back

by pentagrama·1y ago·view on hn ↗
Reading this, a bit off-topic and odd software-building-related question came to my mind: Between building and maintaining macOS + iOS vs. building and maintaining Chromium > Chrome, which do you think is more complex, requires more developer hours, and demands more advanced developer skills?
1 comments
It depends how you count the boundaries of those projects. Does the "effort to develop" Chrome include all the work that went into WebKit (which Chrome was originally based on)? Does iOS include the bundled apps that ship with it? Does macOS include the drivers written for hardware support?

I'm certain that if you go beyond the core kernel and add in device drivers, UI layers, and user space bundled apps, macOS+iOS are far more complicated than Chrome. After all, Safari is bundled with the OS and that itself is comparable in complexity.

But if you were to strip Apple's operating systems down to the core XNU kernel, then I think Chrome is likely more complex. There are plenty of usable kernels out there, but very few usable browser engines that can handle the modern web.