Comment by enragedcacti

I'm seeing a lot of doom and gloom about this mostly stemming from the state of open source swift, but I think the choice has a lot of upside for two main reasons:

1) Choosing Swift implicitly adds improving the status quo of open source swift to the tasks of ladybird. This obviously expands the already huge scope of the project but also derisks it in some ways because it means the project can have a lasting impact regardless of its goals as a competitive browser. Remember that Rust was tempered as a language through the development of Servo and Ladybird could do the same for the non-Apple Swift ecosystem.

2) It unlocks access to a huge number of Swift developers and offers them a unique open source project to work on rather than just building apps for Apple products. As far as I am aware there is no other major language with such a massive (size of developer base):(open source opportunities) ratio. Ladybird acting as the cornerstone of that community could have mutually beneficial results that improve the development of ladybird while also fostering excitement for open source, non-Apple Swift projects.

Ladybird is a wildly ambitious project. We have N=3(ish) for how long it takes to develop a competitive browser from scratch in C++ even with the support of massive companies behind you and it isn't very fast. Obviously we know it works but Ladybird is on mile 100 of a bicycle race around the globe that started 30 years ago. Staying the course on C++ to me looks like saying "We're already so far behind, we can't afford to stop and add an electric motor!" meanwhile everyone else is still pedaling and you aren't getting any closer.