this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2026
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Lobsters.

We’ve been searching for a memory-safe programming language to replace C++ in Ladybird for a while now. We previously explored Swift, but the C++ interop never quite got there, and platform support outside the Apple ecosystem was limited. Rust is a different story. The ecosystem is far more mature for systems programming, and many of our contributors already know the language. Going forward, we are rewriting parts of Ladybird in Rust.

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[–] arcine@jlai.lu 68 points 6 days ago (7 children)

I was enthusiastic about LadyBird until I learnt that the guy leading the project i s a white supremacist, via pivot-to-ai.

Now I hope either someone else takes it over, or that it crashes and burns.

[–] greyfrog@sh.itjust.works 4 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

I don't think you should be able to make claims like this without hard proof.

Do you have any information about this?

Edit: So I found out where you read that, and that article is wayyy over thinking that comment.

I think the Twitter comment could be taken multiple ways and it would be fair to give them the benefit of the doubt.

[–] Zangoose@lemmy.world 13 points 5 days ago (1 children)

How many times do I have to give him the benefit of the doubt though?

First it was the "using they in documentation is political ideology" Github issue, then he publicly defended DHH when people called him out for being a white supremacist, he implied tech companies are discriminating against white people with diversity policies, and he tweeted that he hopes young people will carry on Charlie Kirk's legacy.

If one or two of these things happened in isolation, I could maybe understand giving him the benefit of the doubt as a non-American (for that last one) non-native English speaker. But all of these things taken together? I personally don't think I can look past that.

[–] greyfrog@sh.itjust.works 4 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

To be fair I hadn't heard of some of these, so I think you're right. I wouldn't go so far as as to say he's a white supremacist but it definitely seems like he has an "ideology"

Edit: The more I read about it the more it's pissing me off. Especially defending DHH who wrote that trash article about London (I'm not a Londoner but I'm a Brit who's there enough with work to know he's talking absolute shit).

[–] Zangoose@lemmy.world 4 points 5 days ago

That's fair, I assume most people probably aren't following ladybird that closely so it's easy to miss. It just bothers me because shrugging off small individual problems and ignoring a bigger trend is arguably what let people like DHH get a platform in the first place.

[–] statelesz@slrpnk.net 2 points 6 days ago

Came here to say this.

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[–] tinsuke@lemmy.world 45 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

Andreas Kling's ladybird? Don't wanna touch that with a 10ft pole.

https://hyperborea.org/reviews/software/ladybird-inclusivity/

[–] Telorand@reddthat.com 3 points 6 days ago

Thanks for the reference!

[–] Fizz@lemmy.nz 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Hyperborea.org is that owned by a racist or is the domain ment to be making fun of it?

[–] XLE@piefed.social 9 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (6 children)

Based on the content of that article alone (especially near the bottom), I don't think it's run by a racist at all. Can confirm via their social media presence.

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[–] Reygle@lemmy.world 31 points 6 days ago

Oh. Welp, if it's going to be vibe coded I'm out.

[–] chunes@lemmy.world 10 points 6 days ago (1 children)

The things people criticize are so fucking brainless these days. AI this, slop that.

Not a single one of you made fun of "let's rewrite it in Rust." You can't even elevate to the level of mildly funny parroting.

[–] baggachipz@sh.itjust.works 7 points 6 days ago (1 children)

“Let’s stop halfway through our multi-year project to rewrite it in another language” is peak nerd shiny distraction. I say this as one who resists the urge every day. Way to delay your project by several more years, clown.

[–] Zangoose@lemmy.world 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

All things considered the way they're approaching the migration is fine enough - they're only moving specific portions at a time, they're not stopping C++ development, and they're making sure it doesn't introduce regressions. Adopting a memory-safe language for something like a browser makes sense because it completely eliminates that class of vulnerabilities.

The problem is the way they're approaching the code itself. From their wording, it sounds like they're relying on AI heavily for both writing and reviewing the code. Rust has a steeper learning curve than most languages and is very different from C++. They even mention in the blog that their current Rust code looks like C++ code ported over. If they don't take the time to actually learn Rust before adopting it, it'll just lead to security logic issues that their AI couldn't catch because C++ and Rust don't always behave the same way. And that's completely ignoring all of the other ethical/technical issues with AI

[–] baggachipz@sh.itjust.works 4 points 5 days ago

Be that as it may, the time to choose Rust was at the beginning. It existed then, but they made their technology choice. Continuing to develop in C++ while doing the migration just means more throwaway code and duplicated effort. This decision is truly the worst of both worlds.

[–] fuzzywombat@lemmy.world 9 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I've suddenly lost all interest in this browser's development. From what I've heard, LLMs are pretty bad at generating Rust code for some reason. If they used LLM to bulk convert C++ code to Rust, the quality of the code is questionable at best.

[–] greyfrog@sh.itjust.works 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Surely you read the article?

"The requirement from the start was byte-for-byte identical output from both pipelines. "

The bytecode from C++ is identical to the Rust output.

[–] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 1 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

~~I don't think it's possible to write rust code that compiles to the exact same binary as c++. compilers make different optimizations, and make overall a different structure, especially across languages.~~

~~I think they meant the rust library produces the same output from the same input as the c++ library.~~

if llms indeed generate worse rust code than for other languages, that's not that big of a problem because the compiler will catch a lot of mistakes. if it compiles, it will run, and no memory safety bugs unless unsafe is also used. the llm could pick the wrong functions for some uses, but that should be caught relatively easily with testing, which can be automated partly

edit: I was wrong, they indeed say that. this is weird.

[–] Matty_r@programming.dev 15 points 6 days ago

The worst part is they are doing themselves a disservice by not rewriting it by hand - have they really learnt enough Rust to know how to effectively rewrite the other parts of the engine as they say? Doubtful - they'll probably just do everything through AI stuff going forward.

[–] Sharkticon@lemmy.zip 8 points 6 days ago
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