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Ladybird seems to be progressing at an impressive pace also, time will tell however if their choice of C++ will be a big problem or if modern ways of doing thin

Ladybird seems to be progressing at an impressive pace also, time will tell however if their choice of C++ will be a big problem or if modern ways of doing things are safe enough.

throwaway48476 1y ago
They chose c++ because the web spec implies object oriented design.
- IshKebab 1y ago
  No they didn't. It's C++ because the primary author was most familiar with C++ and only allowed C++ in SerenityOS. https://ladybird.org/#:~:text=The%20choice%20of%20language%20was,of%20modern%20C%2B%2B%20to%20maintain. https://ladybird.org/#:~:text=The%20choice%20of%20language%2...
  - throwaway48476 1y ago
    That was the answer I remember Andreas give in a update video to answer the "why not rust" question.
    - IshKebab 1y ago
      That doesn't really make sense to me either. Even if WebIDL is inheritance based, that is going to be processed automatically so you can easily use codegen to make the resulting interface nice in Rust, in a way that would be relatively difficult if you were hand-writing it.
lawn 1y ago
They're announced they want to move to Swift to combat some of this.
- whizzter 1y ago
  Yep, but there was another post mentioning half a million lines of C++ code so far. While the C++ interop in Swift seems sane with Clang being embedded I wonder how much time/energy they will have to actually move significant parts if it's so large already.
tredre3 1y ago
Their choice is actually Swift and by the time there's a stable release all the C++ code is intended to have been replaced. Time will tell if that will be a big problem or if more mainstream ways of doing things are better for a project intended to run everywhere!
- norman784 1y ago
  I remember they mentioning Swift a few months ago, but currently I don’t see any swift in their github repo, didn’t checked other branches besides main.
- hypeatei 1y ago
  > all the C++ code is intended to have been replaced. That is not their goal at all, I don't where you heard that. Swift is currently stalled due to some blockers listed on their issue tracker, but any usage of it will be in safety-critical areas first and not a complete rewrite of existing code.
glenstein 1y ago
Very excited for Ladybird and Servo. I wonder if a good thing that may emerge from this era of LLM code-support capabilities is that its more feasible to support alternative browser codebases even as they get into the multi-million lines of code.

Ladybird seems to be progressing at an impressive pace also, time will tell however if their choice of C++ will be a big problem or if modern ways of doing things are safe enough.

throwaway48476 1y ago

They chose c++ because the web spec implies object oriented design.

IshKebab 1y ago
No they didn't. It's C++ because the primary author was most familiar with C++ and only allowed C++ in SerenityOS. https://ladybird.org/#:~:text=The%20choice%20of%20language%20was,of%20modern%20C%2B%2B%20to%20maintain. https://ladybird.org/#:~:text=The%20choice%20of%20language%2...
- throwaway48476 1y ago
  That was the answer I remember Andreas give in a update video to answer the "why not rust" question.
  - IshKebab 1y ago
    That doesn't really make sense to me either. Even if WebIDL is inheritance based, that is going to be processed automatically so you can easily use codegen to make the resulting interface nice in Rust, in a way that would be relatively difficult if you were hand-writing it.

lawn 1y ago

They're announced they want to move to Swift to combat some of this.

whizzter 1y ago
Yep, but there was another post mentioning half a million lines of C++ code so far. While the C++ interop in Swift seems sane with Clang being embedded I wonder how much time/energy they will have to actually move significant parts if it's so large already.

tredre3 1y ago

Their choice is actually Swift and by the time there's a stable release all the C++ code is intended to have been replaced. Time will tell if that will be a big problem or if more mainstream ways of doing things are better for a project intended to run everywhere!

norman784 1y ago
I remember they mentioning Swift a few months ago, but currently I don’t see any swift in their github repo, didn’t checked other branches besides main.
hypeatei 1y ago
> all the C++ code is intended to have been replaced. That is not their goal at all, I don't where you heard that. Swift is currently stalled due to some blockers listed on their issue tracker, but any usage of it will be in safety-critical areas first and not a complete rewrite of existing code.

glenstein 1y ago

Very excited for Ladybird and Servo. I wonder if a good thing that may emerge from this era of LLM code-support capabilities is that its more feasible to support alternative browser codebases even as they get into the multi-million lines of code.