Comment by ZoomZoomZoom | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ZoomZoomZoom | Hacker News Reader

Looks like Andreas is a mighty fine engineer, but he's even better entrepreneur. Doesn't matter if intentional or not, but he managed to create and lead a rather visible passion project, attract many contributors and use that project's momentum to detach Ladybird into a separate endeavor with much more concrete financial prospects.

The Jakt -> Swift -> Rust pivots look like the same thing on a different level. The initial change to Swift was surely motivated by potential industry support gain (i believe it was a dubious choice from purely engineering standpoint).

It's awe-inspiring to see how a person can carve a job for himself, leverage hobbyists'/hackers' interest and contributions, attract industry attention and sponsors all while doing the thing he likes (assuming, browsers are his thing) in a controlling position.

Can't fully rationalize the feeling, but all of this makes me slightly wary. Doesn't make it less cool to observe from a side, though.

Andreas is not some kind of hustler. He spent years writing an entire OS (Serenity OS) before the web browser part happened to gain traction. If you were just trying to be an entrepreneur, why do that?

The truth is more simple: he's a good engineer and leader, people recognised that and offered him sponsorships, and the project took off by itself.

I sincerely hope it's just me having trust issues.

Nothing wrong with being wary, generally speaking.*

There are many examples of good engineers that are also good leaders. I think the Venn overlap isn't that unusual, at least for a good engineer leading a team up to maybe a dozen. When a good engineer lands in a spot where they get to work on something they really care about, that doesn't hurt either!

Now, how many good engineers are also good at leading larger teams? As the team size increases, my impression is that it is less common. If so, why? Lots to explore around individual, cultural, and corporate factors.

* If one sets a prior probability to 0 or 1, a posterior probability will not change due to Bayes' Rule. This means new information has no effect. Put another way, choosing either 0 or 1 as a prior is equivalent to stating "no new information will change my belief."

Eh, he's given an interview where he talks about the Swift decision. He and several maintainers tried building some features in Swift, Rust, and C++, spending about two weeks on each one IIRC. And all the maintainers liked the experience of Swift better. That might have ended up wrong, but it's a pretty reasonable way to make a decision.

Two weeks with Rust and you're still fighting with the compiler. I think the LLM pulled a lot of weight selling the language, it can help smooth over the tricky bits.

idk man it's rare to fight the compiler once you've used Rust for long enough unless you're doing something that's the slightest bit complex with async.

You get to good at schmoozing the compiler you start to create actual logical bugs faster.

That's why I said "two weeks."

That goes for almost every language. I recall my first couple of weeks with various compiled language and they all had their 'wtf?' moments when a tiny mistake in the input generated reams of output. But once you get past that point you simply don't make those mistakes anymore. Try missing a '.' in a COBOL program and see what happens. Make sure there is enough paper in the box under LPT1...

Yeah, main issue with Swift is that the c++ interop (which was absolutely bleeding-edge) still isn't to the point of being able to pull in parts of the Ladybird codebase.

If I recall correctly, part of this was around classes they had that replaced parts of the STL, whereas the Swift C++ interop makes assumptions about things with certain standard names.

This is less about languages and more about so-called AI. One thing’s for sure: it’s becoming harder and harder to deny that agentic coding is revolutionizing software development.

We’re at the point where a solid test suite and a high-quality agent can achieve impressive results in the hands of a competent coder. Yes, it will still screw up, needs careful human review and steering, etc, but there is a tangible productivity improvement. I don’t think it makes sense putting numbers on it, but for many tasks, it looks like there’s a tangible benefit.

Yeah, this is glorified yak-shaving if we're being real. I'm not getting my hopes up for a true new browser

> but all of this makes me slightly wary.

Wary of what?

I'd say it's the idea/fact/feeling that, in 2026, agency matters more than skill/wisdom/intelligence.

Long read on the topic (quite funny, covers Cluely): https://harpers.org/archive/2026/03/childs-play-sam-kriss-ai...

Probably, Roy was born agentic as a part of a package which included an disregard for intellectual growth.

This doesn't mean that being agentic cannot be cultivated by regular people.

In 2026, yes, agency matters more than skill/wisdom/intelligence to get VC funds. But what's the point of agency alone if you are leading such a life?

What gives me hope is that in 2026, skillful people can delegate a lot of their work to LLMs, which gives them time to learn the "agentic" part which is basically marketing and talking with people.

(just thinking out loud)

>assuming, browsers are his thing

IIRC he used to work on the Safari browser engine at Apple.

This looks like guerrilla advertising for sure.

LLM and rust rewrite together. And it does work so hopefully they get more attention and build it so I have an alternative browser to use

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