1. There's no way to confirm or falsify that counterfactual.
2. Even if we stipulate that Firefox would be more mature/popular without the rewrite, I think there are many decisions that might have had an equal or larger impact. For example, the design choices they made for their plugin architecture made it harder to compete when Chrome came along, and have had deep influence on their ability to do frequent unobtrusive releases. If you admit one counterfactual you must admit them all. Was the rewrite really the biggest turning point in their trajectory?
3. If you'd offered the firefox creators the level of success it has today, they would take it in a heartbeat. Quibbling about levels of success is a luxury you can only afford after you have managed to not die. (http://paulgraham.com/die.html) That was what my comment was concerned with.
2. Even if we stipulate that Firefox would be more mature/popular without the rewrite, I think there are many decisions that might have had an equal or larger impact. For example, the design choices they made for their plugin architecture made it harder to compete when Chrome came along, and have had deep influence on their ability to do frequent unobtrusive releases. If you admit one counterfactual you must admit them all. Was the rewrite really the biggest turning point in their trajectory?
3. If you'd offered the firefox creators the level of success it has today, they would take it in a heartbeat. Quibbling about levels of success is a luxury you can only afford after you have managed to not die. (http://paulgraham.com/die.html) That was what my comment was concerned with.
Conventional wisdom (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html) makes the far stronger claim that rewrites kill; if we retreat to arguing levels of success I will happily declare victory and go home :)