There's a new browser in town: Nyxt. It is free software. It is intended to be modified by the user, perhaps even rewritten. From https://nyxt.atlas.engineer/:
Built-in programmability.
Use the built-in REPL to program Nyxt. Run short scripts, and try out new workflows. Everything in Nyxt is fully extensible and modifiable.
It is written in Common Lisp.
Is this the browser we programmers have been waiting for? The one we can modify to our wildest dreams?
[Ed's comment: The linked source is obviously intended to show a potential user how it will work, and in this role it does a reasonable job. But there is not a great deal to explain why they think it is a game changer, or why it will appeal to many users. If it is necessary to use Lisp to extend the browser then perhaps it will not have the impact that they seem to believe it will have. But what do you think? Will it gain a foothold, or simply fade away to be forgotten except perhaps for a few enthusiasts?]
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 01 2024, @02:47AM (3 children)
Lisp is a great language for extensions and automation. Autodesk chose it for Autocad (long ago), see https://help.autodesk.com/view/ACDLT/2024/ENU/?guid=GUID-3B8EDFF1-A130-434F-B615-7F2EC04322EE [autodesk.com] for example. It's been the extension language in Emacs forever (or at least a really long time?)
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Friday March 01 2024, @04:08AM (2 children)
Don't know about later versions but in early versions of AutoCAD, AutoLISP was pretty feeble. Couldn't do recursion without rapidly running out of memory. Since looping was impractical to do with recursion, they added control statements for that. Made AutoLISP more like plain old C.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 01 2024, @04:35AM (1 child)
Um, no, looping is not impractical to do with recursion. You just need to be a competent programmer and understand what tail recursion is. That's the proper way to iteration with recursion, and languages like Lisp optimize for it.
(Score: 4, Informative) by bzipitidoo on Friday March 01 2024, @04:47AM
AutoLISP did not optimize for tail end recursion, and would run out of memory if you tried it.