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It's not that hard to build a browser (I'll say this because I've done it, and there are plenty of people who have done it better.) It's just tedious and not so

by swiley 6y ago

It's not that hard to build a browser (I'll say this because I've done it, and there are plenty of people who have done it better.) It's just tedious and not something you can put on the app store.

bigiain 6y ago
> It's not that hard to build a browser One that reliably runs all the javascript needed to support modern Twitter/Facebook/GMail/whatever style webapps? I mean _maybe_, if you're pulling in someone else's code as dependencies to deal with your javascript runtime and your rendering engine. A lot of people could hammer out lynx or w3m in a weekend, but not something that'll run Twitter. (Hell, the Safari Tech Preview occasionally chokes on Titter...)
- murgindrag 6y ago
  I liked the web better with HTML2. There were simple technologies which did a lot too, like Hypercard. The creeping complexity of the web isn't something which had to happen. I understand the reasons it did happen, but in an alternative timeline, without Netscape vs. IE, the dot-com boom/bust, and the whole Netscape meltdown, it might not have happened. People were building sophisticated applications which did a lot in the days of NeXTStep, BeOS, SGI, and Amiga, without this massive complexity build-up. Altavista scaled well too.
  - IanSanders 6y ago
    Just like people got tired of "fancy" user interfaces and minimalism became somewhat fashionable, I hope the same will happen architecturally, possibly after especially bad yet-another vulnerability and breach.
- IanSanders 6y ago
  >One that reliably runs all the javascript needed to support modern Twitter/Facebook/GMail/whatever style webapps? That can stay within the browser or some shared library. It absolutely doesn't need to affect unix/linux architecture in any way.
forgotpwd16 6y ago
You're vastly underestimating the effort required to go from a simple HTML renderer to a full-blown web browser. See [1]. [1]: https://drewdevault.com/2020/03/18/Reckless-limitless-scope.html https://drewdevault.com/2020/03/18/Reckless-limitless-scope....

by swiley 6y ago

It's not that hard to build a browser (I'll say this because I've done it, and there are plenty of people who have done it better.) It's just tedious and not something you can put on the app store.

bigiain 6y ago

> It's not that hard to build a browser One that reliably runs all the javascript needed to support modern Twitter/Facebook/GMail/whatever style webapps? I mean _maybe_, if you're pulling in someone else's code as dependencies to deal with your javascript runtime and your rendering engine. A lot of people could hammer out lynx or w3m in a weekend, but not something that'll run Twitter. (Hell, the Safari Tech Preview occasionally chokes on Titter...)

murgindrag 6y ago
I liked the web better with HTML2. There were simple technologies which did a lot too, like Hypercard. The creeping complexity of the web isn't something which had to happen. I understand the reasons it did happen, but in an alternative timeline, without Netscape vs. IE, the dot-com boom/bust, and the whole Netscape meltdown, it might not have happened. People were building sophisticated applications which did a lot in the days of NeXTStep, BeOS, SGI, and Amiga, without this massive complexity build-up. Altavista scaled well too.
- IanSanders 6y ago
  Just like people got tired of "fancy" user interfaces and minimalism became somewhat fashionable, I hope the same will happen architecturally, possibly after especially bad yet-another vulnerability and breach.
IanSanders 6y ago
>One that reliably runs all the javascript needed to support modern Twitter/Facebook/GMail/whatever style webapps? That can stay within the browser or some shared library. It absolutely doesn't need to affect unix/linux architecture in any way.

forgotpwd16 6y ago

You're vastly underestimating the effort required to go from a simple HTML renderer to a full-blown web browser. See [1]. [1]: https://drewdevault.com/2020/03/18/Reckless-limitless-scope.html https://drewdevault.com/2020/03/18/Reckless-limitless-scope....