I’ve been part of at least 2 successful rewrites. I think that Joel’s post is too often taken as gospel. Sometimes a rewrite is the best way forward.
Moving Ladybird from C++ to a safer more modern language is a real differentiator vs other browsers, and will probably pay dividends. Doing it now is better than doing it once ladybird is fully established.
One last point about rewrites: you can look at any industry disruptor as essentially a team that did a from-scratch rewrite of their competitors and won because the rewrite was better.
I still don’t buy this “safer more modern” mentality. Modern C++ pretty much solves the safety issues. People need to learn how to use tools properly.
If you ask me, Go is a better Rust. Rust is an ugly version of C++ with longer compile times and a band of zealous missionaries.
I mean the keywords mut and fn very annoying to read just get rid of them or spell the f*n thing function.
I always wonder how can one come to such a conclusion. Modern C++ has no way to enforce relationship between two objects in memory and the shared xor mutable rule, which means it can't even do the basic checks that are the foundation of Rust's safety features.
Of course, this statement is also trivially debunked by the reality of any major C++ program with complexity and attack surface of something like a browser. Modern C++ certainly didn't save Chrome from CVEs. They ban a bunch of C++ features, enforce the rule of two, and do a bunch of hardening and fuzzing on top of it and they still don't get spared from safety issues.
What does the memory safety even matter when hackers poison heavily used crates?