> When the half dozen browsers that represent about 99.9% of the browswer market all use C++, perhaps the explanation is not "They're all wrong." I didn't say

> When the half dozen browsers that represent about 99.9% of the browswer market all use C++, perhaps the explanation is not "They're all wrong." I didn't say they're wrong by any means! C++ is the horse and cart. Performance wise, the programming language automobile doesn't exist yet. Of course one should and must use what is currently available! The best language for writing a web browser does not exist yet. Or for writing other similarly complicated applications with performance requirements. So, yes, C++ is probably the best language for writing a web browser right now. The cleanest dirty shirt. Certainly not the safest, but out of high level languages it has the best performance. It has large enough work force, important if you're building a large project. C/C++ interfaces with current operating systems natively. And a lot of other considerations make it a sensible choice. But C/C++ is rather far from what a language could be. It's very bug prone. Overcomplicated. Hard to maintain. And it is slow. Not compared to other languages, but to CPU performance potential. I can write very fast software in C++ -- if I effectively fall back to assembler or at least compiler intrinsics. In other words, by being a human compiler.