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Servo is a "high-risk research project"[1], so I've been wondering what would happen if it doesn't pan out. Rust would still be interesting even without Servo,

Servo is a "high-risk research project"[1], so I've been wondering what would happen if it doesn't pan out. Rust would still be interesting even without Servo, but would mozilla still invest in Rust if they stopped working on Servo? So it's nice to see some non-mozilla involvement and momentum in Rust/Servo. Maybe that means that an investment in learning/using Rust is that much less risky :) [1] http://www.mail-archive.com/dev-servo@lists.mozilla.org/msg00111.html http://www.mail-archive.com/dev-servo@lists.mozilla.org/msg0...

the_mitsuhiko 14y ago
Rust is interesting enough that I'm pretty sure it will do with or without Servo.
nsmartt 14y ago
I can't see Mozilla abandoning Rust. If nothing else, it's valuable as a learning experience for all involved.
- saraid216 14y ago
  Being described as a "learning experience" usually indicates that a project was just scrapped.
  - nsmartt 14y ago
    I meant that it can be called a learning experience to justify further development. Besides, Rust is genuinely useful. I can't be the only one who is interested in (eventually) using it as my go-to language for my projects.
    - pnathan 14y ago
      You aren't. Personally, once Rust stabilizes as a language, I plan to write the bulk of my "low level" at-home code in Rust. After tooling support gets up there (providing things are still awesome), I plan to use it professionally.
      - jacques_chester 14y ago
        Ditto. The safety is just too attractive to pass up.
        jnw2 14y ago
        Will the safety work reliably in a multithreaded environment?
        jacques_chester 14y ago
        They claim so, using M:N threading. Data race safety is one of the design constraints.
        pnathan 14y ago
        Their formal type system is designed around pointer safety for multithreaded environments.
paulirish 14y ago
"I think it's premature to start making a roadmap that makes Servo a competitive product in N years; apart from anything else, such a roadmap is going to be pure fantasy" -- also from that post, from just 6 weeks ago. Curious. That said, having an ARM backend to Rust on Android phones means big things for the potential of mobile web performance. I'm hopeful!
- bzbarsky 14y ago
  A few things: 1) There is no uniform agreement about the state of Servo. Some are more optimistic than others. 2) There is a number of unknown unknowns here; that's what makes it a research project and makes it hard to roadmap. For example doing parallel layout of CSS involving floats is an actual research topic people are currently publishing papers on...
  - qznc 14y ago
    Does it even make sense to parallelize the layouting? When does it take longer than a few milliseconds? I'd rather see DOM-updating (e.g. via Javascript) in parallel to the rendering. Although, that already leads to problems since rendering changes to DOM as well.

the_mitsuhiko 14y ago

Rust is interesting enough that I'm pretty sure it will do with or without Servo.

nsmartt 14y ago

I can't see Mozilla abandoning Rust. If nothing else, it's valuable as a learning experience for all involved.

saraid216 14y ago
Being described as a "learning experience" usually indicates that a project was just scrapped.
- nsmartt 14y ago
  I meant that it can be called a learning experience to justify further development. Besides, Rust is genuinely useful. I can't be the only one who is interested in (eventually) using it as my go-to language for my projects.
  - pnathan 14y ago
    You aren't. Personally, once Rust stabilizes as a language, I plan to write the bulk of my "low level" at-home code in Rust. After tooling support gets up there (providing things are still awesome), I plan to use it professionally.
    - jacques_chester 14y ago
      Ditto. The safety is just too attractive to pass up.
      - jnw2 14y ago
        Will the safety work reliably in a multithreaded environment?
        jacques_chester 14y ago
        They claim so, using M:N threading. Data race safety is one of the design constraints.
        pnathan 14y ago
        Their formal type system is designed around pointer safety for multithreaded environments.

paulirish 14y ago

"I think it's premature to start making a roadmap that makes Servo a competitive product in N years; apart from anything else, such a roadmap is going to be pure fantasy" -- also from that post, from just 6 weeks ago. Curious. That said, having an ARM backend to Rust on Android phones means big things for the potential of mobile web performance. I'm hopeful!

bzbarsky 14y ago
A few things: 1) There is no uniform agreement about the state of Servo. Some are more optimistic than others. 2) There is a number of unknown unknowns here; that's what makes it a research project and makes it hard to roadmap. For example doing parallel layout of CSS involving floats is an actual research topic people are currently publishing papers on...
- qznc 14y ago
  Does it even make sense to parallelize the layouting? When does it take longer than a few milliseconds? I'd rather see DOM-updating (e.g. via Javascript) in parallel to the rendering. Although, that already leads to problems since rendering changes to DOM as well.