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Who is this post intended for? Nobody builds their own browser engines. And I mean nobody. I didn’t get the feeling that he wrote this for pet projects either.

Who is this post intended for? Nobody builds their own browser engines. And I mean nobody. I didn’t get the feeling that he wrote this for pet projects either. Andreas over at Ladybird is probably the only one (and Servo?) who is really doing it the way that this post describes. Still, the last couple of paragraphs made me think that this is more of a reflection of his own time over at Mozilla: could have / would have.

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jawerty 2y ago
Most people don’t need to write their own OS or compiler. Knowing the details of how things work is apart of getting to gaining expertise
pvg 2y ago
And I mean nobody. One such project has pretty regular HN chonkthreads, including last week. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=ladybird&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
- skilled 2y ago
  Yeah that is what I meant. To my knowledge, Andreas is the only person crazy enough to do it and also do it in the open. You have to watch some of his YouTube videos to appreciate the insanity that goes into getting things to work, but he at least has some help from the OSS community: building automated tests, scripts, etc. As I was reading the post I thought he would at least shout him out too!
  - pvg 2y ago
    Ah that's 'statistically nobody' vs 'nobody'.
    - pessimizer 2y ago
      The word directly under "Nobody" is "Andreas."
cjpearson 2y ago
Flow is another example I've seen. https://www.ekioh.com/flow-browser/ https://www.ekioh.com/flow-browser/
ramon156 2y ago
There's a reason they sometimes on interviews ask "what happens when I fill in a url and hit enter", because almost no one knows. It's good to know how your daily tools work.
doublerabbit 2y ago
> Nobody builds their own browser engines Anymore. https://eylenburg.github.io/browser_engines.htm https://eylenburg.github.io/browser_engines.htm
asadotzler 2y ago
As someone who worked with roc for many years at Mozilla, and with 25 years of Mozilla and Gecko experience myself, I think it serves as a solid warning.
roca 2y ago
I was inspired to write it by reading about Ladybird, so I wrote it for Andreas Kling basically :-). But there is also Flow: https://www.ekioh.com/flow-browser/ https://www.ekioh.com/flow-browser/ and Servo. Maybe in the future someone else will try. Also I think it's fun to think about these things even if you're not building a browser engine. It only took about 90 minutes to write.
esprehn 2y ago
For general web browsing it's true there's basically just Gecko, WebKit and Blink that are broadly used and compatible with the whole ecosystem. There's a fair number of other engines though like Sciter, Flow, Cobalt and Servo.

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jawerty 2y ago

Most people don’t need to write their own OS or compiler. Knowing the details of how things work is apart of getting to gaining expertise

pvg 2y ago

And I mean nobody. One such project has pretty regular HN chonkthreads, including last week. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=ladybird&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

skilled 2y ago
Yeah that is what I meant. To my knowledge, Andreas is the only person crazy enough to do it and also do it in the open. You have to watch some of his YouTube videos to appreciate the insanity that goes into getting things to work, but he at least has some help from the OSS community: building automated tests, scripts, etc. As I was reading the post I thought he would at least shout him out too!
- pvg 2y ago
  Ah that's 'statistically nobody' vs 'nobody'.
  - pessimizer 2y ago
    The word directly under "Nobody" is "Andreas."

cjpearson 2y ago

Flow is another example I've seen. https://www.ekioh.com/flow-browser/ https://www.ekioh.com/flow-browser/

ramon156 2y ago

There's a reason they sometimes on interviews ask "what happens when I fill in a url and hit enter", because almost no one knows. It's good to know how your daily tools work.

doublerabbit 2y ago

> Nobody builds their own browser engines Anymore. https://eylenburg.github.io/browser_engines.htm https://eylenburg.github.io/browser_engines.htm

asadotzler 2y ago

As someone who worked with roc for many years at Mozilla, and with 25 years of Mozilla and Gecko experience myself, I think it serves as a solid warning.

roca 2y ago

I was inspired to write it by reading about Ladybird, so I wrote it for Andreas Kling basically :-). But there is also Flow: https://www.ekioh.com/flow-browser/ https://www.ekioh.com/flow-browser/ and Servo. Maybe in the future someone else will try. Also I think it's fun to think about these things even if you're not building a browser engine. It only took about 90 minutes to write.

esprehn 2y ago

For general web browsing it's true there's basically just Gecko, WebKit and Blink that are broadly used and compatible with the whole ecosystem. There's a fair number of other engines though like Sciter, Flow, Cobalt and Servo.