Top all-time · #12286
WaspDev Blog
Personal blog · waspdev.com/articleswebprogramming
WaspDev Blog is a personal blog at waspdev.com about web and programming. Since 2025, 6 different Hacker News readers have linked it 41 times, most often “I'll probably never use Windows”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-13, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (2) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link WaspDev for its Servo browser engine progress update and a Windows 10 support post. Comments mostly discuss the Servo project, and one asks where a claim about a $30 yearly fee appears in the article.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 2 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Random things related to software development.
Most-linked posts?
- /articles/2025-04-07/will-there-be-a-new-browser-with-a-completely-new-engine2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2026-08-01
- /articles/2026-03-12/i-ll-probably-never-use-windows2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2026-06-15
- I'll probably never use Windows2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-03-12
What Hacker News says?
Yeah, and when you think about the insane complexity of Web standards, and the fact that even Microsoft failed to create a browser with an independent engine, we are very unlikely to see a new browser engine: https://waspdev.com/articles/2025-04-07/will-there-be-a-new-... . This means that not only we are unlikely to see browsers with new engines but also that the existing browser engine diversity might even shrink…
Comment linking /articles/2025-04-07/will-there-be-a-new-browser-with-a-completely-new-engine
on “Hang on to Your Firefox”Submitted Some software bloat is OK as a story · 60 points
HN discussionYeah, consider the insane complexity of Web standards, and the fact that even Microsoft failed to create a browser with an independent engine: https://waspdev.com/articles/2025-04-07/will-there-be-a-new-... . This means that not only we are unlikely to see browsers with new engines but also that the existing browser engine diversity might even shrink if an existing browser becomes underfunded and / or loses a critic…
Comment linking /articles/2025-04-07/will-there-be-a-new-browser-with-a-completely-new-engine
on “Google Has Removed MV2 Extensions from the Chrome Web Store, Including UBO”Submitted Some features that every JavaScript developer should know in 2025 as a story · 19 points
HN discussionI wrote an article with more examples https://waspdev.com/articles/2025-05-17/js-destructors-or-ex... . It's actually a simplified version of this https://github.com/tc39/proposal-explicit-resource-managemen... .
Comment linking /articles/2025-05-17/js-destructors-or-explicit-resource-management
on “JavaScript's New Superpower: Explicit Resource Management”Submitted What I don't like in JavaScript as a story · 8 points
HN discussionFor garbage collected languages destructors cannot be called synchronously in most cases because the VM must make sure that the object is inaccessible first. So it will not work very deterministically, and also will expose the JS VM internals. For that JS already has WeakRef and FinalizationRegistry. https://waspdev.com/articles/2025-04-09/features-that-every-... https://waspdev.com/articles/2025-04-09/features-that…
Comment linking /articles/2025-04-09/features-that-every-js-developer-must-know-in-2025-part-2
on “JavaScript's New Superpower: Explicit Resource Management”Submitted Is it still worth using jQuery in 2025? as a story · 5 points
HN discussionI am watching this project with interest. It's impressive that they're doing such titanic work. However, I'm highly skeptical that they can create a real rival to established browsers. I'm sorry for telling this, but Web standards are simply too complex and huge. Ladybird to Chrome / Firefox is almost like Wine / ReactOS to Windows, that last 3-5% of gap actually differentiates a normal browser from a browser that i…
Comment linking /articles/2025-04-07/will-there-be-a-new-browser-with-a-completely-new-engine
on “This Month in Ladybird – August 2026”Submitted Is it possible to create a new browser from scratch? as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThere is also a native DomParser API. I wrote an example of HTML sanitizer that uses DomParser: https://waspdev.com/articles/2025-05-07/how-to-sanitize-html...
Comment linking /articles/2025-05-07/how-to-sanitize-html-without-libraries
on “Element: setHTML() method”Submitted Avoid Using "< [Cdata[ ]]>" in RSS as a story · 2 points
HN discussionIt seems that pipe operator was introduced largely because PHP arrays and strings don't have "methods". You can't write something in "OOP" style: "some_string"->str_replace("some", "replacement")->strtoupper(). With PHPs array / string procedural way writing such chains is much bulkier. Pipe operator will somewhat reduce the boilerplate, but the native "OOP" style is still much better. Although there is a proposal f…
Comment linking /articles/2025-06-12/my-honest-opinion-about-php
on “PHP 8.5”Submitted AI isn't just a tool and it might be dangerous as a story · 1 points
HN discussionYeah, the core ergonomics is significantly lagging behind most other backend languages despite improvements in some areas. I even wrote an article https://waspdev.com/articles/2025-06-12/my-honest-opinion-ab... . As for concurrency/async, it's possible to do requests in parallel with curl_multi_*. Other async/prallel things are also possible, but tend to be more complicated compared to JS or other languages with pro…
Comment linking /articles/2025-06-12/my-honest-opinion-about-php
on “PHP 8.5”Submitted Browsers are becoming more bloated as a story · 1 points
HN discussionYes, HTML & CSS alone won't replace JS. Of course, for complicated form validation HTML is not sufficient. But IMHO it's very important to provide basic functionality in HTML / CSS as much as possible / reasonable. Moving the functionality to HTML / CSS can potentially improve the SEO. As for positioning, there is an experimental feature @position-try. Here I made a small demo where it handles overflows. https://was…
Comment linking /articles/2025-06-29/css-features-web-developers-should-know-in-2025
on “Replacing JavaScript with Just HTML”Submitted I'll probably never use Windows as a story · 1 points
HN discussionStill PHP's syntax leaves much to be desired, especially the arrays. https://waspdev.com/articles/2025-06-12/my-honest-opinion-ab...
Comment linking /articles/2025-06-12/my-honest-opinion-about-php
on “PHP 8.5 alpha 1 is available for download”Submitted I'll probably never use Windows as a story · 1 points
HN discussionIf MS isn't going to fix this, I'm not going to use Windows 11 again. https://waspdev.com/articles/2026-03-12/i-ll-probably-never-...
Comment linking /articles/2026-03-12/i-ll-probably-never-use-windows
on “Windows 11 users are tired of MS account requirements creeping into everything”Submitted OS-Level Age Verification as a story · 1 points
HN discussionYeah, but not very maintainable (mildly saying). Now, someone asked you to change a color somewhere... or whatever. After changing that color the code doesn't run because the author also reused the portion of the code (you changed) as a constant ). Now you fix that, but something else breaks, etc. Such hyper-optimized software is very brittle. Not every bloat is necessarily a bad thing, in moderation it allows to ea…
Comment linking /articles/2025-11-04/some-software-bloat-is-ok
on “Coding Tricks Used in the C64 Game Seawolves”Submitted Kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes as a story · 1 points
HN discussionReminds me this https://waspdev.com/static/images/2025-11-04/bloat.webp
Comment linking /static/images/2025-11-04/bloat.webp
on “Windows 11's built-in Weather app wastes more than 1 GB of RAM”Submitted The Future of Stack Overflow as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThere is N-th child selector with filter, for example you can write :nth-child(3 of .red) https://waspdev.com/articles/2025-06-29/css-features-web-dev...
Comment linking /articles/2025-06-29/css-features-web-developers-should-know-in-2025
on “You can make up HTML tags”Submitted JavaScript's For-Of Loops Are Fast as a story · 1 points
HN discussionRidiculous because it's absolutely guaranteed to fail. Irresponsible because if it does succeed against all odds, the internet will actually become a worse place. If you can't implement most of the web standards (not even all, just most of them), then one of the following will happen: - your engine will never catch on (best case scenario) - your engine will be forever known as "this browser where nothing works" and…
Comment linking /articles/2025-04-07/will-there-be-a-new-browser-with-a-completely-new-engine
on “June in Servo: real world compat, media queries, SharedWorker, and more”Submitted A simple bouncing ball game as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
