We're building a browser when it's supposed to be impossible

Re:We're building a browser when it's supposed to be impossible by giantrobot on Tuesday April 11, 2023 @12:28PM (#35527454)

If you have infinite time and resources with perfect communication/understanding you can solve a lot of engineering problems. No one has that. This is where the original quoted claim from the article comes from, "building a web browser is impossible". That's encoding a lot of experience and reality of the Brobdingnagian challenge of building a web browser from scratch on 2023's web.

It's not negativity to point out a downside to an approach to a particular problem. It's potentially useful to get feedback on a development approach. Constructive criticism is very important in engineering projects because it encodes assumptions of limitations we all have.

A positive statement like "oh those sub problems are solvable!" doesn't really provide any help. No shit the problems are solvable in a perfect world. Such statements aren't even necessarily constructive because they don't offer any analysis or advice. It smacks of toxic positivity[0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_positivity

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Re:We're building a browser when it's supposed to be impossible by naikrovek on Thursday April 13, 2023 @06:09PM (#35562797)

not all positivity is toxic positivity, you know. I wasn't even positive, I was just anti-negative. being against negativity is not the same as being positive at all.

spouting out a problem you foresee being revealed after another problem is solved is not constructive criticism, it is reactionary and attention-seeking.

my comment is about comments like yours; unlimited time and energy to mention anything that makes what I say sound bad, improbable or difficult, and zero time or energy to even entertain the idea that my point of view is valid, and worth considering.

toxic negativity.

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