Andreas Kling aka @awesomekling wrote:
We’ve been evaluating a number of C++ successor languages for @ladybirdbrowser , and the one best suited to our needs appears to be @SwiftLang 🪶
Over the last few months, I’ve asked a bunch of folks to pick some little part of our project and try rewriting it in the different languages we were evaluating. The feedback was very clear: everyone preferred Swift!
Why do we like Swift?
First off, Swift has both memory & data race safety (as of v6). It’s also a modern language with solid ergonomics.
Something that matters to us a lot is OO. Web specs & browser internals tend to be highly object-oriented, and life is easier when you can model specs closely in your code. Swift has first-class OO support, in many ways even nicer than C++.
The Swift team is also investing heavily in C++ interop, which means there’s a real path to incremental adoption, not just gigantic rewrites.
Strong ties to Apple?
Swift has historically been strongly tied to Apple and their platforms, but in the last year, there’s been a push for “swiftlang” to become more independent. (It’s now in a separate GitHub org, no longer in “apple”, for example).
Support for non-Apple platforms is also improving, as is the support for other, LSP-based development environments.
What happens next?
We aren’t able to start using it just yet, as the current release of Swift ships with a version of Clang that’s too old to grok our existing C++ codebase. But when Swift 6 comes out of beta this fall, we will begin using it!
No language is perfect, and there are a lot of things here that we don’t know yet. I’m not aware of anyone doing browser engine stuff in Swift before, so we’ll probably end up with feedback for the Swift team as well.
I’m super excited about this! We must steer Ladybird towards memory safety, and the first step is selecting a successor language that we can begin adopting very soon. 🤓🐞
Pretty rude to Rust programmers not choosing Rust for the re write.
Really feels like a mistake. No major language exists without a major benefactor supporting it, and Swift’s only benefactor has zero interest in cross platform anything.
Good luck 5 years from now when cross platform Swift has gone the way of cross platform Safari.
Actually, this isn’t true. Apple has a vested interest in cross platform Swift. They’ve been pushing hard for Swift on Linux because they want Swift to run on servers, and they’re right to. Look at how hard JavaScript dominates on the server-side because of one language everywhere.
Swift is a fast, modern, and safe language for iOS, macOS, and other Apple platforms.
This seems like such a poor choice if you want a cross platform browser.
Hey Ladybird — get off Xitter and use something else like Mastadon.
Weird fascist tech bro likes weird fascist tech bro platform
Weird fascist tech bro
What the hell are you talking about? I have been following Andreas for few years already and in no way he is fascist, in fact he is one of the most wholesome people around that I know of.
Your comment convinced me to finally take a look at his profile and see what the fuss is about.
I didn’t see anything that’d make me scream fascism, either.
But there’s definitely stuff that’s off. Things that, in isolation, would be one thing, but when you analyze them all together, it wouldn’t be weird to say there’s a pattern. A picture starts to form, and it’s one that I’ve sadly seen many times before.
So I went back and grabbed a few tweets:
- Andreas’ take on… political leanings of contributors?
- Spoiler: he thinks the left doesn’t contribute, apparently, and I have no idea how he measured lurkers.
- Andreas is, according to himself, something like a centrist?
- What does he consider a “purity test” from either side?
- See this measurement of his political leanings. Rest assured, he shared it in jest.
- Did you know the internet makes fun of these tests because it only takes a few progressive choices to throw you so far left, you’d think only through decidedly unwholesome picks it’d be possible to hit the right side?
- Andreas believes Twitter is full of positive energy.
- I thought this was funny, because everyone I know—especially Twitter users—claim it’s become a far-right infested cesspit.
- Andreas’ neutral take and isolated opinion on pronouns in the office
- The most liked reply: “[…] a red flag indicating that it is a woke workplace. […]” Many such followers. This is his bubble. Very positive.
- Andreas’ reaction to someone who didn’t like what they saw in a GH issue.
- Multiple times now, when this issue was mentioned, I’ve seen people bring up how old it is. The age is irrelevant if he clearly still thinks the same. I stand by Lea’s arguments here, and seeing him double down and fail to understand the problem is worrying.
I barely had to scroll to find these, they’re all recent. There’s much more.
Individually, you could dismiss everything. It’s just humor. He’s neutral. Objective. Wholesome. But then, why does he keep hitting the same keys? You’d assume a wholesome centrist would have a little more variety in their stand-up routine.
You know what he reminds me of, after reading so many of his tweets?
People who dress up in a veneer of positivity, but you ask them what they think is negative, and they’ll say things like raising awareness of LGBT issues. Not in those words, of course, because that’s not positive. When they talk about it, they’ll put on this show about how they don’t take sides, and how they’re simply worried about the technical discussion, the actually important stuff, you know? They simply don’t like unhelpful noise, things like trying to foster an inclusive community.
It’s easy to seem like a positive figure when you never properly acknowledge any criticism. Position yourself as a factual, neutral voice of objectivity, even when that’s literally impossible. Paint those who disagree as non-contributing, unproductive, negative noise-makers. Say you agree with people on topics they care about, but then turn around and tell them they’re all doing it wrong. Cover it all up in emoji and a “Let’s do it together!” attitude, but reject anyone who reaches out with the wrong greeting.
And there you have it, Andreas reads like a man who’s either lying to himself or to others, and I don’t know which is worse.
I went into this thinking, “I have to avoid baselessly criticizing people. There’s surely nuance to this man’s real beliefs, people on the internet are too quick to attack without evidence.” Which is why I’m honestly surprised to say that I came out with a mildly worse opinion of Andreas than when I started. What the hell.
I sincerely hope he can reflect on his behavior and grow out of this strange mindset. Andreas seems to be a great software developer and Ladybird can be an enormous boon for the web, so it hurts to see him acting this way.
Again, I genuinely don’t think he’s on Twitter because he’s a “weird fascist tech bro” who likes a fascist platform (what is even meant by weird?). I find it more probable that he’s comfortable there, realizes that it’s not going anywhere, that it remains the most popular platform, and therefore doesn’t think Mastodon is worth the effort.
Why he’s so comfortable there and doesn’t like Mastodon is worth thinking about, though.
This is literally the text from one of the links above that assert that Andreas is a fascist:
“I’m doing my best to build something I believe in, and everyone is welcome to participate as long as we can set our differences aside.
”I cannot imagine how lopsided your world-view needs to be to interpret this kind of neutrality as “fascist”.
The only conclusion that I can draw is that some people are so polarized ( black and white ) that they can only interpret people that are not “with” them as “against” them.
And to clarify “with” above means “shares my extreme views and expectations”.
If that is true, it is tragically sad.
- Andreas’ take on… political leanings of contributors?
