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 ๐ชถ
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. ๐ค๐
Having read all the context and the "debunking," no, I don't think that person is delusional. I think they're just more sensative to how certain patterns of actions can be hurtful to marginalized groups than awesomekling is, and that awesomekling has showed a consistent pattern of associating with, and empowering, bad folks, and for not taking it seriously when people say "associating with bad folks makes the project less inclusive, and makes people less willing to contribute." The justification he provides basically boils down to "Well you don't contribute so I don't have to listen to" when part of why people aren't contributing is that they make first contributions and he offhandedly dismisses them. It's interesting to me that "trans people exist" is a political agenda but "we refuse to acknowlege your pronouns and will change them with moderator powers on our discord" isn't.
I disagree that people trying to make the language of technology more inclusive are doing nothing but causing trouble. They're trying to make our communities more open to more contributors, and by slamming the doors in their faces we prevent them from continuing forward. And here's the thing: I've seen this play out before. Really big, really successful, projects see consistent long term contributions and develop and grow over time. Projects that are harmful to marginalized groups get niche appeal but not mass adoption. Also whether or not he supports right-wing politics, I find it hard to take it seriously that someone who's so "wholesome" is "just" a misogynist or a transphobe. Those are serious allegations, and ones that I haven't seen well addressed, and ones I don't care to associate myself with until awesomekling shows up and puts in the work to make it clear marginalized people are welcome working on his codebase. As of right now? It seems he's perfectly willing to accept money and code from people who show consistent patterns of abuse.
As a left-aligned person, myself, I ALSO think we need to stop excusing hate, but I think that looks somewhat different.