Andreas Kling announces Swift as Ladybird's future language for better safety and ergonomics. Full transition awaits Swift 6.

I would have preferred Rust, a language created by Mozilla instead of one with ties to Apple, but I’m not a dev so I can’t really judge. What are your thoughts?

  • 9point6@lemmy.world
    351·
    3 months ago

    Independent of corporate interests

    .

    Picks one of the few languages created due to corporate interests

    This will die on the vine

    • PullPantsUnsworn@lemmy.mlEnglish
      26·
      3 months ago

      Yep. It was developed to improve parallelization and security of Firefox. Many core parts of Firefox have been replaced with Rust implementations.

        • turnipjs@lemmy.ml
          71·
          3 months ago

          The biggest part is that Chromium has all but taken over the browser space, and Google is additionally 90% or so of Firefox’s funding which likely gives them power even when it’s unspoken. That is to say that Google has way too much control over browsers to go along with their way too much control over internet traffic in general. The recent Manifest V3 thing and Mozillas “privacy preserving” ad personalization also likely have significant effects.

          • loathsome dongeater@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
            63·
            3 months ago

            I agree with what you said but there is next to no chance a new browser engine from scratch will be able to challenge Blink’s dominance.

            Google’s power comes from a combination of unfortunate factors. They have limitless money to support Chrome’s development. They are one of the biggest vendors of online services. They are one of the biggest drivers of new web standard adoption.

            Breaking this monopoly will require regulation and enforcement, not a “tech visionary” and a GitHub co-founder playing hero.

            • turnipjs@lemmy.ml
              81·
              3 months ago

              The alternatives have to exist first before the monopoly can break. One doesn’t have to think the browser will singlehandedly change the entire browser space to be hyped about more alternatives. I am just excited to see some amount of motion in opposition to the decline into the google-net. Not that this is the only thing happening but it is an interesting one that I hope pans out.

            • youmaynotknow@lemmy.ml
              2·
              3 months ago

              So you’d rather live in a world where nobody does anything about it because politicians won’t do anything? That’s an idea to move forward 🙄

              • loathsome dongeater@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
                3·
                3 months ago

                My point is that no one talks about using regulations to curb Google’s browser monopoly ever. Even the anti-trust suit against them was related to their search offering. This relates to how Mozilla is beholden to Google for funding, and other players in the game being big corporations themselves.

                politicians won’t do anything

                Politicians can be made to do stuff. It is not always easy or even possible but activism sometimes works. Either way it is more likely to work than a toy browser for a niche segment of nerds becoming a viable alternative.

                • youmaynotknow@lemmy.ml
                  2·
                  3 months ago

                  I do get your point, and in a perfect world that would be the solution. However, there are too many considerations to keep in mind with this:

                  1.- it’s usually the nerdy crowd that is willing to go out of their way to resist monopolies like this. The rest of the people cannot be bothered with this because they risk missing an Instagram post of a dog scratching a carpet. So, creating a solution geared at nerds is highly likely to achieve the desired effect.

                  2.- doing something like this is still doing something, which is much more than anyone can expect from “regulators”. Librewolf, Mulkvad browser, Brave, etc, are there because a bunch of nerds did them, nothing was being regulated.

                  3.- in every post about enshitification I’ve seen the last couple of years the need to regulate these companies always comes up. This has had little to no impact in getting those regulations even started.

                  Those are only 3 of the many reasons why we do need more of these independent and nerd focused applications. If we didn’t have them, then we’d be unequivocally fucked.

                  Lemmy and Mastodon, what was/is being regulated to make them happen instead of fakebook, Quitter and fucking reddit? Nothing at all.

                  You make a good point, but the chances of anything happening on the regulatory side of things in the near future is basically null. I hope I’m wrong.

  • asudox@lemmy.world
    1·
    3 months ago

    I do wonder: why not rust? It would have been amazing. A fast language on par with C++ that also is memory safe. But Swift? You gotta be kidding me…

  • amzd@lemmy.world
    14·
    3 months ago

    Swift is a fantastic language and with c++ interop out of the box it’s the obvious choice.

  • JustMarkov@lemmy.mlEnglish
    622·
    3 months ago

    I would have preferred Rust, a language created by Mozilla instead of one with ties to Apple, but I’m not dev so I can’t really judge. What are your thoughts?

    I don’t know anything about Swift, but people like to ignore the fact, that Rust is not entirely free, as it fails to exercise freedom 3.
    tl;dr: Rust Foundation don’t want you to apply modifications to their language without “explicit approval”.
    And you are also limited to share modified versions of their software.

    (If someone can imply, that Python and Perl have similiar restriction — they are not the same, because both of their trademarks protect usage of software against fraud, but you can freely patch and modify it.)

    For me personally, seeing LadyBird not choosing Rust as their main language is very promising. Rust software is everywhere now and this is concerning.

    • turnipjs@lemmy.ml
      15·
      3 months ago

      That… is not a restriction on freedom 3. You could complain about your inability to use the rust name for anything you want but that is not the same thing as your ability to distribute modified versions of the software. It is also fairly standard practice for foss software to restrict the use of such trademarks. For example, Gnome does pretty much the same thin. FreeBSD as well. Libre Office also has similar restrictions, although they are defined more nebulously. It is not clear to me what usages are allowed with the Linux trademark but they certainly do restrict who can use it and for what and you must get permission before using it. See also, about trademarks in FOSS: https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=9d96e1bf-bced-48f7-b5b4-ee561e7a9348

      The software is free. The trademarks are not. The four freedoms are about the software and not about trademarks. You could fork Rust and call it Corrosion, just like people have forked Firefox and called it Waterfox.

    • asudox@lemmy.world
      1·
      3 months ago

      There’s a reason why software is being made with Rust now. It has the speed of C++ (sometimes faster), has a nice syntax, is memory safe by default, has the best compiler error messages and also the book is very good. I learnt entirely by the book and it’s very good at explaining things.