7 ms·

If I had to rank-order the various humiliations I've seen, this comes near the top. Microsoft: "here's our best stab at what a great browser looks like - and i

by tjic 17y ago

If I had to rank-order the various humiliations I've seen, this comes near the top. Microsoft: "here's our best stab at what a great browser looks like - and it took us 14 years to get here". Google: "we've been working on a codebase for 2 years. We decided to release it as a patch to your browser. Our brief foray into this area has improved your best effort by 10x". Ouch!

lamby 17y ago
This is misleading. Webkit, the core component of Chrome, has been worked on for far more than 2 years.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- nixme 17y ago
  Except they only benchmarked javascript performance. V8 is only about 2 years old.
  - nostrademons 17y ago
    True, but the guy who did V8 is the same guy who did Beta, Self, and HotSpot. That's like 20 years of experience in writing high-performance VMs for dynamic languages right there.
    - deleted 17y ago
      [deleted]
    - enomar 17y ago
      Microsoft could have hired him or someone like him.
      - jackmoore 17y ago
        Great things aren't going to happen by just having him on the payroll, Microsoft would have to make good use of his abilities by giving him resources, time, meaningful work, and not undermine his efforts. If they just throw him into unfocused micro-manged bureaucracy then it's just a waste.
    - maximilian 17y ago
      And the guys who wrote the Squirrelfish VM for safari weren't all famous VM researchers. From what I read, they just picked all the low hanging fruit in classic VM design and got great performance - better than IE8 for sure. Their code is even open source. MS could just read through the source and copy the design.
      - pohl 17y ago
        Indeed, they wouldn't even have to read the source. They could just read the blog and the papers it references: http://webkit.org/blog/189/announcing-squirrelfish/ http://webkit.org/blog/189/announcing-squirrelfish/
    - apr 17y ago
      Microsoft has no lack of talented engineers, what they do lack is vision.
      - andreyf 17y ago
        "Vision" isn't an easily defined quantity. What MS lacks is incentive to make a browser with fast JavaScript performance, as they make most of their money off desktop apps, many of which web-based apps are looking to replace. So actually, the opposite is true: MS has a big economic incentive to slow down JS performance in browsers, because it will make them more money selling desktop softare. One way to do this is to release new versions of IE which have slow JS interpreters, and use marketing to convince enterprise customers that the new browsers are super-duper top-of-the-line shiny things, with features like security and easy maintainability.
        davepeck 17y ago
        Microsoft has economic incentive to stay competitive on many fronts. I guarantee you that MSFT is working hard to make JS faster, to make their browser more standards compliant, and to substantially improve security. It makes no strategic or tactical sense for them to do otherwise -- to improve the browser is not to make the desktop less attractive.
        deleted 17y ago
        [deleted]
        andreyf 17y ago
        I guarantee you that MSFT is working hard to make JS faster, Then why haven't they made it as fast as a grad student volunteer did in 2 months for FireFox [1]? This kind of stuff has been pretty well researched in the past couple of decades :-P 1. Scroll to "How We Did It", here: http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roadmap/archives/2008/08/tracemonkey_javascript_lightsp.html http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roadmap/archives/2008/08/trac...
        davepeck 17y ago
  - acg 17y ago
    It isn't clear to me that is it just comparing the javascript engines like for like. For all we know Google throws more operating system resources at processing the a single page than IE does natively. It may also be a battle of architecture (where each chrome page is a separate process with its own engine). So it may not just be the skill of the engine developer, but competing architectures.
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
  - sjs 17y ago
    If Microsoft could throw away their old codebase and start fresh with all the hindsight we have now, including the Self papers of the mid 90s, I think they could do a much better job. Maybe not as good as Google, but decent. They could certainly match the Tracemonkey project.
- tjogin 17y ago
  That's very true, but Internet Explorer has been worked on even longer still. Also, the V8 javascript engine is Google's own.
- jsz0 17y ago
  Misleading yes but a valid point still. Microsoft could use WebKit in IE but instead their deep hatred and mistrust of open source software is standing in the way of providing their customers a better product.
  - acg 17y ago
    To be fair it also may be the architecture that they've chosen for IE and windows. My understanding is that bits of IE form part of the windows O/S by it's use of COM: I'm guessing that Microsoft would like to honor a lot of the interfaces for these components.
andreyf 17y ago
MS makes money off desktop software, so putting a fast JS interpreter in IE would only benefit their competitors making web apps. It would border on negligence to their shareholders. Google, on the other hand, has economic incentive to promote faster browsers, as they're looking to make money off of web-based services.
- sili 17y ago
  Web-based apps are here to stay and over time will get bigger. By refusing to play the game, MS is burying its head in the sand and pretending the problem does not exist.
andylei 17y ago
this is kind of unfair. the lessons microsoft and the development community have learned from working on browsers were all things that the Chrome team gets for free. they also get to start from scratch, whereas the IE team has to work on an outdated codebase and provide lots of legacy support.
- icey 17y ago
  Microsoft is free to rewrite IE from the ground up any time they'd like. The only legacy support they need is the same specifications that all other browsers are supposed to adhere to.
  - acg 17y ago
    There are APIs for browser extension that Microsoft will want to continue to support as they are no doubt used by partners/corporations. It's not just about how well the web renders. The same way that firefox would be unwilling to start from scratch without providing support for the present plugin framework.

by tjic 17y ago

lamby 17y ago

This is misleading. Webkit, the core component of Chrome, has been worked on for far more than 2 years.

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
nixme 17y ago
Except they only benchmarked javascript performance. V8 is only about 2 years old.
- nostrademons 17y ago
  True, but the guy who did V8 is the same guy who did Beta, Self, and HotSpot. That's like 20 years of experience in writing high-performance VMs for dynamic languages right there.
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
  - enomar 17y ago
    Microsoft could have hired him or someone like him.
    - jackmoore 17y ago
      Great things aren't going to happen by just having him on the payroll, Microsoft would have to make good use of his abilities by giving him resources, time, meaningful work, and not undermine his efforts. If they just throw him into unfocused micro-manged bureaucracy then it's just a waste.
  - maximilian 17y ago
    And the guys who wrote the Squirrelfish VM for safari weren't all famous VM researchers. From what I read, they just picked all the low hanging fruit in classic VM design and got great performance - better than IE8 for sure. Their code is even open source. MS could just read through the source and copy the design.
    - pohl 17y ago
      Indeed, they wouldn't even have to read the source. They could just read the blog and the papers it references: http://webkit.org/blog/189/announcing-squirrelfish/ http://webkit.org/blog/189/announcing-squirrelfish/
  - apr 17y ago
    Microsoft has no lack of talented engineers, what they do lack is vision.
    - andreyf 17y ago
      "Vision" isn't an easily defined quantity. What MS lacks is incentive to make a browser with fast JavaScript performance, as they make most of their money off desktop apps, many of which web-based apps are looking to replace. So actually, the opposite is true: MS has a big economic incentive to slow down JS performance in browsers, because it will make them more money selling desktop softare. One way to do this is to release new versions of IE which have slow JS interpreters, and use marketing to convince enterprise customers that the new browsers are super-duper top-of-the-line shiny things, with features like security and easy maintainability.
      - davepeck 17y ago
        Microsoft has economic incentive to stay competitive on many fronts. I guarantee you that MSFT is working hard to make JS faster, to make their browser more standards compliant, and to substantially improve security. It makes no strategic or tactical sense for them to do otherwise -- to improve the browser is not to make the desktop less attractive.
        deleted 17y ago
        [deleted]
        andreyf 17y ago
        I guarantee you that MSFT is working hard to make JS faster, Then why haven't they made it as fast as a grad student volunteer did in 2 months for FireFox [1]? This kind of stuff has been pretty well researched in the past couple of decades :-P 1. Scroll to "How We Did It", here: http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roadmap/archives/2008/08/tracemonkey_javascript_lightsp.html http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roadmap/archives/2008/08/trac...
        davepeck 17y ago
- acg 17y ago
  It isn't clear to me that is it just comparing the javascript engines like for like. For all we know Google throws more operating system resources at processing the a single page than IE does natively. It may also be a battle of architecture (where each chrome page is a separate process with its own engine). So it may not just be the skill of the engine developer, but competing architectures.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- sjs 17y ago
  If Microsoft could throw away their old codebase and start fresh with all the hindsight we have now, including the Self papers of the mid 90s, I think they could do a much better job. Maybe not as good as Google, but decent. They could certainly match the Tracemonkey project.
tjogin 17y ago
That's very true, but Internet Explorer has been worked on even longer still. Also, the V8 javascript engine is Google's own.
jsz0 17y ago
Misleading yes but a valid point still. Microsoft could use WebKit in IE but instead their deep hatred and mistrust of open source software is standing in the way of providing their customers a better product.
- acg 17y ago
  To be fair it also may be the architecture that they've chosen for IE and windows. My understanding is that bits of IE form part of the windows O/S by it's use of COM: I'm guessing that Microsoft would like to honor a lot of the interfaces for these components.

andreyf 17y ago

MS makes money off desktop software, so putting a fast JS interpreter in IE would only benefit their competitors making web apps. It would border on negligence to their shareholders. Google, on the other hand, has economic incentive to promote faster browsers, as they're looking to make money off of web-based services.

sili 17y ago
Web-based apps are here to stay and over time will get bigger. By refusing to play the game, MS is burying its head in the sand and pretending the problem does not exist.

andylei 17y ago

this is kind of unfair. the lessons microsoft and the development community have learned from working on browsers were all things that the Chrome team gets for free. they also get to start from scratch, whereas the IE team has to work on an outdated codebase and provide lots of legacy support.

icey 17y ago
Microsoft is free to rewrite IE from the ground up any time they'd like. The only legacy support they need is the same specifications that all other browsers are supposed to adhere to.
- acg 17y ago
  There are APIs for browser extension that Microsoft will want to continue to support as they are no doubt used by partners/corporations. It's not just about how well the web renders. The same way that firefox would be unwilling to start from scratch without providing support for the present plugin framework.