5 ms·

Google went from nothing, no web browser at all, to best-of-breed in under two years That's obviously wrong. The Chrome beta was over two years ago, and you ca

Google went from nothing, no web browser at all, to best-of-breed in under two years That's obviously wrong. The Chrome beta was over two years ago, and you can bet V8 didn't just appear overnight. Chrome is older than its 1.0. Not to mention that it's based on WebKit, which has been in development for a decade (if you start from KHTML).

statictype 16y ago
Why not also throw in libc as well and say it's been over multiple decades?
- alextgordon 16y ago
  Yes, why not. My point is that Chrome has no clear cut "starting date". It's the culmination of multiple teams over multiple time periods. To compare its progress with IE's over the last two years is a little dishonest, as many of the things that IE is doing now were implemented in WebKit before Chrome's release. It's essentially writing off a huge stretch of time in Chrome's code's history.
  - Herring 16y ago
    Microsoft is also quite welcome to use webkit. In fact most everyone would be much happier if they did.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
- jacquesm 16y ago
  Because libc is universal and does not apply to 'just' browsers but webkit does.
- ori_b 16y ago
  Because the vast majority of difficulty of developing a browser lies in making it able to display the pages that it's browsing correctly.
- amalcon 16y ago
  Well, you could, but every browser relies on (some very similar version of) libc. Not every browser relies on WebKit.
ams6110 16y ago
That jumped out at me also as a completely wrong-headed statement. To paraphrase Newton, they were standing on the shoulders of giants when they started.
reneherse 16y ago
I'd take issue with his other premise as well. Though I suspect he's on a different operating system, Chrome on Mac OS 10.5 seems to be an insufferable memory hog.
- ams6110 16y ago
  Chrome was built for Windows. Mac OS X was not supported until Version 5. Why use Chrome on Mac OS X when there's another good Webkit browser there by default?
  - chc 16y ago
    "Good" is relative. Compared to IE 6, Safari for Mac is great. Compared to Chrome, Safari is annoyingly slow. Chrome never just locks up the way Safari does.
stevefink 16y ago
While I agree with most of Jeff's sentiments - I do have to diverge on marking how fast software moves by something as arbitrary as a version number. Something such as versioning is completely ad-hoc and should not mark the advancement/maturity of a software product. How long did VLC take to get to version 1.0? That does not mean their development/release cycle is any slower than Chrome's. Perhaps I am being a bit drastic here, but it appears to me that judging software iteration speed by a version number is almost as lame as marking a programmer's efficiency by the number of lines of code he writes in a business day.

statictype 16y ago

Why not also throw in libc as well and say it's been over multiple decades?

alextgordon 16y ago
Yes, why not. My point is that Chrome has no clear cut "starting date". It's the culmination of multiple teams over multiple time periods. To compare its progress with IE's over the last two years is a little dishonest, as many of the things that IE is doing now were implemented in WebKit before Chrome's release. It's essentially writing off a huge stretch of time in Chrome's code's history.
- Herring 16y ago
  Microsoft is also quite welcome to use webkit. In fact most everyone would be much happier if they did.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
jacquesm 16y ago
Because libc is universal and does not apply to 'just' browsers but webkit does.
ori_b 16y ago
Because the vast majority of difficulty of developing a browser lies in making it able to display the pages that it's browsing correctly.
amalcon 16y ago
Well, you could, but every browser relies on (some very similar version of) libc. Not every browser relies on WebKit.

ams6110 16y ago

That jumped out at me also as a completely wrong-headed statement. To paraphrase Newton, they were standing on the shoulders of giants when they started.

reneherse 16y ago

I'd take issue with his other premise as well. Though I suspect he's on a different operating system, Chrome on Mac OS 10.5 seems to be an insufferable memory hog.

ams6110 16y ago
Chrome was built for Windows. Mac OS X was not supported until Version 5. Why use Chrome on Mac OS X when there's another good Webkit browser there by default?
- chc 16y ago
  "Good" is relative. Compared to IE 6, Safari for Mac is great. Compared to Chrome, Safari is annoyingly slow. Chrome never just locks up the way Safari does.

stevefink 16y ago

While I agree with most of Jeff's sentiments - I do have to diverge on marking how fast software moves by something as arbitrary as a version number. Something such as versioning is completely ad-hoc and should not mark the advancement/maturity of a software product. How long did VLC take to get to version 1.0? That does not mean their development/release cycle is any slower than Chrome's. Perhaps I am being a bit drastic here, but it appears to me that judging software iteration speed by a version number is almost as lame as marking a programmer's efficiency by the number of lines of code he writes in a business day.