I wonder what’s in it for Shopify. This seems like an odd thing for them to sponsor, or a very expensive FU to Google.
Well, it could be genuine altruism. But I doubt a web totally controlled by Google sounds good to a company that relies on the semi-open web for its business.
This is a bit like Valve liking Linux I imagine.
I was wondering why it was written in C++, but the FAQ already beat me to it.
Why build a new browser in C++ when safer and more modern languages are available?
Ladybird started as a component of the SerenityOS hobby project, which only allows C++. The choice of language was not so much a technical decision, but more one of personal convenience. Andreas was most comfortable with C++ when creating SerenityOS, and now we have almost half a million lines of modern C++ to maintain.
However, now that Ladybird has forked and become its own independent project, all constraints previously imposed by SerenityOS are no longer in effect. We are actively evaluating a number of alternatives and will be adding a mature successor language to the project in the near future. This process is already quite far along, and prototypes exist in multiple languages.Glad to see they are open to using safer languages. C/C++ was great for its time, but we really need to move on from them.
As someone who has done no programming since taking C++ in high school more than 20 years ago, what do you mean by safer language?
C and C++ require more manual management of memory, and their compilers are unable to let you know about a lot of cases where you’re managing memory improperly. This often causes bugs, memory leaks, and security issues.
Safer languages manage the memory for you, or at least are able to track memory usage to ensure you don’t run into problems. Rust is the poster boy for this lately; if you’re writing code that has potential issues with memory management, the compiler will consider that an error unless you specifically mark that section of code as unsafe.
This is the first I’m hearing of Ladybird. Looks really interesting and glad to see there are more options for browsers coming
I used to follow Ladybird/SerenityOS stuff but their takes on “political stuff” is just… too bad.