this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2024
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The dev has 30 years of experience with c++ and a lot of it was on browsers.
He tried to incorporate rust with the help of "JT", one of the original rust designers/devs and according to Andreas it didn't work that well due to the web being too objet oriented or something like that. They both worked together (well, mostly "JT") to create a new safe programming language called "yakt" that transpile to c++, but the project is currently pretty much dead because nobody is really working on it anymore.
The web being too object oriented for rust? Assuming that made sense, who wrote the dang language? If that's true I'm even less confident they know what they're doing then I was before.
You're doubting someone's ability to create a web browser knowing that they specialize in browser development since the early 2000s?
If this isn't enough to have confidence in them then nothing will.
Using my decades of experience in how programming and compilers works and the fact Mozilla has used it to great effect and how it is being used for parts of the Linux kernel.... Yeah just a general statement it doesn't make any sense.
Maybe they aren't effective at designing software with the paradigms of the language or they don't like it but the given explanation doesn't track.
I am pretty sure it was about how it was difficult for them to do oop with rust, but I reckon it was long ago and my programming knowledge is minimal.
Found it:
https://rl.rootdo.com/r/rust/comments/yuxb8a/serenityos_author_rust_is_a_neat_language_but
I vaguely remember the talk about needing oop for the web being on discord and not twitter, so the twitter post is likely a reaction that.
Reading all of that it sounds mostly like a dev who has spent 20 years doing things the C++ way wasn't comfortable learning something new. Like basically they've been using horrible design patterns that Rust bans because they're horrible, and instead of learning better approaches they just say Rust is bad
It could be. But then again, he did have the help of a Rust designer/core dev. I believe they even wrote the first iteration of the "Jakt" compiler in Rust before rewriting it in Jakt itself, so Andreas isn't against using Rust.
So someone who wrote their own functional operating system and browser from scratch which he is now targeting the public with, is not comfortable learning something new?
You are all assuming that the project will be c++ only when the authors haven't said anything about the matter. Who knows if they aren't open to moving to rust? The project is originally in c++, not only but, because that's what the target OS supported. There are examples of other browser moving from c++ to rust (Firefox) who says they can't do the same?