[Santosh83]

Agree about marketing. Mozilla needs to get the word out to those who don't follow the tech scene in any way, shape or form. That's the real challenge, but there also lie the bulk of its potential user base. Not sure exactly how they can do that without resorting to annoying, almost sleazy stuff that Google do (like bundling their browser with many other s/w and OEM system builders)...

Quantum... I like to think of 57 and beyond as a quantum leap from before. They did after all let go of XUL overnight, and people do praise its speed overnight. :-)

[Crespyl]

> quantum leap from before

So, the smallest possible leap? :P

I like to think that it's loosely related to the multithreaded work-stealing features, breaking as much as possible up into "quanta" of work to be grabbed by the next available thread.

It's a decently memorable codename in any case, and works well enough for that purpose.

[Rusky]

I think of it less as "the smallest possible" and more as just "one indivisible unit"- going from 56 to 57 without rewriting the style system in Rust would be a long and probably impossible task.

[Manishearth]

"quantum" doesn't mean "small".

"quantum leap" means an abrupt, large, leap.

See https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/quantum_leap

[ehsanu1]

It's a joke. A quantum leap is what you say, but a quantum in physics is all about being the smallest discrete unit of some physical property such as energy.

[Manishearth]

Right, but it doesn't mean "small", some quanta are quite large.

[ehsanu1]

I agree, not small (seems subjective), but still the smallest! The smallest leap is probably not very large :D

[Manishearth]

No, a quantum leap is any abrupt leap between any two energy levels (i.e. you can span multiple), it characterizes the abruptness, not the size.

IIRC the term's usage in English derives both from the fact that it is an abrupt leap, and also from the radical change to physics brought forth by quantum mechanics.