Yeah I remember Ladybird, and Serenity OS starting as a learning project to teach engineers that a Browser can be made from scratch by a relatively small team. I even remember the author claiming he did it to occupy himself as he was trying to stay sober off drugs. This was all very admirable.

Then somewhere along the way, they decided they wanted to be a real browser for some reason even though we have Chrome, Safari and Mozilla which is open source. This is IMO the worst use of your time as talented engineers, your product is completely undifferentiated and can never be differentiated since it’s a browser. You’re competing against very well funded adversaries, who are giving away everything for free.

Inevitably to compete, you will lean heavily into AI coding, at which point the “learning” goal is completely left at the wayside.

I’d analogize, there are sometimes good reasons to build a game engine, maybe it’s for learning, keeping the skill alive, something unique you want to demonstrate or you just want to reinvent the wheel for your game but using AI, a bajillion tokens to build an Unreal clone is a waste of your time, which is exactly what Ladybirds doing.