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> We’ve been searching for a memory-safe programming language to replace C++ in Ladybird for a while now. The article fails to explain why. What problems (besides the obvious) have been found in which "memory-safe languages" can help. Do these problems actually explain the need of adding complexity to a project like this by adding another language? I guess AI will be involved which, at this early point in the project…
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That’s probably just the classic HackerNews title shortening algorithm at work.
> classic HackerNews title shortening algorithm Woah, this is a wild claim. @dang: Is this a thing? I don't believe it. I, myself, have submitted many articles and never once did I see some auto-magical "title shortening algorithm" at work!
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Same here. I had Claude write me a web based RSS feed reader in Rust. It has some minor glitches I still need to iron out, but it works great, is fast as can be, and is easy on the eyes. https://github.com/AdrianVollmer/FluxFeed
Rust is the final language. Defect free. Immaculate types. Safe. Ergonomic. Beautiful to read. AI is going to be writing a lot of Rust. The final arguments of "rust is hard to write" are going to quiet down. This makes it even more accessible.
Oh my, there's a new language called Rust? Didn't they know there already is one? The old one is so popular that I can't imagine the nicely readable one to gain any traction whatsoever (even if the old one is an assault on the senses).
Looks like Andreas is a mighty fine engineer, but he's even better entrepreneur. Doesn't matter if intentional or not, but he managed to create and lead a rather visible passion project, attract many contributors and use that project's momentum to detach Ladybird into a separate endeavor with much more concrete financial prospects. The Jakt -> Swift -> Rust pivots look like the same thing on a different level. The in…
Wary of what?
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I personally think that people might've framed it as use Ada/D over rust comment which might have the HN people who prefer rust to respond with downvotes. I agree that, this might be wrong behaviour and I don't think its any fault of rust itself which itself could be a blanket statement imo. There's nuance in both sides of discussions. Coming to the main point, I feel like the real reason could be that rust is this s…
> which might have the HN people who prefer rust to respond with downvotes. This completely misses the purpose of the downvoting feature, which is not surprising, since upvoting seems no longer to indicate quality or truth of the comment neither. > rust is this sort of equilibra that the world has reached for, especially security related projects Which is amazing, since Rust only covers a fraction of safety/security…
I agree with you in the sense that it would've definitely been interesting to read what Andreas thinks of Ada/D and the discussion surrounding it and your overall comment too.
I do wish that anyone from ladybird team/maybe even Andreas if he's on HN (not sure) could respond to the original query if possible.
I remember ladybird had a discord server I once joined, perhaps someone from the community could ask Andreas about it there if possible since It would be genuinely fascinating to read.
Although a point I am worried about is if Ladybird changes the language again let's say after a discussion of using Ada/D. It might be awkward.
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Apple’s own marketing speak has Swift as a cross platform language. Just like, I suppose, C# is a cross platform language. Apple puts zero resources into making that claim reality, however.
Apple actually did put some resources behind it, the toolchain is reasonably pleasant to use outside macOS and Xcode, they have people building an ecosystem in the Swift Server Workgroup, and arguably some recent language design decisions don't seem to be purely motivated by desktop/mobile usage. But in the end I can't help but feel Swift has become an absolute beast of a multi-paradigm language with even worse compi…
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You can do it via the C ABI, and use opaque pointers to represent higher-level Rust/C++ concepts if you want to. Firefox is a mixed C++ / Rust codebase with a relatively close coupling between Rust and C++ components in places (layout/dom/script are in C++ while style is in Rust, and a mix of WebRender (Rust) and Skia (C++) are used for rendering with C++ glue code)
> You can do it via the C ABI, and use opaque pointers to represent higher-level Rust/C++ concepts Yeah but, you can do the same in Swift
The Rust compiler is incredibly solid (across all target platforms), and while it's C/C++ interop is relatively simplistic, what does exist is extensively battle tested in production codebases.
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Agree, and it's also such a shame that none of the AI companies actually focus on that way of using AI. All of them are moving into the direction of "less human involved and agents do more", while what I really want is better tooling for me to work closer with AI and be better at reviewing/steering it, and be more involved. I don't want "Fire one prompt and get somewhat working code", I want a UX tailored for long se…
I think it was Steve Jobs who said computers should be like a bicycle for the mind, I tend to agree
"Bicycle for the mind", as always when it involves Jobs, sounds more fitting for the masses though, so thanks for sharing that :)
i rememebr seeing interviews saying rust is not suited for this project because of recursion and dom tree. how they tested multiple languages and settled on swift. then they abandon swift and now they shift towards rust. this entire project starts to look like "how am i feeling today?" rather than a serious project.