Interview contributors and post them on the blog

[jdm]

Simple, short formula with freeform responses:

• tell us about yourself
• why did you start contributing to Servo?
• what was challenging about your first contribution?
• what do you like about contributing to the project? what do you get out of it?
• any final thoughts you'd like to share?

[msub2]

Is there still interest in doing this? I think it would be a nice addition, would be happy to be the first one if so.

[jdm]

Yeah, let me throw together some initial questions,!

[jdm]

Nevermind, I wrote questions 8 years ago. Have at it!

[msub2]

You got it!

tell us about yourself

My name is Daniel, though I more commonly go by my online handle "msub2". I'm something of a generalist, but my primary interests are developing for the web, XR, and games. I created and run the WebXR Discord, which has members from both the Immersive Web Working Group and the Meta Browser team, among others. In my free time (when I'm not working, doing Servo things, or tending to my other programming projects) I'm typically watching videos from YouTube/Dropout/Nebula/etc and playing video games.

why did you start contributing to Servo?

A confluence of interests, to put it simply. I was just starting to really get into Rust, having built a CHIP-8 emulator and an NES emulator to get my hands dirty, but I also had prior experience contributing to other browser projects like Chromium and Gecko. I was also eyeing Servo's WebXR implementation (which I had submitted a couple small fixes for last year) as I could see there was still plenty of work that could be done there. To get started though, I looked for an adjacent area that I could work on to get familiar with the main Servo codebase, which led to my first contribution being support for non-XR gamepads!

what was challenging about your first contribution?

I'd say the most challenging part of my first contribution was twofold: the first was just getting oriented with how data flows in and out of Servo via the embedding API and the second was understanding how DOM structs, methods, and codegen all worked together in the script crate. Servo is a big project, but luckily I got lots of good help and feedback as I was working through it, which definitely made things easier. Looking at existing examples in the codebase of the things I was trying to do got me the rest of the way there I'd say.

what do you like about contributing to the project? what do you get out of it?

The thing I like most about Servo (and perhaps the web platform as an extension) is the amount of interesting problems that there are to solve when it comes to implementing/supporting all of its different features. While most of my contributions so far have been focused around Gamepad and WebXR, recently I've been working to help implement SubtleCrypto alongside another community member, which has been really interesting! In addition to the satisfaction I get just from being able to solve interesting problems, I also rather enjoy the feeling of contributing to a large, communal, open-source project.

any final thoughts you'd like to share?

I'd encourage anyone who's intrigued by the idea of contributing to Servo to give it a shot! The recent waves of attention for projects like Verso and Ladybird have shown that there is an appetite for new browsers and browser engines, and with Servo's history it just feels right that it should finally be able to rise to a more prominent status in the ecosystem.

[Taym95]

Tell us about yourself:
I’m Taym, an embedded developer. Most of my work has been on IoT projects bluetooth, zigbee, and wi-fi. A big part of that is using embedded JavaScript engines like duktapeJS and quickJS. at one point I even tried to make my own engine, but that failed dramatically 😅.

why did you start contributing to Servo?

I was working on a project where we built our own script engine on top of duktapeJS, and we were migrating from C/C++ to Rust. I needed to see how others integrated JS engines into Rust, since almost all of them are in C/C++.

When I googled “integrated JS engine in Rust,” I found two results: Deno and Servo. at first I went straight to Deno, but the integration there was really hard and ambiguous(for me), and I couldn’t get much inspiration. then I checked Servo and started reading how SpiderMonkey is integrated.

I saw there were open issues created by gterzian to improve SpiderMonkey integration by moving unsafe code out of Servo’s script layer. That was exactly what I was looking for, so I started learning from it, contributing back, and working with him on those issues.

What was challenging about your first contribution?

Honestly, I was really lucky in the beginning. I picked up issues created by gterzian, and he was super helpful and easy to approach. He explained the details, guided me through, and made continuing with Servo much easier. He was kind of like a mentor, and I really enjoyed that collaboration.

What do you like about contributing to the project? What do you get out of it?

I always thought working on a browser engine was something impossible to approach, like only experts could do it. But Servo completely broke that stereotype for me.

The code is approachable and you can build and run servoshell in seconds with just git, gitHub and vscode editor. The community is very friendly too, if you have a problem, you just ask on Zulip and someone will help.

Any final thoughts you’d like to share?

Servo is special. For me, it started as a way to learn how JS engines are integrated into Rust, but it turned into a place where I grow, collaborate, and give back.