3 ms·

Cautionary tale for the ‘rewrite it in Rust’ camp

by fooker 3y ago

sebzim4500 3y ago
I think it's mainly a cautionary tale for the "let's write a browser engine" camp.
- pavlov 3y ago
  If anything, it’s an encouraging tale for the “let’s invent a new language for our rewrite of a complex application” camp. The rewrite failed but the language lives on because the problem was general enough.
  - fooker 3y ago
    Most programming languages were born out of such a need, not necessarily just the successful ones.
    - cookieperson 3y ago
      Rust is doing just fine. And your original comment is specieous at best.
  - GeekyBear 3y ago
    > The rewrite failed Servo code, written in Rust, to enable the use of multiple CPU cores to speed up rendering was merged into Firefox quite a few years ago. https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/08/inside-a-super-fast-css-engine-quantum-css-aka-stylo/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/08/inside-a-super-fast-css-en... Also, shout out to Lin Clark, whose blog posts for Mozilla back in the day set a high bar.
    - pavlov 3y ago
      Fair enough. My impression was that Servo didn’t meet its original goals. Whether that counts as failure is a mindset question, I suppose.
  - kzrdude 3y ago
    Some of the best things in Servo were taken over by firefox, weren't they?
    - cookieperson 3y ago
      Yes.
  - capableweb 3y ago
    > The rewrite failed What rewrite are you talking about? Servo was never intended to replace Gecko, so it can't be that. Servo was always in Rust, so you're not talking about a rewrite there. Servo delivered on its promise to be a sandbox for experiments that might end up in Firefox, so surely you're not talking about that either.
- tannhaeuser 3y ago
  Was about to write it's a cautionary tale for "let's procrastinate to write x by going meta and bikeshedding on tools and languages" camp but pavlov beat me to it, interpreting what he wrote as sarcasm.
  - jeltz 3y ago
    Depends. It made Forefox lose marketshare but it also gave us Rust.
jeltz 3y ago
Not really. The Servo project delvireded som amazing results which made Firefox's rendering much faster.
- fooker 3y ago
  Firefox has been consistently slower than most other browsers for the last fifteen years.
  - earthling8118 3y ago
    That's just not true. Over 10 years ago I switched to Chrome because it was much faster but it's been nearly 5 years since I switched back because Firefox was blowing it away
  - jeltz 3y ago
    Nope, that has always been highly workload dependent.
GeekyBear 3y ago
> Cautionary tale for the ‘rewrite it in Rust’ camp Mozilla, famously, made multiple attempts to update Firefox's rendering engine to take advantage of multiple CPU cores that had to be abandoned before they switched over to Rust and started to see some success. >Parallelism is a known hard problem, and the CSS engine is very complex. It’s also sitting between the two other most complex parts of the rendering engine — the DOM and layout. So it would be easy to introduce a bug, and parallelism can result in bugs that are very hard to track down, called data races. https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/08/inside-a-super-fast-css-engine-quantum-css-aka-stylo/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/08/inside-a-super-fast-css-en...
- o1y32 3y ago
  Rust may have helped but I doubt that's the deciding factor. This needs more context
  - GeekyBear 3y ago
    There is already a link to an interview with Josh Matthews, who led Servo development, where he makes the case that moving to Rust from C is the factor that finally allowed the effort to succeed after three previous failed attempts. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36093636 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36093636
- kvark 3y ago
  Reminds me of the famous “you have to be this tall to write multithreaded code” poster :)

Cautionary tale for the ‘rewrite it in Rust’ camp

by fooker 3y ago

Cautionary tale for the ‘rewrite it in Rust’ camp

sebzim4500 3y ago

I think it's mainly a cautionary tale for the "let's write a browser engine" camp.

pavlov 3y ago
If anything, it’s an encouraging tale for the “let’s invent a new language for our rewrite of a complex application” camp. The rewrite failed but the language lives on because the problem was general enough.
- fooker 3y ago
  Most programming languages were born out of such a need, not necessarily just the successful ones.
  - cookieperson 3y ago
    Rust is doing just fine. And your original comment is specieous at best.
- GeekyBear 3y ago
  > The rewrite failed Servo code, written in Rust, to enable the use of multiple CPU cores to speed up rendering was merged into Firefox quite a few years ago. https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/08/inside-a-super-fast-css-engine-quantum-css-aka-stylo/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/08/inside-a-super-fast-css-en... Also, shout out to Lin Clark, whose blog posts for Mozilla back in the day set a high bar.
  - pavlov 3y ago
    Fair enough. My impression was that Servo didn’t meet its original goals. Whether that counts as failure is a mindset question, I suppose.
- kzrdude 3y ago
  Some of the best things in Servo were taken over by firefox, weren't they?
  - cookieperson 3y ago
    Yes.
- capableweb 3y ago
  > The rewrite failed What rewrite are you talking about? Servo was never intended to replace Gecko, so it can't be that. Servo was always in Rust, so you're not talking about a rewrite there. Servo delivered on its promise to be a sandbox for experiments that might end up in Firefox, so surely you're not talking about that either.
tannhaeuser 3y ago
Was about to write it's a cautionary tale for "let's procrastinate to write x by going meta and bikeshedding on tools and languages" camp but pavlov beat me to it, interpreting what he wrote as sarcasm.
- jeltz 3y ago
  Depends. It made Forefox lose marketshare but it also gave us Rust.

jeltz 3y ago

Not really. The Servo project delvireded som amazing results which made Firefox's rendering much faster.

fooker 3y ago
Firefox has been consistently slower than most other browsers for the last fifteen years.
- earthling8118 3y ago
  That's just not true. Over 10 years ago I switched to Chrome because it was much faster but it's been nearly 5 years since I switched back because Firefox was blowing it away
- jeltz 3y ago
  Nope, that has always been highly workload dependent.

GeekyBear 3y ago

> Cautionary tale for the ‘rewrite it in Rust’ camp Mozilla, famously, made multiple attempts to update Firefox's rendering engine to take advantage of multiple CPU cores that had to be abandoned before they switched over to Rust and started to see some success. >Parallelism is a known hard problem, and the CSS engine is very complex. It’s also sitting between the two other most complex parts of the rendering engine — the DOM and layout. So it would be easy to introduce a bug, and parallelism can result in bugs that are very hard to track down, called data races. https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/08/inside-a-super-fast-css-engine-quantum-css-aka-stylo/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/08/inside-a-super-fast-css-en...

o1y32 3y ago
Rust may have helped but I doubt that's the deciding factor. This needs more context
- GeekyBear 3y ago
  There is already a link to an interview with Josh Matthews, who led Servo development, where he makes the case that moving to Rust from C is the factor that finally allowed the effort to succeed after three previous failed attempts. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36093636 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36093636
kvark 3y ago
Reminds me of the famous “you have to be this tall to write multithreaded code” poster :)