
The Nigerian Teenagers Who Built Crocodile Browser - crablar
http://www.woodencomputer.net/posts/2015/6/25/the-nigerian-teenagers-who-built-crocodile-browser
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hackuser
To Osine and Anesi, if you read this:

1) Awesome job, keep going!

2) You'll find some naysayers, nitpickers and other critics here: Your heroes,
including Gates, Zuckerberg, and Musk, all had to deal with them too, before
they were legends (and still do to some extent). You can't avoid them; they
are drawn to risk-taking and [EDIT: innovation] like ants to a picnic. Just
ignore them, their criticisms are just wind in your face as you move forward.
They wish their projects made the front page of Hacker News!

3) We'd love to hear from you; feel free to leave a comment!

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Osine_I
Thanks

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hackuser
Welcome! Out of curiousity, why did you choose to make a web browser (and not
something else)? It's a great project, just curious what motivated your
choice.

~~~
Osine_I
You have made a few games in the past, and creating a browser has always
seemed cool to me. So when the Anesi needed a browser to work on his phone, I
took it as an opportunity to do something that seemed cool to me.

~~~
ayel_mao
Did you write the rendering engine and the Javascript engine yourselves?

~~~
Osine_I
No, we worked on an already existing one. We are currently in the process of
building one

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aninteger
I think this might be a violation of the GPL

More discussion here:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/coding/comments/38vbme/13_15_yrs_ol...](https://www.reddit.com/r/coding/comments/38vbme/13_15_yrs_old_nigerian_brothers_built_mobile_web/)

~~~
Osine_I
It is not a violation of GPL because we referenced tint browser in the about
section of the app.

~~~
nickpsecurity
He is right. If you modify and distribute GPL code, whatever changes you made
have to be distributed with it in source code form. The BSD licensed code
doesn't have this restriction, which is why it's used in place of GPL for
those not wanting to redistribute their source. Maybe use that in the future
for such things.

For now, if you're app forks GPL code, you have to release the source, pull
it, or hope nobody cares. Good to start noticing these little, but important,
things early to develop good habits.

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clark-kent
The interview is cool, and even inspirational. They needed a faster browser
for slower networks, so they did the research, found an appropriate rendering
engine and built it. They solved their own unique problem and built a better
browser for Nigerian networks.

Osine and Anesi, you guys can ping me, if there's anyway I can help.

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userbinator
Did they write their own rendering engine and everything? If so, that would be
_very_ impressive indeed. The Web really needs more diversity in browsers, for
a wide variety of reasons.

Unfortunately I can't seem to find any detailed information about it; Google
the name and almost all the pages are about how amazingly awesome its creators
are, and not the product itself... potential users really want to know about
what makes this better than existing browsers.

~~~
kumarm
In the link there is interview where they explained.

No they did not build a Browser from Scratch. They wrote a UI for Default
webkit engine that comes with Android.

Is it a technical accomplishment? Not by any means for a professional. But it
is awesome that these kids figured how to do this and mostly appear to be self
learners.

Edit: Reddit Thread here talks about using a GPL Browser (built over Webkit
engine that comes with Android).
[https://www.reddit.com/r/coding/comments/38vbme/13_15_yrs_ol...](https://www.reddit.com/r/coding/comments/38vbme/13_15_yrs_old_nigerian_brothers_built_mobile_web/)

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pratyushag
THIS is awesome! Great to see some positive news of talent coming from
NIgeria. <as somebody who moved from SF to Nigeria>

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bobajeff
So did they build the Rendering Engine, JavaScript Engine, Network Interface
etc. stuff from scratch? If so I'm impressed. I also wonder how it's supposed
work better on bad connections.

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nickpsecurity
Keep at it! You're off to a great start. :)

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stann
This is impressive. As a player in the Nigerian tech market, it is good to see
budding local talents

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whalesalad
Seriously? Have you seen their website?
[http://www.bludoors.com/](http://www.bludoors.com/)

~~~
ams6110
IMO it's no worse than yours.

~~~
userbinator
At least his site is viewable without JavaScript.

~~~
nickpsecurity
That much I'll go with. I have NoScript. I click on a Nigerian site and see
nothing but a whole list of scripts? I'll pass...

