[HN Gopher] This Month in Ladybird
___________________________________________________________________
This Month in Ladybird
Author : net01
Score : 395 points
Date : 2025-08-02 06:34 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ladybird.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (ladybird.org)
| net01 wrote:
| Here's a guide to help you get started contributing:
|
| https://github.com/LadybirdBrowser/ladybird/tree/master/Docu...
|
| Here are the latest Web Platform (WPT) tests:
|
| https://wpt.fyi/results/?run_id=6292901677236224
|
| There is a Discord if you want to ask questions:
|
| https://discord.gg/c8JEZkDvtY
|
| Compile it yourself (it takes 15-20 minutes to fully compile) and
| test it on a website. Compare it to Firefox or Chrome and see
| what's wrong. Fix it and submit a PR.
|
| how to build Ladybird
| https://github.com/LadybirdBrowser/ladybird/blob/master/Docu...
| hyperbolablabla wrote:
| I tried contributing but its too c++-y for me to understand it
| unfortunately.
| net01 wrote:
| This is the way to start learning.
|
| Look at a WPT test and try to focus on it.
|
| Look at the web spec
|
| Ask questions in the Discord about where it would be, and
| people are gladly willing to help. :)
| its-kostya wrote:
| Unfortunately for c++, the industry is moving towards Rust.
| Even conservative gray-suit Corps are using rust for their
| new projects. The limiting factor is available rust devs.
| Writing c++ is a sure way to get hired maintaining a legacy
| codebase.
|
| Ladybird is an outlier and there are probably a few more
| project like it, but anyone looking to be employed should
| pick up the new skill that is rust. Contribute to ladybird
| and learn c++ if the project interests you, but don't learn
| it for a career.
| saidinesh5 wrote:
| There are plenty of embedded projects still being started
| with c. C++ also has a lot of demand where i am at.
|
| The advice about career is very geography and industry
| dependent. Almost no one hired Node.js developers in my
| city back when i started.
| its-kostya wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44768882
| xdfgh1112 wrote:
| They're likely moving to swift not rust.
| zarzavat wrote:
| You may live in a bubble. Rust is great and all but C++
| is still dominant in its space. The web browser you're
| using right now? C++. The OS you're using? Probably some
| unholy mixture of C and C++. Console and computer games?
| Written in C++ as a rule.
| andrepd wrote:
| The commenter talked about new projects, why are you
| talking about the web browser and the OS?
| Thaxll wrote:
| New games are not made in Rust. Rust has been trying hard
| and it's going nowhere.
| Wintamute wrote:
| Working on a major new project right now in C++. In our
| case, it's a high performance 2D GPU accelerated drawing
| application - C++ and many of its battle
| hardened/established libs are the only game in town. Rust
| is a non-starter for a large range of apps
| its-kostya wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44768882
| desdenova wrote:
| I wish I lived in the same world as you.
|
| There's basically 0 rust jobs available that aren't scam
| startups.
| its-kostya wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44768882
| landdate wrote:
| I don't understand the hate towards C++. Many of the
| aspects criticized for are non-issues in modern C++. I am
| not to knowledgable about Rust, but what reason is there
| to use Rust? Memory safety isn't much of a problem in C++
| anymore with smart pointers, std::move. Implicit typing
| exists in C++ with std::auto. Functional programming with
| lambda, std::functional, std::map, etc. C++ does
| everything I have wanted it to do, has a huge ecosystem
| of libraries, and great tools.
| lII1lIlI11ll wrote:
| > Memory safety isn't much of a problem in C++ anymore
| with smart pointers, std::move.
|
| Of course it is! You can still access an object after
| std::moving it somewhere, return references to local
| stack variables from functions, double-delete (or zero!),
| use uninitiated variables and do bunch of other things
| that rightfully caused notoriety C++ has got. And am
| saying it as someone who writes C++ every workday,
| unfortunately.
| throwaway18373 wrote:
| You "write C++ every workday" and don't even know that
| moved-from objects are guaranteed to be valid?
|
| > return references to local stack variables from
| functions
|
| > use uninitiated variables
|
| Any properly configured compiler will catch and warn
| about those errors.
|
| > double-delete (or zero!)
|
| Not a real issue if you're using smart pointers.
|
| Sure, you _can_ program with no compiler warnings and no
| smart pointers--but nothing is stopping you from wrapping
| your entire Rust program in "unsafe" and doing all those
| things there as well. Programming languages can only do
| so much to save people from their own incompetence.
| thegrim33 wrote:
| This'll be an "out there" comment but after coming to the
| conclusion long ago that governments have infrastructure
| built to manipulate online communities with mass
| propaganda, usually to impart typical political/social
| messaging, and then realizing that a few years ago the
| NSA put out an official statement about wanting people to
| not use C++, I finally put two and two together and
| realized that, being a government entity, they could have
| easily just tacked on an "anti-C++" campaign to the list
| of active propaganda farm campaigns, and viola, anti-C++
| comments start appearing on forums everywhere.
| rs186 wrote:
| The industry is not moving to Rust. There are projects
| here and there, but mostly for safety critical code and
| other situations where it makes sense, see chromium and
| Windows kernel. I don't know any major project stopping
| active development in C++ and switching to Rust instead.
| its-kostya wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44768882
| rvz wrote:
| > The limiting factor is available rust devs. Writing c++
| is a sure way to get hired maintaining a legacy codebase.
|
| Anyone looking to be extremely employable in this market
| should really learn both.
|
| Otherwise, you are not going to see a migration to Rust
| from C++ shops at all.
|
| > Ladybird is an outlier and there are probably a few
| more project like it. but anyone looking to be employed
| should pick up the new skill that is rust.
|
| Then I suggest you prepare for Leetcode hards on Rust
| code, if you want to show that you are highly experienced
| in solving DSA problems that are found in systems
| software.
|
| Also, why does Ladybird get a pass and the others don't?
| ndiddy wrote:
| Out of curiosity, where are you located where large
| companies are desperately trying to snap up every
| available Rust developer? Everywhere I've looked, the few
| Rust job postings I've seen have mainly been from
| cryptocurrency startups. All of the non-crypto Rust job
| postings I've seen are from companies trying to get
| experts in a particular niche. Must have 8 years of Linux
| kernel development experience plus 3 years of Rust
| experience, must have 5 years of network driver
| development experience plus 4 years of Rust experience,
| that sort of thing. Even including crypto startups, I see
| far more C++ jobs than Rust jobs.
| its-kostya wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44768882
| its-kostya wrote:
| There are a lot of comments that I unfortunately cannot
| address individually so I'll make a single reply and try
| to address them all. A lot of valid call outs pointing
| out flaws in my claim and even extrapolating from my
| claim, please understand my coarse answer balanced
| brevity and thoroughness. I'll do my best to expand and
| provide evidence:
|
| I am plugged into an alumni network (based in the US) so
| I'd say I have a decent sample size to draw
| conclusions/trends from. Yes, these trends don't apply to
| every market or locality so there are loads of counter
| examples. The demographics of the alum network appear to
| be mostly mid-to-senior level ICs and management from
| backgrounds being engineers in the private sector and gov
| contractors. The start-up scene is grossly under-
| represented.
|
| The tell-tale sign of a mature technology that has the
| momentum to last is if businesses that do a lot of gov
| contracts finally adopt a technology. We've seen this
| pattern with virtualization, then with containers, then
| with clouds + micro-services. Gov contractors are _very_
| conservative to adopt and rely on technology because
| ultimately their customer (gov agencies) maintain the
| service. And their pay are not like big tech so they
| cannot compete on that front and need a healthy and
| established pool of talent to pick from.
|
| Every successful project is staffed with leads who know
| the problem space and the technology that is used in the
| solution. When planning for a project, you HAVE to
| account for how easy it will be to find talent to support
| the project given your budget. For short-term or "high-
| risk-of-being-on-time" projects the talent pool is
| obviously larger for established technologies like c++
| and so that is what has historically been chosen.
| Obviously where it is appropriate to use c++. For those
| of you claiming I am in a bubble... perhaps. But keep in
| mind that companies with a "first to market" mentality
| are not the majority :)
|
| The point of inflection for Rust I am continually
| noticing, and why I am confident it is an excellent for
| career-growth, it is NO LONGER being labeled as a "high
| risk" for new medium to long-term projects/efforts. When
| there is runway to grow/find Rust developers and there is
| runway to develop a missing library that is a dependency,
| Rust seems to be favored. Yes, if your industry is
| dependent stable and battle tested libraries then that is
| a case when Rust might not displace it. But another trend
| that backs up my claims is seeing parts of such
| libraries/projects being refactored out into its own
| thing written in Rust - and all that lives in parallel.
| So perhaps the dev that knows both languages is the
| better career advice. Lean toward one language or another
| based on your interests.
|
| One final thing I will add is there is a good deal of
| "internal learning" opportunities for already employed
| folks to learn rust and start on the new project. These
| are folks that know memory management, know the problem
| space, know the company tooling, etc. Compare that with a
| new hire that will also learn rust, and you can see which
| an employer will favor. Internal folks moving to Rust
| opportunities and back-filling them with new c++ devs is
| a common tactic. But that being said, talent still needs
| to be found and often times casting a wider net by
| looking for c++ folks that are willing to transition to
| Rust is a tactic used on job postings. Rust is in demand
| for systems programmers and zero trust applications, btw.
| Timwi wrote:
| It is so amazing and wholesome to see a huge team of people come
| together and just collaborate on something they are passionate
| about and seriously believe in. I'm very hopeful that Ladybird
| will get to the point where we can use it as a main browser.
| net01 wrote:
| Compile it yourself (it takes 15-20 minutes to fully compile)
| and test it on a website. Compare it to Firefox or Chrome and
| see what's wrong. Fix it and submit a PR.
|
| how to build ladybird
| https://github.com/LadybirdBrowser/ladybird/blob/master/Docu...
| phito wrote:
| You forgot the enormous learning curve of understanding how
| browsers work and how to write proper code in Ladybug that
| doesn't waste the maintainers' time.
|
| Last time I tried, I couldn't find a website that worked with
| it. Where do you even begin contributing to such a large,
| complex, very much WIP project? The barrier to entry is
| daunting.
| therein wrote:
| >Last time I tried, I couldn't find a website that worked
| with it.
|
| That was the case for me last time I tried it as well,
| which was a few months ago. Tried it again yesterday and I
| could load many pages. Could even render complex real life
| pages like YouTube.
|
| I recommend anyone to build it themselves. It is a very
| simple and smooth experience.
| phito wrote:
| Amazing, going to try it again right now. I had also
| tried a few months ago.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Pick a site that almost works on it and then fix it to
| fully work?
| barkingcat wrote:
| When it comes to larger projects, first:
|
| - you don't need to understand the whole in order to help
|
| the kind of bugs you can start with are like :
|
| - this icon is a bit weird, it's off centre by 2px - how do
| I add 2 pixels to this icon? either by moving it or by
| changing the underlying image asset? if I'm moving it, what
| is the subroutine that paints it? if I'm changing the image
| asset itself, where is it stored? (is it in a packed store?
| or is it just a plain file, etc)
|
| - when I click this button, trace the pathway - it's
| supposed to add to history and turn blue. is it doing that?
|
| etc.
|
| For large projects, start super small and work your way out
| from there.
| paddim8 wrote:
| You don't have to implement some big new feature. I found a
| layout rendering problem when I tested it on my own website
| and could quite easily go and fix it without having any
| prior experience with browser development.
| Timwi wrote:
| I did actually watch a friend compile and run it, and we
| tried it on a couple of simple web pages and were impressed
| with the results!
|
| However, there are two barriers to me building it myself and
| submitting PRs. The first is that it's not officially
| supported to build or run on Windows, so I'd have to get
| familiar with WSL first or set up a dual-boot environment.
|
| The second is that it's written in the obsolete and unusable
| language of C++. I would have loved an opportunity here to
| get into Rust or something, but C++ has proven itself
| hazardous to my mental health, so I'm staying away from it.
| robin_reala wrote:
| There's always the option of contributing to Servo if
| you're interested in Rust and browser engineering.
| 0points wrote:
| Those are two you-problems.
| skrebbel wrote:
| > The second is that it's written in the obsolete and
| unusable language of C++.
|
| Oh come on. There's nicer ways to say "I'm not good at it".
| It's OK you know, you can't be good at everything. Just
| don't make it other people's fault.
| tormeh wrote:
| Nobody's good at C++. I've written C++ and even got to
| the point where I felt I had things under control, but
| tbh that's just delusion and hubris.
| apelapan wrote:
| If you look at it that way, nobody is good at anything.
| True perhaps but not a very useful stance.
|
| Millions of people have built meaningful software with
| C++ over the past several decades. It is everywhere and
| it mostly works OK.
|
| Of course, C++ is not necessarily the best choice for
| everything or anything. But it is a mostly reasonable
| choice for lots of things in 2025, just like it was in
| 1995.
| SleepyMyroslav wrote:
| There are different levels of confidence in junior
| programmers code in different languages. For C++ it is
| one of the lowest possible.
|
| If thousands of HN readers suddenly decide that they need
| to start their 10+ years learning of C++ with immediate
| contribution to the Ladybird project it would be not
| really helpful, right?
| apelapan wrote:
| It would be a weird kind of bad situation, if literally
| thousands of juniors with little to no
| experience/understanding of programming simultaneously
| start learn-as-you-go contributing C++ code for Ladybird.
|
| In the perhaps more plausible situation that two or three
| people with a reasonable foundation in CS and/or a bit of
| professional programming experience decide to learn C++
| in order to help Ladybird, I think it would work out
| quite fine.
| SleepyMyroslav wrote:
| I had to think carefully if I would ever agree with
| 'plausible situation' at any point of my career. And the
| answer is no. If they really needed 2-3 ppl they would
| have adjusted their sponsorships/donations plan and
| picked up those ppl full time. There are costs of bigger
| teams and wider contributor networks that are rarely
| advertised.
|
| But ofc what can I know about browsers, I am just a
| gamedev. From my PoV (studio tech director) in custom
| game engines juniors mostly do acts of wanton destruction
| in the name of curiosity. And then leave for better
| compensated industries anyway.
|
| In my opinion folks inciting random contributions from
| webdev crowd unfamiliar with C++ are not helping. And
| those who are familiar should know better than to do
| random drive-by features.
| desdenova wrote:
| I'm pretty good at C++.
|
| By using a very simple technique, I've managed to write 0
| bugs in it in the past 15 years.
| whytevuhuni wrote:
| I assume that simple technique is to not write any C++,
| despite being pretty good at it?
| desdenova wrote:
| Yes, that was the joke.
| samtheprogram wrote:
| Hah, the same could be said about Rust.
|
| And I'd disagree with both.
| xdfgh1112 wrote:
| Unusable yet people have written a browser in it?
| skrebbel wrote:
| Four browsers!
| emilbratt wrote:
| I love Rust, but I do not like how people are rust
| evangelists and look down on everything else. That is not
| how we in the Rust community look at things.
|
| Now, with that out of the way. Andreas has been very clear
| about the reasons why C++ is the chosen language. He has
| years of experience with it along with writing browsers.
|
| Im paraphrasing here, but he has said that the web evolved
| around the era of OOP and C++ is the OOP language of that
| era. Including statements on how C++ fits nicely with the
| OOP styles of web specs.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| For the WSL part: that's one command in powershell/cmd and
| then a download from the Microsoft store. You won't find it
| challenging, there's not much more to it than that in 99%
| of cases (and if you do run into issues, there are probably
| better alternatives to trying to fix WSL anyway).
|
| As for C++, Ladybird uses very modern C++ that makes it
| substantially easier to write reasonably safe code than the
| C++ of yore.
|
| Still, as much as I would like to see the world move to
| safer languages, C++ is everywhere. Every major browser is
| written in it. It's not "unusable" in the slightest (though
| I certainly understand not wanting to learn C++ as an
| outsider at this point in time, it's a quite boring
| language in comparison and the C++ job market probably
| won't let you make use of modern language features that
| might make it interesting).
|
| I would love to live in a world where projects with
| security risks like web browsers would "just" use Rust
| instead of C++ but you'll have to convince the people
| building the browser to spend their own time or their
| bosses' time to learn Rust first, and that's a tough sell.
|
| There's Servo if you want to contribute to an open source
| browser in Rust. It looks like it can certainly use the
| help it you compare its development speed with Ladybird.
| rs186 wrote:
| I don't know which bubble you are in, but C++ is nowhere
| near obsolete status. As much as want Rust to be adopted
| widely, that still hasn't happened, despite small-scale
| effort to sprinkle it in various projects.
| perching_aix wrote:
| Why the commanding tone?
| net01 wrote:
| English isn't my first language; sorry about that :)
| newdee wrote:
| Thank you for your helpful comment. I'm compiling it
| right now :)
| Henchman21 wrote:
| Your English seemed perfect to me, including the tone.
| Some people wilt at the mere suggestion that they do
| something.
| newdee wrote:
| Why the tone policing? This isn't helpful. Whereas parent
| comment was to the point and linked to a helpful resource.
| Give people the benefit of the doubt and assume good
| intent.
| perching_aix wrote:
| I did assume good intentions and even gave them the
| benefit of the doubt: that's why I asked them why they
| were using a commanding tone and said nothing else. They
| clarified that indeed, their intentions were good and so
| being rude and sounding commanding wasn't the intent, and
| that was the end of that. Why do you have to turn this
| into something bigger? It was a done topic.
|
| I also disagree that this isn't helpful. *
|
| For one, they're now aware that they come off as
| commanding when they write like this. They now know they
| should look up why that is (if they care), and how to
| alter their language accordingly. This should serve them
| well, since it makes their use of language more in line
| with their intentions, and prevents them from receiving
| rude / more involved meta responses from those who don't
| assume good intentions or aren't willing to hear them out
| like I did. It should also prevent them accidentally
| causing reputational harm to the projects and
| organizations they're trying to support this way.
|
| Second, since I kept it brief and minimal, I avoided
| other people asking about this not so nicely and not so
| straightforward. Could have turned into an ugly flamewar.
|
| Speaking of, I do not understand why some people have it
| so out for "tone policing". It feels like an
| overreaction, a grand backwards swing in response to
| supposed "moderation overreach / censorship". Admittedly
| very in vogue these days, but cultural standards exist
| for a reason. I refuse to be forced to decide between the
| two extremes of overpolicing and no policement at all. I
| do also appreciate the value of just letting moderation
| tools and moderators do their job, but I do still have
| some - increasingly faint - hope that with some people,
| communication is also a viable, or even the preferable
| way - as it was in this case.
|
| * And I further disagree that being helpful in terms of
| information content or effect would be mutually exclusive
| with all this, or would even be related. Helping alone
| doesn't make a helpful person, particularly if helping
| isn't their explicit intention.
| samuell wrote:
| This is such an important project, to keep the big corporations
| from completely controlling the future of the web.
|
| And it doesn't hurt that Andreas seems to be such a nice, humble
| guy.
| larodi wrote:
| Interesting whether guys employ LLM to speed up development.
| Starting a new browser just like this would be very bold
| decision like 15 years ago, now seems like a reasonable thing
| to do actually.
| net01 wrote:
| Most of the guys in the LB project don't use LLM's, even
| though it extremely spec-driven, because C++ is not great
| with AI for some reason.
| hyperbolablabla wrote:
| But Andreas does fairly heavily, if you watch his code VODs
| you see that he leans on copilot often.
| rzzzt wrote:
| With some "Thank you, Copilot"-s sprinkled in to spare
| him in the robot uprising universe.
| SpecialistK wrote:
| I haven't watched the VODs myself but I am curious as to
| the nature of the Copilot use - is it a fancy
| autocomplete, a 2nd look at code he's already written, or
| is it generating large parts of the code?
|
| The SerenityOS project literally has "NIH syndrome" at
| its core ["the SerenityOS project, which has a strong
| culture of writing everything from scratch.",
| https://ladybird.org/#faq] so I would expect a degree of
| skepticism of AI code generation.
|
| But there was the post semi-recently about Cloudflare
| developers shipping a mostly-AI-generated software,
| overseen by real devs
| [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44159166] Perhaps
| Andreas' use of Copilot is a similar thing, where he
| saves keystrokes and finds errors in the generated output
| with his own experience. I'll go watch some VODs.
| xdfgh1112 wrote:
| Most of it was written without LLMs for that reason, but
| now Ladybird is its own project, the NIH focus has
| largely gone away. They are using a lot of third party
| code now. Their mission is compete with Chrome, not be
| 100% NIH.
| lttlrck wrote:
| With "No code from other browsers" which in a browser
| must mean most of the code is largely written from
| scratch?
| RadiozRadioz wrote:
| Would have to be at the hands of an already skilled
| practitioner. Average Joe programmer setting out to build a
| browser with Copilot will end badly. Big-picture architecture
| and discipline is too important with this level of
| complexity.
| larodi wrote:
| Not what I meant really. antirez is not a junior yet codes
| with LLM assistence.
|
| Not sure why this gets downvoted but since when is it
| illegal to ask whether people actually use intellisense? I
| mean - what's wrong with being interests how ppl bootstrap
| and get to thousands of LOCs in practically no time.
|
| Just for the record - I never said vibecoded.
| therein wrote:
| A comment that could apply to anything. Notice how nobody
| except for your subthread here is talking about AI. This
| thread is not about AI or LLMs, for a good reason.
| kome wrote:
| they're downvoting you, but the developer actually uses
| copilot a lot in his development videos. why are people so up
| in arms?
|
| of course, he's a very, very proficient developer and a
| browser specialist. he's not just vibecoding, like you might
| be implying. but he also uses llms for development.
| squigz wrote:
| Because LLMs being a thing now has no bearing on whether
| it's a good idea or more practical to build a new browser.
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| Because it's bad enough (for those of us that aren't
| heavily invested in the topic) that often 50%+ of the
| frontpage is about AI now, to go into the comments for a
| clearly non-AI topic and see a bunch of "but what about
| LLMs" comments really just sucks the fun out of HN for a
| lot of us.
| larodi wrote:
| That's not even close to true unless you rate all ML as
| AI and all conditional structures thinking. Like, why
| don't you first try to rate and count them before
| spitting malice ?
|
| in all honestly much less AI stuff gets to the HN front
| compared to when OpenAI first released GPTs. Given there
| are thousands of publications every month and dozens of
| startups launched with ridiculous valuations and most of
| this is actually submitted here for karma or leverage.
|
| Besides, what, knowledge representation via stochastic
| probabilistic graphical models is now an heresy? Since
| when? Since MPEG or MP3 ?
| larodi wrote:
| Well to my surprise they do, even though every sane dev in
| 2025 uses some sort of code assites autocomplete. So it
| seams now we discussing what is the threshold reg
| intelligence of the autocomplete.
|
| Ridiculous stuff indeed.
|
| I've been coding for 25 years and nothing in my message
| implies vibe coding. I know what I'm talking and sure bet
| many others here do.
| shakna wrote:
| Ladybird is 425k LOC. Chromium is 3.5m LOC.
|
| Starting a new browser, using LLMs... Is not going to
| maintain enough context.
|
| Whilst Andreas does use Copilot a fair bit [0], he tends to
| do a line at a time, frequently disagree and rewrites his
| own, before prompting again. That is... He basically uses it
| as a fancy autocomplete. Not much else.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mxubNQC5O8&t=3099s
| adamrt wrote:
| I believe Chromium is closer to 35m LOC
| larodi wrote:
| Fancy or not an autocomplete is autocomplete. What if it
| autocompletes one class or one function at a time? Does
| this make it obnoxious to even think asking about it on HN?
| Xaiph_Rahci wrote:
| > Andreas seems to be such a nice, humble guy.
|
| Truer words have never been spoken!
|
| His monthly update videos are so soothing to watch.
| charcircuit wrote:
| In order for that to be true Ladybird would need a sizeable
| market share, more than browsers like Firefox, which also isn't
| made by a corporation.
| samuell wrote:
| On Twitter, Andreas points out that his Keynote Presentation on
| the Ladybird Browser on the FUTO conference in Texas earlier in
| the year, might be the best current introduction to the project:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YM7pDMLvr4
| dewey wrote:
| I've watched this a few months ago after randomly seeing it on
| YouTube. It's a very good talk and fun to follow even if you
| are not a browser developer. He's a good presenter.
| Zardoz84 wrote:
| The web is UTF-16 ? WTF
| osmsucks wrote:
| JavaScript is: https://mathiasbynens.be/notes/javascript-
| encoding
| demurgos wrote:
| > The ECMAScript/JavaScript language itself, however, exposes
| characters according to UCS-2, not UTF-16.
|
| The native JS semantics are UCS-2. Saying that it's UTF-16 is
| misleading and confuses charset, encoding and browser APIs.
|
| Ladybird is probably implementing support properly but it's
| annoying that they keep spreading the confusion in their
| article.
| dzaima wrote:
| It's not cleanly one or the other, really. It's UCS-2-y by
| `str.length` or `str[i]`, but UTF-16-y by
| `str.codePointAt(i)` or by iteration (`[...str]` or `for (x
| of str)`).
|
| Generally though JS's strings are just a list of 16-bit
| values, being intrinsically neither UCS-2 nor UTF-16. But,
| practically speaking, UTF-16 is the description that
| matters for everything other than writing
| `str.length`/`str[i]`.
| grishka wrote:
| And most mainstream GUI toolkits are, as well. It can be said
| that UTF-16 is the de-facto standard in-memory representation
| of unicode strings, even though some runtimes (Rust) prefer
| UTF-8.
| 0points wrote:
| > And most mainstream GUI toolkits are, as well.
|
| No. Windows use UTF-16 internally. Most GUI toolkits do
| not.
|
| > It can be said that UTF-16 is the de-facto standard in-
| memory representation of unicode strings, even though some
| runtimes (Rust) prefer UTF-8.
|
| No, that wouldn't be true at all.
|
| Your technical merit seem to be limited by your Windows
| experience, and even that is dated.
|
| Microsoft recommends UTF-8 over UTF-16 since 2019 [1].
|
| 1: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-
| us/windows/apps/design/global...
| perching_aix wrote:
| > Most GUI toolkits do not.
|
| Why are you guys talking like there were dozens of GUI
| toolkits in mainstream use? It's basically web stuff, Qt,
| and then everything else. Web would be UTF-16 as
| discussed above, Qt is UTF-16, and even if we entertain
| the admittedly "large just behind-the-scenes" Java/.NET
| market, that's also all UTF-16. WxWidgets being a fence
| sitter can do both UTF-8 and UTF-16, depending on the
| platform.
|
| Which players am I missing? GTK and ImGUI? I don't think
| they are too big a slices of this pie, certainly not big
| enough to invalidate the claim.
| grishka wrote:
| Apple also uses some kind of UTF-16 internally, afaik
| 0xfffafaCrash wrote:
| not just UTF-16 but potentially malformed UTF-16 (supporting
| invalid surrogate pairs or surrogate halves and with js string
| functions computing things like lengths independently of UTF-16
| characters)
|
| This is also widely known as WTF-16 (seriously, look it up!)
| Pooge wrote:
| For some reason I can't find the RSS feed for the newsletter;
| anyone that did who could post it here? I can only find the one
| for the "announcements"--which seem a lot less relevant to follow
| the progress of the project.
| JimDabell wrote:
| https://buttondown.com/ladybird/
| haunter wrote:
| Why Discord though? Truly independent project, keep big corps
| away, future of the web at stake here yada yada yet using the
| most walled garden of walled gardens. If there is no publicly
| accessible and searchable archive then might as well not exist.
| 42lux wrote:
| Because it's chat if you treat it like a knowledge base it's on
| you.
| frou_dh wrote:
| Come on, it's inevitable that chat history becomes a
| knowledge base to some extent even if the participants are
| aware of this pitfall.
| 42lux wrote:
| Only if you let it.
| globular-toast wrote:
| If that were true than IRC would be absolutely perfect.
| perching_aix wrote:
| So would be Discord, and so it is.
| dotnetcarpenter wrote:
| SerenityOS used IRC but when Andreas changed to discord he
| saw a massive influx of developers. I assume that it was a
| no brainer to use discord when forking Ladybird...
| mnmalst wrote:
| I think Andreas made a comment about this in some of his videos
| along the lines of: It's where the most people are.
| bowsamic wrote:
| Andreas has made it clear he's not interested in free software
| politics. That's not his battle
| freedomben wrote:
| That's fine, but I don't see what free software has to do
| with searchability and persistence of the backlog
| bowsamic wrote:
| I didn't say it did. The person I replied to mentioned free
| software adjacent principles
| rs186 wrote:
| Would like to hear your suggestion of an alternative that:
|
| * has a modern interface and allow people to communicate
| efficiently
|
| * does not cost a fortune to use
|
| * has good moderation tools
|
| * supports multiple channels
|
| * has enough built-in moderation so that spam/illegal content
| is minimal
|
| etc.
| aledue wrote:
| Zulip?
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Zulip. Open source, self-hostable, looks decent and not only
| does it have every feature that discord has, their version of
| threads/topics to spin off individual conversations is
| extremely well done.
| mdaniel wrote:
| And, don't overlook the _indexability_ of Zulip so that
| information doesn 't instantly /dev/null just because
| Discord hates having bots or because one can only ever(!)
| join 100 Discord servers
|
| e.g. https://servo.zulipchat.com/#narrow/channel/416780-fea
| ture-t...
| ivanjermakov wrote:
| Because network effect. You either use Discord or nobody comes.
| biehl wrote:
| Any news on the usage of Swift?
| net01 wrote:
| There are currently a few blockers :
| https://github.com/LadybirdBrowser/ladybird/issues/933
| biehl wrote:
| Thanks. That looks like nice progress.
| Kholin wrote:
| If their blog has an RSS feed, that would be great for people who
| want to follow their work.
| 0points wrote:
| What do you even mean "if their blog had a RSS feed"?
|
| The feed is right there in the link being discussed.
| uallo wrote:
| They mean that https://ladybird.org/posts.rss only includes
| "news" (last updated in October 2024) but not "newsletters".
| In another thread, there is a link to the newsletter archive
| which can be subscribed to with a feed reader:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44765710
| edent wrote:
| I wonder if Ladybird will ever become a member of the WHAT-WG
| steering group. It would be nice to see more / any independent
| voices on there.
| skrebbel wrote:
| I doubt they're as interested in bigco politics as they are in
| hacking out features.
| easton wrote:
| On the other hand, I think they had a dev or two on TC39. I
| remember it being mentioned in one of Andreas' videos (years
| ago)
| mrob wrote:
| 120Hz limit for high refresh rate support seems strange. The most
| common refresh rate for high refresh rate monitors is 144Hz, and
| faster refresh rates are available. If you run a 120fps animation
| on a 144Hz monitor you'll get duplicated frames, which negates a
| large part of the benefit.
| hyperbrainer wrote:
| My first thought was that this was done with consideration for
| mobile phones, since many higher-end models use 120 Hz
| displays, but Ladybird does not seem to support mobile for now.
|
| > Websites using requestAnimationFrame now render at up to
| 120Hz on supported hardware
|
| But the phrasing of it about "can now" suggests to me that this
| may simply be a performance issue too. They changed it from 60
| to 120. Perhaps in the future they can go from 120 to 144 or
| even 240.
| m12k wrote:
| Maybe the developer that implemented it only had a 120hz
| display to test it on?
| trflynn89 wrote:
| I think this was just worded a bit wrong in the newsletter. In
| the actual code, it is set to the refresh rate of the screen
| itself.
| pmkary wrote:
| You guys are on fire!
| pmkary wrote:
| You guys are hugely on fire. Who would have thought someday a new
| engine rises in this climate, and then who would have thought it
| would be a small team, without a trillion dollar giant behind
| them pouring hundreds of millions into its production? This is
| truly one of the greatest things I have seen in my lifetime.
| kloop wrote:
| > Who would have thought someday a new engine rises in this
| climate, and then who would have thought it would be a small
| team, without a trillion dollar giant behind them pouring
| hundreds of millions into its production?
|
| Anybody who has ever worked on a large enterprise software
| team. Anybody who has ever worked in this scenario will believe
| this. Computing history is full of 2-10 people teams beating
| giant well funded teams to the punch.
|
| This mostly occurs because work expands to fill the time and
| resources allowed for the project (Parkinson's Law), and large
| companies have almost unlimited amounts of both.
| badsectoracula wrote:
| Exactly, and to add to that: people who work on the stuff
| they personally _like_ tend to do thing faster than people
| who work on stuff because they have to (like it is often the
| case in large enterprises).
| sho_hn wrote:
| It also helps that working on a browser engine is "easy" in
| the sense that you are developing to a known target and
| there are increasingly decent test suites available. It
| helps a lot with keeping motivation alive since there's a
| persistent drip feed of low-hanging fruit and it'd easy to
| quantify your productivity and you don't get super stuck,
| vs. having to innovate or greenfield stuff. Teams of
| skilled volunteers excel at this, and makes for fairly easy
| contributor recruitment to feed that team. Making a browser
| engine is almost the ideal case.
|
| The breadth of the task is staggering, but there is a real
| shot at posting the necessary endurance given the
| circumstances, being thrifty and given time.
|
| Before you reach for the downvote button for talking out of
| my arse and calling what the Ladybird folks doing a
| (qualified, specific) "easy", when we at KDE created KHTML
| which later begat WebKit, for many years - kling might
| remember! - our IRC channel topic was "which mozilla bug do
| we emulate today?", so I've seen it happen once before!
| Ladybird can succeed; consider contributing.
| donadolabs wrote:
| Unbelievable process, this guys are crushing it
| OptionX wrote:
| Really really hope these guys get a foothold in the market. I'm a
| decades long Firefox user but even I have to admit things with
| Mozilla aren't looking bright so projects like this are the only
| things that can save us from the chrome clone wars.
| neverrroot wrote:
| The power of one, the power of a mind who can't take no for an
| answer to the inner voice.
|
| And don't lecture me about the many, for the many wouldn't have
| started it, they joined the one.
|
| You know the one, cherish him.
|
| Thanks!
| karambanoonoo wrote:
| How long until it gets abandoned too?
| sertsa wrote:
| If on an Arch based distro, Ladybird is in AUR. Easy to try,
| compiling now!
| Havoc wrote:
| How is the ladybird experience at the moment? Coming from FF and
| basically just need ublock and a handful of extensions that make
| YT usable
| zhec wrote:
| It's currently in pre-alpha phase and glitches on pretty much
| every modern website (source: I just compiled and tested), so
| not very usable right now. Their target is to release in 2028.
| (See https://x.com/ladybirdbrowser/status/1895767072639951341)
| Havoc wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback. Hopefully it becomes more usable
| asap...keen for this to not turn into a chrome(ium) mono-
| culture
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