The ability to program creates affordances that empowers one to make changes to a piece of software they are using. They can tweak it to their heart's content until it is just right right in the ways that matter to them, or create their own version from scratch.

I read a blogpost by Joshua Thijssen in which he stopped listening the the news, lamenting that all news is bad news and there's nothing he could do about it, realised that tech news is also bad news: big tech companies' interests are increasing not aligned with the interest of their users, sleazy practices skirting legality or pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable on browsers, and more. The browser was important enough for him and he cared about it's future, this was something he could influence, to in his words, push back, if only just a little.

But that’s not quite right this time. This time, I DO have some influence because I am a programmer. I can develop software and I can share this software and code with others so they do not need to use it from companies that only serve their shareholders and pockets.

So we come to the point that I’ve decided that I am going to write a browser. For two reasons: I want this to be a way to push back. Just a tiny amount. And reason two is that I always wanted to write a browser.

This is a common response among software engineers. There are currently over 450 web browser projects on Github in various stages of development. Unless the idea is to create a web browser as a learning exercise, I think looking at what already exists and contributing to the project is a better us of time and effort. One such project that I have eyes on is the Ladybird project by Andreas Kling who used to work on Webkit at Apple. He appeared on the Changelog podcast recently talking about SerenityOS and the Ladybird project.

There are many things that happen around us that we have no power to influence but there are things that we can indeed influence if only to push back a little bit. For those things we must do whatever we can no matter how small because it matters.