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348 points giuliomagnifico | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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giancarlostoro ◴[] No.46244569[source]
I still wish Mozilla had kept oxidizing Firefox. It would have been a net positive for Rust itself.
replies(3): >>46244641 #>>46244668 #>>46245780 #
anonnon ◴[] No.46244641[source]
Clearly, the fact that Servo failed must be indicative of shortcomings in Mozilla itself, and not Rust the language, its ecosystem, or its users.
replies(4): >>46244809 #>>46244842 #>>46244921 #>>46245463 #
WD-42 ◴[] No.46244921[source]
Did it fail? The servo project seems alive and well, just not under Mozilla. They decided CEO pay packages were more important.
replies(1): >>46246035 #
anonnon ◴[] No.46246035[source]
> Did it fail

13 years to get to v0.0.1 is a success? Look at how much progress Ladybird has made in a fraction of that time. Remember that these people are constantly starting rewrites of C and C++ projects (when they're not demanding others do it) in Rust "for safety" (and "oops it's MIT now"), even of ancient Unix utilities with minimal attack surfaces like the "date" command, yet when it comes to a browser rendering engine, which entails computationally-intensive, aggressively-optimized rendering of untrusted input--a massive attack surface, and the very thing for which Rust was supposedly designed--they somehow can't get the right combination of enough Rust zealots (and Adderall) to get past the finish line.

replies(2): >>46246713 #>>46253257 #
lifthrasiir ◴[] No.46253257[source]
> 13 years to get to v0.0.1 is a success?

Wine took a roughly same amount of time to be versioned as well, but no one calls Wine a failure.

replies(2): >>46257546 #>>46262385 #
1. seertaak ◴[] No.46262385[source]
First, wine was widely panned for years before it stopped sucking.

Second, you're simply ignoring that parent poster mentioned Ladybird, a non-rust project which is advancing much more speedily than servo. And I think they have a valid point -- and while the jury is still out, it's possible that in other rust-centric efforts which have experienced foot-dragging (eg WASI), the root cause may be rust itself.

Parent poster expressed their point somewhat sarcastically, but if I (C++/python dev, I admit!) were a betting transfem, my money would be on them being right.

That said, I think the Tor project got this decision right. This is as close to an ideal use-case for rust as you can get. Also, the project is mature, which will mitigate rewrite risk. The domain is one where rust can truly shine -- and it's a critical one to get right.