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I'm fed up with it, so I'm writing a browser

adayinthelifeof.nl

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Re: I'm fed up with it, so I'm writing a browser

#341

Post by ltbarcly3 »

I'm surprised at the amount of attention that a threat to write a browser has gotten here. There is 0.000000% chance that anyone will write a new web browser that can reasonably render current web pages without about $10M/yr of budget or volunteer effort, probably much more. You can say this is just being dismissive or pessimistic or whatever, but it's no different than someone saying they are going to build their own Space Shuttle, and the progress so far is a partial sketch of one of the tires.

In about 3 or 4 weeks the author here has managed to implement about 2% of a very poor parser for html. Parsing HTML is probably one of the least labor intensive parts of writing a browser and is a task that would be suitable as a project for an undergraduate student majoring in CS as a project for a class. Writing a javascript engine that is fast enough to allow current web pages to work is not even comparable in complexity and effort. Projecting to what it would take to build a very poor browser, we are looking at about 150 years or more.

Re: I'm fed up with it, so I'm writing a browser

#342

Post by trinsic2 »

jefc1111 wrote: post #124
jaytaph wrote: post #59

OP here. Thanks for the pos/neg/neutral comments everybody. Some remarks: Yes, there are a lot of browsers out there where I can contribute to which would be more efficient. But that would result in just a few browsers instead of a lot of browsers. I'm all for the last one, as this would give people options. This IS a pet project. I never told anyone otherwise. I would start writing it even when I wasn't fed up with…

This is an inspiring attitude. I used to be stuck in a rut of "there's no point starting to build / learn a thing because there will almost certainly never be a result of substance". After a while I realised that every unfinished thing results in learning, which is applied in the future, etc etc. What truly got me out of the rut was the realisation I was not only not finishing anything, I was not _doing_ anything. An…

> I used to be stuck in a rut of "there's no point starting to build / learn a thing because there will almost certainly never be a result of substance".

In my view, that's what people in power want to encourage, using crowed influencing dynamics [0].

There is an a loosely orchestrated effort to make people feel less powerful because that makes it easier for people in power (people with money or resources) to increase their self-interest endeavors.

This is why I don't watch the news, and take peoples opinions about the world with a grain of salt. Ideas are like viruses, the spread rapidly. The people with the most resources gets to set the tone about what the population thinks by using modern media to mold the narrative. If you don't understand your individual value, you will be swept into this mind set, whether you are aware of it or not.

[0]: Example https://cxl.com/blog/17-lesser-known-ways-to-persuade-people...

Re: I'm fed up with it, so I'm writing a browser

#343

Post by otp209 »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #72
jaytaph wrote: post #59

OP here. Thanks for the pos/neg/neutral comments everybody. Some remarks: Yes, there are a lot of browsers out there where I can contribute to which would be more efficient. But that would result in just a few browsers instead of a lot of browsers. I'm all for the last one, as this would give people options. This IS a pet project. I never told anyone otherwise. I would start writing it even when I wasn't fed up with…

> I get angry about not being able to do anything about anything. And this is my way of trying to do something about it. It's the best I can do. This attitude is gold, and it's what changes the whole world. What you said about the misery of "news" resonates with me. In psyops we call it "sapping". Propaganda designed to demoralise, dispirit and corrode resistance used to come from our enemies . The classic example wa…

> As you do, I find the discourse around tech to be a pit of dismissiveness, avoidance, denial, resignation, and learned-helplessness

I have a whole tirade on this, but I completely agree. It seemed while going through college that the whole prescriptivism and general attitudes in tech are built in such a way so as to discourage certain mindsets which the industry DESPERATELY needs, and my hypothesis is that not having representation of those mindsets across the board has contributed to a much of the degradation of UX over time (along with collective laziness of course; low level languages being more work to use, much as I enjoy high level conveniences myself).

Re: I'm fed up with it, so I'm writing a browser

#344

Post by Scubabear68 »

phkahler wrote: post #202
ynniv wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a developer my problem with the GPL is that it's less free than other licenses. It's an interesting legal hack, but it can only succeed in its goals by boiling the ocean. I just want to write things, and sometimes making money involves not publishing all of your source code. Having to choose between options and idealism limits the popularity of GPL projects.

>> As a developer my problem with the GPL is that it's less free than other licenses. The freedom to deny other people the freedom you are enjoying is not compatible with the notion of freedom. It's hypocrisy. That's not to say there is no place for MIT/BSD licenses, but it is not with general application software or libraries used to build such.

The fundamental problem I have with the GPL, and I think is echoed elsewhere here, is that the GPL is not about my code. It is trying to force my will on other people’s code. It is inherently less free because it is trying to exert dominance over things I do not own and have never been involved in. In theory, a 10 liner GPL Python script could infect an org with 20 millions lines of closed source code and try to dictate the licensing of those 20 million lines.

To me that is just wrong.

Re: I'm fed up with it, so I'm writing a browser

#345

Post by palata »

lijok wrote: post #138
Ensorceled wrote: post #136

The first part of this blog really resonated with me. Stuff is bad, fascism is on the rise, mega corporations control more and more wealth, those two things feed on each other, book banning in the US, war in Ukraine, my country is burning due to global warming, ... and all of this bad news damages the psyche. I've been thinking of how I can help, that I should stop reading so much negative news, for my own mental hea…

> Stuff is bad, fascism is on the rise, mega corporations control more and more wealth, those two things feed on each other, book banning in the US, war in Ukraine, my country is burning due to global warming, ... and all of this bad news damages the psyche. Turn off the news. We are living in unprecedentedly peaceful and prosperous times, and it's only getting better day by day. That is a fact. If you feel otherwise…

> and it's only getting better day by day. That is a fact.

Ever heard of climate change and mass extinction? That is super bad, and unprecedented. Society may well not survive it, in a timeline of a few decades. I think there are reasons to be worried.

Re: I'm fed up with it, so I'm writing a browser

#346

Post by _moof »

gumby wrote: post #171

> I do not expect ANYTHING to come from this project. I do not expect to finish this project. And I do expect that - if nobody will follow me into helping the project - the project will be dead quite soon. I do not expect this project to become the dominant browser that will topple all the big players in the market. This sounds like Linus' original announcement of Linux on comp.os.minix: > Hello everybody out there u…

> it probably never will support anything other than AT-harddisks

*installs Linux on literal spacecraft*

You never know where a project will go. And in a way it doesn't matter, if you're doing it for your own reasons.

Re: I'm fed up with it, so I'm writing a browser

#347

Post by carapace »

Scubabear68 wrote: post #344
phkahler wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> As a developer my problem with the GPL is that it's less free than other licenses. The freedom to deny other people the freedom you are enjoying is not compatible with the notion of freedom. It's hypocrisy. That's not to say there is no place for MIT/BSD licenses, but it is not with general application software or libraries used to build such.

The fundamental problem I have with the GPL, and I think is echoed elsewhere here, is that the GPL is not about my code. It is trying to force my will on other people’s code. It is inherently less free because it is trying to exert dominance over things I do not own and have never been involved in. In theory, a 10 liner GPL Python script could infect an org with 20 millions lines of closed source code and try to dict…

The GPL started when RMS wanted to fix his printer and Xerox said "No."

Re: I'm fed up with it, so I'm writing a browser

#348

Post by Ensorceled »

tmtvl wrote: post #296
Ensorceled wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> US makes up a mere ~4% of the worlds population So you concede all the other points? "This revision represents 11 million more people living in extreme poverty, largely driven by South Asia (5 million) and the Middle East and North Africa (4 million)." World Bank is claiming there are 11 million more people living in extreme poverty in 2023[1]. [1] https://blogs.worldbank.org/opendata/march-2023-global-pover...

From your very own link, Figure 1 shows a very clear drop in poverty rate across the last 30 years for all regions except North Africa & the Middle East, even the global trend shows a clear decline. Quote: > It is still the case that global poverty has been falling since the 1990s, and at a slower rate since 2014 There is no distinct trend line for the U.S.A., but it seems like it is part of the "Other High Income" g…

> > and it's only getting better day by day.

This is the part I'm disputing. You are moving the goal posts to "generations" ...

There is a fair amount of evidence that we are currently in a down swing in some key areas.

Re: I'm fed up with it, so I'm writing a browser

#349

Post by carapace »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #167
phkahler wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> As you do, I find the discourse around tech to be a pit of dismissiveness, avoidance, denial, resignation, and learned-helplessness. Do you think this is why people are abandoning the GPL license in favor of MIT/BSD? Something about the fight the GPL aims to win being a hopeless fantasy? In the face of the sentiment you and OP express, I'd think GPL usage would be widespread.

I think opinions around software licenses are limited to us hackers, and the actively code-publishing subset of us, moreover. From my POV the GPL certainly seems alive and well, and the ideology of the Free Software movement remains sound and strong. What I'm alluding to is the wider public. In we literally walked around town interviewing young and old. Soon as I can, I'll share the results in a HN submission.

> Soon as I can, I'll share the results in a HN submission.

Please do!

Re: I'm fed up with it, so I'm writing a browser

#350

Post by raphlinus »

Go for it! I think you will learn a lot, and it seems like your expectations are calibrated well.

Source: wrote a browser[1]. I enjoyed it and learned a lot. My motivation for starting it is that the open source browser landscape was bleak at the time. There was khtml, which seemed fairly solid, but that was KDE and I was firmly in the Gnome camp. Mine was very fast and lean, but wouldn't scale to embrace what's now considered the basics of a web browser: JS and CSS. Motivation tailed off sharply when Mozilla announced they would be open sourcing their browser. If I had known it would take them over 4 years to ship Firefox 1.0, I might have kept at it.

Gambatte!

[1]: https://levien.com/gzilla/

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