> but still came away with the feeling there was literally no one using Servo
Code from Servo is in every single copy of Firefox, so it's pretty popular as code goes.
> And I find it wholly unappealing to abandon the existing corpus of literal decades of knowledge having been poured into those language ecosystems all in the name of whatever it is that Rust delivers on. I just have too much experience in the industry to throw away my time and play with toys.
Rust doesn't throw away that corpus. Rust draws heavily on that corpus. It leverages LLVM (used to compile C/C++), integrates with C libraries, integrates with GDB, draws a ton of design decisions from actual experience using C++, and so on.
It's a tool that runs inside Firefox, AWS, Microsoft, and a lot of other high-reliability, high-performance areas. It may be young, but it's quickly building (IMO compelling) evidence that it's very much not a "toy." ;)
It really isn't. The entire purpose of servo was to be a vehicle for r&d with the eventual goal of merging code back to firefox. It succeeded. No one used it because that really wasn't the point.
I think you're right in that that was the original sell, but it's not how they sell it today.
"Servo’s mission is to provide an independent, modular, embeddable web engine, which allows developers to deliver content and applications using web standards."
So maybe they're just not there yet?
But in my opinion, if you create popular software and no one uses it, it's not popular from its adoption, it's popular for some other reason. I can't point to any one using Servo and figure out how they use it, because I don't know of any companies or products actually using it besides Mozilla.
And I embed web tech, so I've spent a lot of time in that particular field. I just don't see it actually being used outside of Mozilla projects, like it was originally conceptually sold.
I guess that will take a few years then. Having only CEF and Webkit ports out there and is really hard for us out there looking at offscreen embedding.
Wait, you're working with web tech – probably the most archetypal field where preventing security vulnerabilities is the top priority – and you don't see the benefit of using Rust instead of C?
It’s definitely a major focus, but from where I operate I have to trust the embedded library to address a lot of those concerns. There’s usually very limited exposure offscreen embedders have to see to.
If Servo is any lighter than CEF, I absolutely want it to be the solution I use. So I’m very interested in its development.
Code from Servo is in every single copy of Firefox, so it's pretty popular as code goes.
> And I find it wholly unappealing to abandon the existing corpus of literal decades of knowledge having been poured into those language ecosystems all in the name of whatever it is that Rust delivers on. I just have too much experience in the industry to throw away my time and play with toys.
Rust doesn't throw away that corpus. Rust draws heavily on that corpus. It leverages LLVM (used to compile C/C++), integrates with C libraries, integrates with GDB, draws a ton of design decisions from actual experience using C++, and so on.
It's a tool that runs inside Firefox, AWS, Microsoft, and a lot of other high-reliability, high-performance areas. It may be young, but it's quickly building (IMO compelling) evidence that it's very much not a "toy." ;)