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by smartmic11 hours ago |
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upvoteby 0x00cl10 hours ago|
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Ladybird as a project is not that old, and it's still in pre-alpha, if they are going to make important changes then it's better now than later.
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upvoteby jsheard8 hours ago|
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> I am somewhat concerned about the volatility.

Not just volatility but also flip-flopping. Rust was explicitly a contender when they decided to go with Swift 18 months ago, and they've already done a 180 on it despite the language being more or less the same as it was.

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upvoteby zem6 hours ago|
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they tried swift, it didn't work, and they figured rust was the best remaining option. that's not "flip-flopping" (by which I assume you mean random indecisiveness that leads to them changing their mind for no reason)
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upvoteby lioeters5 hours ago|
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Yup, this was not flip-flopping, it was willingness to be open to options, even if it means going back on a decision branch made earlier in the process.

For the Ladybird project, now is the best time to be making a big decision like this, and it's commendable that the project lead was honest to recognize when an earlier attempt was not working, to be able to re-think and come to a better decision. I'm no fan of Rust, but for this project I think most of us would agree it's a better language than Swift for their purpose.

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upvoteby qingcharles5 hours ago|
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They made a very pragmatic and sensible decision after reviewing Swift that it wouldn't be suitable for their purposes, so they shifted to the next best alternative. I think they reasoned it very well and made a great decision.
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upvoteby 0x4574 hours ago|
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I guess they bet on Swift being more than Apple's blessed way of writing UI software.
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upvoteby fmajid8 hours ago|
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It's not that they are loving Rust, but they realized going all-in on Swift means becoming sharecroppers on massa Tim Apple's plantation.
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upvoteby boxed9 hours ago|
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There's been some fun volatility with the author over the years. I told him once that he might want to consider another language to which he replied slightly insultingly. Then he tried to write another language. Then he tried to switch from C++ to Swift, and now to Rust :P
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upvoteby oblio9 hours ago|
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Upside: he's learning?
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upvoteby jacquesm3 hours ago|
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Indeed, and as a school those 18 months are well worth it, but it is in many ways also 18 months wasted. There is a strong sense of NIH with the Ladybird dev(s), and I wonder if that isn't their whole reason for doing this.

I've seen another team doing something similar, they went through endless rewrite cycles of a major package but never shipped, and eventually the project was axed when they proposed to do it all over again, but this time even better.

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upvoteby rjh291 hours ago|
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The sense of NIH is from Serenity, and that was probably the reason for Jakt's existence too. Now it's spun off into its own project there is a lot more pragmatism.
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upvoteby jacquesm1 hours ago|
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Well, here's to hoping because we really need a stand-in for FF. I realize the irony here in terms of that being the ultimate 'NIH' project but that one I can get behind because the browser landscape is much too fragile. Of course they might end up taking users away from FF rather than from Chrome, Edge or Safari.
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upvoteby rjh291 hours ago|
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In case you didn't know they're using a lot of third-party libraries now for pretty major things: libcurl for http, Skia/Harfbuzz for rendering, libxml, OpenSSL, ffmpeg, etc:

https://github.com/LadybirdBrowser/ladybird/tree/8017f8a7ed3...

The core browser engine, JS/CSS/layout etc will always be original.

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