We're building a browser when it's supposed to be impossible (awesomekling.substack.com)

Article summary

The article discusses how the SerenityOS team is building a browser, Ladybird, despite the common perception that it's impossible. The team's approach focuses on stronger web specifications, vertical slices of functionality, deferring performance work, a strong team culture, and experienced leadership. This approach allows them to make progress on building a browser. The team also tries to improve web specifications by reporting bugs and making pull requests to improve them.

Main themes

• building a browser
• web standards
• browser engine development
• performance optimization
• team culture and leadership
• competition and market dynamics

What commenters say

• Building a browser from scratch is not impossible, but building a competitive engine is a significant challenge.
• The constant churn of new web features and standards makes it difficult to keep up with browser development.
• Implementing web standards is not the hardest part of building a browser, but rather achieving good performance is the main difficulty.
• Some argue that the perception of building a browser being impossible is exaggerated and may be influenced by PR efforts from large corporations.
• Others believe that building a browser engine is comparable to building a compiler, but with additional complexities due to the need to support broken websites and graphical output.
• The ever-changing nature of JavaScript and the need to support a wide range of websites make building a browser a complex task.
• Some argue that the difficulty of building a browser lies not in the technical aspects, but in the fact that the output criteria are not well-defined, making it hard to test and validate the browser's behavior.