nnethercote

15 ms·

91.
How to speed up the Rust compiler(blog.mozilla.org)
185 points by nnethercote 10y ago|123 comments
92.
by nnethercote 10y ago
Yes, Firefox has some old bugs, because it's a large and old piece of software. But that's entirely separate from whether it's easy to contribute to.
93.
by nnethercote 10y ago
I'm pretty sure it's because Graydon established and enforced a positive culture from the very start -- backed up by a good Code of Conduct -- and everyone since has continued to do that.
94.
by nnethercote 10y ago
> I've heard very good things about it, but also that it is a pretty tough read. Give it 100 pages. If you don't like it by then -- or at least significant chunks of it -- then you probably won't like the whole thing.
95.
by nnethercote 10y ago
> Rust was successfully integrated into Firefox's build system It's coming along nicely, but there are still kinks to be worked out. (E.g. Android!) https://wiki.mozilla.org/Oxidation has details.
96.
by nnethercote 10y ago
Yes. A web browser is a VM for executing untrusted code. That is its truly unique feature. Understand that and a lot of other things become clear.
97.
by nnethercote 10y ago
I once sat next to Anne Toner at a dinner. (I admit I don't remember her name, but I doubt there are any other female scholars in Cambridge studying the same topic.) I asked her what she worked on, and she told me that her PhD was abou
98.
by nnethercote 10y ago
> Firefox will all pretty much just crash if malloc() fails It's not nearly as simple as that. A general approach we try to use is the following. - Small allocations are infallible (i.e. abort on failure) because if a small allocati
99.
by nnethercote 10y ago
There are good web clients for video chat, e.g. talky.io. Therefore it doesn't make that much sense for Firefox to have its own version.
100.
by nnethercote 10y ago
And yet LE added IPv6 support a mere 2.5 months after it left Beta. It's not that bad!
101.
by nnethercote 10y ago
I heard a nice description of Eletrolysis that at least partly explains why it has taken so long: it's the single largest change that has ever been made to Firefox.
102.
by nnethercote 10y ago
The one that surprised me the most was the inability to replay music in your head. Probably because I do that a lot. Here's a series of things you could try. - Sing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" out loud. - Do it again silent
103.
by nnethercote 11y ago
That's likely what'll happen eventually. But we're starting with 1 content process because even that is a huge change and is going to cause disruption and will take a while to iron out the wrinkles.
104.
by nnethercote 11y ago
It'll be 1 at first. It's likely to then gradually be increased over time, probably to 2, then 4, maybe 8. Not sure about beyond that. I'm currently working on reducing memory usage to help with this, because that's the
105.
by nnethercote 11y ago
That's exactly it. Mobile apps are killing the web. Firefox OS was an attempt to combat that. This was no secret (e.g. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Booting_to_the_Web ) but it's something that most people have overlook
106.
by nnethercote 11y ago
> This article is a little disingenuous in how it represent this as something revolutionary. We can quibble over the use of the word "revolutionary", but it certainly seems to be effective : "In the past few years, she ha
107.
by nnethercote 11y ago
I know Sarah. She's a lovely person, very smart and competent, with a genuine love of archaeology. It's great to see she's having such success.
108.
by nnethercote 11y ago
A big problem is that many people won't believe a woman's complaints if it falls anything short of something as blatant as this. People like that guy are the easy cases. I read an article the other day about devastating, long-term
109.
by nnethercote 11y ago
One way to describe a browser: it is a VM for running untrusted code. That's one thing that truly distinguishes browsers and the web from other platforms, and is a good characteristic to keep in mind.
110.
by nnethercote 11y ago
There are two different meanings of "plugin" being used here. The CDM plugin does just one thing (the DRM stuff) compared to, say, Flash, which is a gigantic thing. DRM still sucks, but it's a clear improvement from a securit
111.
by nnethercote 11y ago
Mozilla gave out $503,000, only $15,000 of which went to Buildbot (that's 2.9%), and only part of that money is going toward the Buildbot docs change; the rest is going towards "improvements so Buildbot works better in the Amazon
112.
by nnethercote 11y ago
Thank you for your positive attitude.
113.
by nnethercote 11y ago
Bringing up a subject while denying it should be brought up generally considered a dirty rhetorical trick, particularly when done in a distasteful way like you did: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophasis .
114.
by nnethercote 11y ago
> Please note carefully that I'm not comparing poor corporate governance to spousal abuse. Don't be disingenuous. That's a ridiculous and awful comparison and you know it. You should be ashamed.
115.
by nnethercote 11y ago
> Mozilla has really lost touch with its users. Good on them for backtracking on this, but... This kind of negativity is really common on HN and it makes me sad. "This group of people did something I don't like, and then they c
116.
by nnethercote 11y ago
> What does this piece of bullshit really mean? Mozilla briefly dabbled with advertising on the new tab page. That's now stopping. Like the article says: "We have therefore made the decision to stop advertising in Firefox.&quot
117.
by nnethercote 11y ago
You're citing jwz's CADT post in a thread discussing Firefox ? It's a product for which people regularly complain about open bugs that are 10 or more years old.
118.
by nnethercote 11y ago
Firefox's deal with Yahoo (or any other search engine) is only valuable so long as Firefox has lots of users. And Firefox's market share has been dropping for years now. That's what the author is worried about.
119.
by nnethercote 11y ago
I think Rust is great and I think having Rust code in Firefox will be great. But this is about more than just transient build system issues. If we want to completely replace C/C++ components with Rust components, rather than just havin
120.
by nnethercote 11y ago
There's still a bunch of build system issues to be solved before any Rust code can be included in Firefox. You can follow along at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1135640 . Note especially the two bugs list

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