-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Darren New wrote: > Christopher Smith wrote: >> why isn't the web littered with >> Python/Haskell/Java/whatever web browsers that are far more feature rich >> and performant, not to mention more secure and bug free? > > Because you not only have to be performant and feature-rich, you also > have to be bug-compatible. It also helps to be distributed with an OS.
Ah, so all these other languages provide you with development advantages as long as you are willing to give up performance and features. That kind of reads to me as, "C++ appears to have some merit relative to other languages". As for the OS distribution factor.... Firefox isn't distributed with Windows or OS X. It is bundled with other operating systems, but most of them would gladly take another browser if it was better than Firefox and didn't impact their cost of goods. > Note that people write tons and tons of web browsers. Every language > that lets you fetch a web page, do SOAP or cURL, is basically a browser. > It just lacks the GUI. Special-purpose stuff may very well overwhelm > general-purpose stuff in quantity of bytes transferred. I don't doubt that any language can fairly easily implement a basic HTTP client (although it is amusing how many of them seem to prefer just wrapping cURL) with minimal effort. That's essentially a classroom assignment, and it is simple enough that languages are unlikely to be so inappropriate as to cause significant shortcomings. I'm talking about a project whose scale is enough to "separate out the men from the boys" so to speak. That means competing with the big boys in terms of feature completeness and quality. - --Chris -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFHOVPrOagjPOywMBARAtXDAJ9c9XiY85VJAFpKoKRrAtrL+DcxuACbBfEe ty6+zi+AKqdaFsxjQDTC/Do= =LrZu -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-lpsg
