yes, but that reads like a put down for Mozilla. That hypothetically a team of guys earning like half a million a year in a big hedge fund could be recruited to build precisely a parallel CSS engine if they work in it for a year or two is not a good argument for using C++ for this either.

Re: Mozilla Welcomes the Rust Foundation

#184

Post by skohan » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 9:16 PM UTC

forgetfulness wrote: post #183

skohan wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I am saying there is nothing intrinsic to the problem of a CSS engine that makes it intractable in C++. C++ is the most used language for highly parallel, HPC applications. I don't see why there is anything magical about CSS which would prevent a c++ solution from also existing here. I'm not arguing that Rust was not the best choice here for Mozilla. I personally would also rather work with Rust than C++ in almos…

Yes, but that reads like a put down for Mozilla. That hypothetically a team of guys earning like half a million a year in a big hedge fund could be recruited to build precisely a parallel CSS engine if they work in it for a year or two is not a good argument for using C++ for this either.

It's not a put-down to Mozilla at all. I'm sure they chose Rust for very good reasons, and they achieved a great result. I'm not even arguing that C++ should be used for this. I'm just saying it's absurd to claim that C++ could not be used for this if you really wanted to.