Chrome Engineer: ‘Why What You’re Reading About Blink Is Probably Wrong’

Alex Russell, who works on Chrome for Google:

Blink gives developers much more assurance that when they change something, it’s only affecting the things they think it’s affecting. Moving without fear is the secret of all good programming. Putting your team in a position to move with more surety and less fear is hugely enabling.

Yes, there are losses. Separating ourselves from a community of hugely talented people who have worked with us for years to build a web engine is not easy. The decision was wrenching. We’ll miss their insight, intelligence, and experience. In all honesty, we may have paid too high a price for too long because of this desire to stay close to WebKit. But whatever the “right” timing may have been, the good that will come from this outweighs the ill in my mind.

Basically, according to Russell, the WebKit project has grown unwieldy, and the Chrome team decided it was time to spring clean and cut dead weight.

★ Wednesday, 3 April 2013