The Nigerian Teenagers Who Built Crocodile Browser | Hacker News Reader

The Nigerian Teenagers Who Built Crocodile Browser

woodencomputer.net

64 pointscrablar30 comments

To Osine and Anesi, if you read this:

1) Awesome job, keep going!

2) You'll find some naysayers, nitpickers and other critics here: Your heroes, including Gates, Zuckerberg, and Musk, all had to deal with them too, before they were legends (and still do to some extent). You can't avoid them; they are drawn to risk-taking and [EDIT: innovation] like ants to a picnic. Just ignore them, their criticisms are just wind in your face as you move forward. They wish their projects made the front page of Hacker News!

3) We'd love to hear from you; feel free to leave a comment!

Thanks

Welcome! Out of curiousity, why did you choose to make a web browser (and not something else)? It's a great project, just curious what motivated your choice.

You have made a few games in the past, and creating a browser has always seemed cool to me. So when the Anesi needed a browser to work on his phone, I took it as an opportunity to do something that seemed cool to me.

Did you write the rendering engine and the Javascript engine yourselves?

No, we worked on an already existing one. We are currently in the process of building one

2) Naysayers can have value - some criticisms will be valid and helpful. Ignoring all feedback unless it is positive is not wise. The trick is to listen to it, evaluate it for yourself, and decide which criticisms should be ignored, and which should be heeded.

I think this might be a violation of the GPL

More discussion here: https://www.reddit.com/r/coding/comments/38vbme/13_15_yrs_ol...

It is not a violation of GPL because we referenced tint browser in the about section of the app.

If you distribute a program based on GPL sources you have modified, you have to also distribute that source code. That is, unless the original authors gave you the sources under a different license.

He is right. If you modify and distribute GPL code, whatever changes you made have to be distributed with it in source code form. The BSD licensed code doesn't have this restriction, which is why it's used in place of GPL for those not wanting to redistribute their source. Maybe use that in the future for such things.

For now, if you're app forks GPL code, you have to release the source, pull it, or hope nobody cares. Good to start noticing these little, but important, things early to develop good habits.

The interview is cool, and even inspirational. They needed a faster browser for slower networks, so they did the research, found an appropriate rendering engine and built it. They solved their own unique problem and built a better browser for Nigerian networks.

Osine and Anesi, you guys can ping me, if there's anyway I can help.

Did they write their own rendering engine and everything? If so, that would be very impressive indeed. The Web really needs more diversity in browsers, for a wide variety of reasons.

Unfortunately I can't seem to find any detailed information about it; Google the name and almost all the pages are about how amazingly awesome its creators are, and not the product itself... potential users really want to know about what makes this better than existing browsers.

In the link there is interview where they explained.

No they did not build a Browser from Scratch. They wrote a UI for Default webkit engine that comes with Android.

Is it a technical accomplishment? Not by any means for a professional. But it is awesome that these kids figured how to do this and mostly appear to be self learners.

Edit: Reddit Thread here talks about using a GPL Browser (built over Webkit engine that comes with Android). https://www.reddit.com/r/coding/comments/38vbme/13_15_yrs_ol...

"Unfortunately I can't seem to find any detailed information about it"

Listen to the talk. All the good questions are asked & answered.

THIS is awesome! Great to see some positive news of talent coming from NIgeria. <as somebody who moved from SF to Nigeria>

So did they build the Rendering Engine, JavaScript Engine, Network Interface etc. stuff from scratch? If so I'm impressed. I also wonder how it's supposed work better on bad connections.

Keep at it! You're off to a great start. :)

This is impressive. As a player in the Nigerian tech market, it is good to see budding local talents

Seriously? Have you seen their website? http://www.bludoors.com/

Somehow it's still kind of fascinating.

They're kids. Give them a break. Would you like to show us the website you had when you were 16?

The sliding effect and animations are cool at least.

You should have seen my first webpage. Animated rainbow gifs, crazy backgrounds on crazier font-colors. Their site is much better. Mine looked like those Myspace pages from back in the day. autoplaying midi music included.

Please consider deleting your comment. Imagine if those kids find out they're on Hacker News, and find this. It's not very interesting to your fellow commenters either.

IMO it's no worse than yours.

At least his site is viewable without JavaScript.

That much I'll go with. I have NoScript. I click on a Nigerian site and see nothing but a whole list of scripts? I'll pass...

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