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An anonymous coward writes:
"Mozilla is using work on it's next generation layout engine, Servo, to fine tune a new language used for writing that layout engine. The new language, called Rust, started as a personal project of Greydon Hoare and has since grown to be sponsored by Mozilla and Samsung. From the article:
The Rust language will power Mozilla's new browser, Servo, and its big selling point is efficiency. Because C++ crashes when it runs into memory allocation issues, it weakens any browser that uses the language. Mozilla designed Rust to be superior to C++ this way, more easily isolating tasks and promote a process known as "work stealing," which is when tasks from an overloaded processor are shifted over to another one.
Rust is a general purpose, multi-paradigm, compiled programming language developed by Mozilla Research. It is designed to be a "safe, concurrent, practical language", supporting pure-functional, concurrent-actor, imperative-procedural, and object-oriented styles."
(Score: 1) by rev0lt on Sunday March 16 2014, @03:41AM
You're fond of C++ and I respect that. Everyone is broken in their own special way :)
It's the reason why RISC processors beat out CISC processors
Well, they didn't. The truth is somewhere in the middle. Modern RISC implement complex instructions like div, and modern CISC use microcode RISC architecture. Its a crazy world out there.
If you try to keep stuffing more and more complex functions deeper and deeper into your system, you end up with a system so complex that it is practically unmaintainable.
I'd say you actually just defined modern C++ or modern Java, but its okay.
Languages should provide programmers with the basic building blocks they need to program
For me, objects aren't building blocks, they are aberrations. OOP will suck your soul (I know a bit about both soul sucking and OOP, I do it everyday). I'd switch in a heartbeat to assembly listings.
In this regard I would rather see Mozilla write a C++ library to provide some level of automated memory management than an entirely new language.
Well, they wrote a full-blown WYSIWYG rendering platform (also linkable as a library) and still has memory problems. They call the main product "Firefox".
Doing so allows for the creation of some pretty amazing programs by good programmers, at the cost of having to deal with some pretty awful programs written by bad programmers
Amen! But do we really need rendering engines in C++? Is OO the best paradigm for a browser?
(Score: 1) by clone141166 on Sunday March 16 2014, @03:55AM
That's fine, I have very little experience with functional programming languages so I'm not qualified to argue for or against OOP vs. Functional.
But my question would be, if hypothetically OOP is bad for writing browsers and a functional language is needed, then why is an entirely new functional language required? Are existing functional programming languages so terribly bad that a whole new one needs to be written from scratch?
(Score: 1) by rev0lt on Sunday March 16 2014, @09:22PM
Well, DSLs are on the rise. And having a browser building language would theoretically allow the easy building of customized browsers, using the same core features.