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by zyedidia 447 days ago
I don't think there are any plans for Ladybird to have a JIT compiler (they used to have one but decided to remove it) [1, 2], so it's not clear to me that this performance gap will be improved anytime soon (if ever).

[1]: https://youtu.be/dKHopzDtElY?si=jc3ho2NT4vPTbXBz&t=14

[2]: See FAQ here https://awesomekling.github.io/Ladybird-a-new-cross-platform...

2 comments

> I don't think there are any plans for Ladybird to have a JIT compiler (they used to have one but decided to remove it) [1, 2], so it's not clear to me that this performance gap will be improved anytime soon (if ever).

How does that make this comparison make any sense?

Point is, this isn't a Servo vs Ladybird comparison. It's a Mozilla vs Ladybird comparison.

I read here recently that Ladybird is prepared to switch to Swift rather than C++. I can't seem to find the relevant sources; can anyone confirm?
Yes, here[0]. Although, it's not anywhere close to being used for everyday things. There are blockers listed in their GitHub issues and various issues posted to the Swift forums.

[0]: https://xcancel.com/awesomekling/status/1822236888188498031

Thank you! I'd imagine performance-sensitive components in the engine need to remain in C++ (or a similar systems language) right? However, I'm not privy to Swift's runtime benchmarks.
Swift has been adding support for things like non-copyable types that should help with writing performance sensitive parts.
> imagine performance-sensitive components in the engine need to remain in C++

I'd imagine so, yes. I think the vision is to use Swift in "risky" areas like parsing data for example. Probably much more too, but the big hitters would be safety critical areas I think.