3 ms·

I manage the team at Google that currently owns the Puppeteer project. The previous team that developed Puppeteer indeed moved to Microsoft and have since star

I manage the team at Google that currently owns the Puppeteer project. The previous team that developed Puppeteer indeed moved to Microsoft and have since started Playwright. While it is true that staffing is tight (isn't it always), the number of open issues does not tell the full story. The team has been busy with addressing technical debt that we inherited (testing, architecture, migrating to Typescript, etc) as well as investing in a standardized foundation to allow Puppeteer to work cross-browser in the future. This differs from the Playwright team's approach of shipping patched browser binaries.

capableweb 5y ago
> The team has been busy with addressing technical debt that we inherited [...] migrating to Typescript Wow, not writing stuff in TypeScript is now considered technical debt? I knew people were already rushing to rewrite everything in TypeScript if they could, but didn't knew we'd come this far along the hype-cycle already.
- eu 5y ago
  Perhaps because Typescript is a Microsoft baby?
  - mohanmcgeek 5y ago
    GP manages puppeteer team at Google
- Dlanv 5y ago
  Yes definitely. I've worked at two companies in three years spanning 250,000 employees and both companies consider writing JavaScript deprecated in favor of typescript.
vlunkr 5y ago
I used Puppeteer on a project recently to generate some really big and complex PDFs that would have been a massive pain to do any other way, so thanks for your work, and I'm very happy to hear that the project isn't dead.
throwthrow564 5y ago
Glad to hear that. Puppeteer still has a number of compelling things over Playwright (like not shipping patched binaries) so I hope competition in this space can continue to happen :)
sebazzz 5y ago
> This differs from the Playwright team's approach of shipping patched browser binaries. Can you expand on that?
- extra88 5y ago
  "Each version of Playwright needs specific versions of browser binaries to operate." [0] They patch and compile browser binaries so they have the functionality Playwright needs. Their build of Chromium is one release ahead of what's out but it looks like one could maintain a library of older Playwright browser binaries to test with. They probably have an older Firefox 91 binary that's feature-equivalent to the current Firefox ESR. Their WebKit builds won't ever be exactly the same as Apple Safari. [0] https://playwright.dev/docs/browsers https://playwright.dev/docs/browsers

capableweb 5y ago

> The team has been busy with addressing technical debt that we inherited [...] migrating to Typescript Wow, not writing stuff in TypeScript is now considered technical debt? I knew people were already rushing to rewrite everything in TypeScript if they could, but didn't knew we'd come this far along the hype-cycle already.

eu 5y ago
Perhaps because Typescript is a Microsoft baby?
- mohanmcgeek 5y ago
  GP manages puppeteer team at Google
Dlanv 5y ago
Yes definitely. I've worked at two companies in three years spanning 250,000 employees and both companies consider writing JavaScript deprecated in favor of typescript.

vlunkr 5y ago

I used Puppeteer on a project recently to generate some really big and complex PDFs that would have been a massive pain to do any other way, so thanks for your work, and I'm very happy to hear that the project isn't dead.

throwthrow564 5y ago

Glad to hear that. Puppeteer still has a number of compelling things over Playwright (like not shipping patched binaries) so I hope competition in this space can continue to happen :)

sebazzz 5y ago

> This differs from the Playwright team's approach of shipping patched browser binaries. Can you expand on that?

extra88 5y ago
"Each version of Playwright needs specific versions of browser binaries to operate." [0] They patch and compile browser binaries so they have the functionality Playwright needs. Their build of Chromium is one release ahead of what's out but it looks like one could maintain a library of older Playwright browser binaries to test with. They probably have an older Firefox 91 binary that's feature-equivalent to the current Firefox ESR. Their WebKit builds won't ever be exactly the same as Apple Safari. [0] https://playwright.dev/docs/browsers https://playwright.dev/docs/browsers