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Dev tools · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to I built a small browser engine from scratch in C++

Hi HN! Korean high school senior here, about to start CS in college. I built a browser engine from scratch in C++ to understand how browsers work. First time using C++, 8 weeks of development, lots of debugging—but it works! Features: - HTML parsing with error correction - CSS cascade and inheritance - Block/inline layout engine - Async image loading + caching - Link navigation + history Hardest parts: - String parsing(html, css) - Rendering - Image Caching & Layout Reflowing What I learned (beyond code): - Systematic debugging is crucial - Ship with known bugs rather than chase…

A browser engine written in C++ from scratch implements HTML parsing with error correction, CSS cascade and inheritance, block and inline layout rendering, asynchronous image loading with caching, and link navigation… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.

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    A C++ HTML template engine that uses compile time HTML parsing - rep-movsd/see-phit

    2017 · github.com · its alternatives →

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    A little help for programmers, who wants to run C/C++ code in the browser. (This is my second attempt to show it, first time I got banned bcoz of my personal page domain, I don't really understand it why is is suspicious.)

    2022 · github.com · its alternatives →

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    Codebrowser homepage

    2016 · code.woboq.org · its alternatives →

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    An OpenGL RTS game engine written in C. Contribute to eduard-permyakov/permafrost-engine development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2021 · github.com · its alternatives →

  5. 5

    We’ve been working on Vaev, a minimal web browser engine built from scratch. It supports HTML/XHTML, the CSS cascade, @page rules for pagination, and print-to-PDF rendering. It even handles calc(), var(), and percentage units—and yes, it renders Google.com (mostly). This is an experimental project focused on learning and exploration. Networking is basic (http:// and file:// only), and grid layouts aren’t supported yet, but we’re making progress fast. We’d love your thoughts and feedback.

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

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    A top-down 2d game engine, written from scratch in under 1000 lines of C. Development of the game based on this engine is streamed on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/ryanpcmcquen - ryanpcmcquen/basque

    2020 · github.com · its alternatives →

  7. 7MP

    I have been working on this game somewhat sparsely for the past three years or so. However, it is still in a very early stage, and there is a lot of work to do. One of my friends encouraged me to post about it here, since he felt people might find interesting how I don’t use any libraries for it. The game can be played on a browser by virtue of WebAssembly. There are native ports using either MiniFB or SDL2, but you have to build those yourself. I decided to write the game in C because I feel like it is a simple language that a lot of people can understand well enough, and I didn’t think I…

    2023 · zamfofex.neocities.org · its alternatives →

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    C++ Path Tracer from scratch with zero third-party libraries. - themartiano/luz

    Jun 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  9. 9

    Back then there were not a lot of frameworks for C++ like there are available now, gradually added serialization, reflection, orm, modules for apache|nginx, then started adding programming language integration and then finally added support for building on various Os'es and also support for most of the build tools out there.

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

  10. 10

    I love C and C++, but setting up projects can sometimes be a pain. Every time I wanted to start something new I'd spend the first hour writing CMakeLists.txt, figuring out find_package, copying boilerplate from my last project, and googling why my library isn't linking. By the time the project was actually set up I'd lost all momentum. So, I built Craft - a lightweight build and workflow tool for C and C++. Instead of writing CMake, your project configuration goes in a simple craft.toml: [project] name = "my_app" version = "0.1.0" language = "c" c_standard = 99 [build] type = "executable"…

    Apr 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

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    A GUI Notepad completely made from scratch using C++ native library and Graphics library coupled with mouse events as part my 12th Grade Project in 2015 - vibhoothi/CNotepad

    2020 · github.com · its alternatives →

  12. 12

    Greetings, This is a link to our learning guide to make your own MCP server in C/C++ (with no other dependencies). If you wanted to make one from scratch but needed some insight into dealing with MCP messages: the I/O flow, JSON parsing, and request dispatch, grab the teaching version tagged mcp/teaching/v1.0.0 in the repository. The JSON parsing in C would have been a hurdle, but then there's this amusing story: Eric: "Let's create a helloWorld MCP server in C." Gemini: "That will be somewhat difficult, there are easier ways." Eric: "Why is it difficult??" (the second…

    2018 · ibm.github.io · its alternatives →

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    Last week's post from Thariq "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of HTML" went viral in X. He made a good point about HTML being the more expressive and human friendly alternative to markdown files. I completely buy in where he's coming from, I've been asking Claude Code to create me HTML files to better understand what we're planning and building together. What Thariq didn't address was the part of sharing and collaborating on these HTML artifacts (he proposed uploading to S3). While I've been heavy user of HTML artifacts to share quarterly plans, implementation specs, technical guides and…

    May 2026 · display.dev · its alternatives →

  14. 14

    I've created cppmatch, a lightweight, header-only C++ library that brings Rust-inspired pattern matching and error handling to C++. It tries to imitate the functionality of the questionmark (?) operator in C++ by using a macro that uses the gcc extension https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Statement-Exprs.html This allows to create exceptionless code with non-intrusive error-as-value that unlike Exceptions, makes it clear which kinds of error a function can generate and forces you to handle (or ignore) them. The ? operator translates to *expect* To handle the errors I…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  15. 15

    A CSS 3D engine for the DOM. Renders polygon meshes in HTML by leveraging matrix3d transforms. - GitHub - layoutit/polycss: A CSS 3D engine for the DOM. Renders polygon meshes in HTML by leveraging matrix3d transforms.

    Jun 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

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    A high performance, middleware oriented C++14 http web framework please use matt-42/lithium instead - matt-42/silicon

    2015 · github.com · its alternatives →

  18. 18

    A minimal viable programming language on top of liblgpp - codr7/alang

    2021 · github.com · its alternatives →

  19. 19AI

    I built this software to help users who need to do static code analysis for C/C++ codebase. This can help you to explore the ASTs interactively. It can replace the Clang ast dump completely and also you can search the code/ASTs in a structual way. For example you can search a function which matches specific name or number of paremeters.

    May 2026 · uvic-aurora.github.io · its alternatives →

  20. 20

    Brisk is an open-source C++ GUI framework with a declarative approach, offering powerful data bindings, GPU-accelerated graphics, and dynamic widget management. It supports macOS, Linux, Windows, and simplifies UI creation with modern paradigms and CSS-like layouts. Initially developed for a graphics-intensive project with a complex and dynamic GUI, the framework is currently under active development.

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

  21. 21

    Inspired by Compiler Explorer and other playground/fiddle websites like jsfiddle, db-fiddle, Go playground, and Rust playground, I thought it would be cool to have a playground for nearly any program so I've been working on Program Explorer: a playground for running programs from containers. I am inspired by these playgrounds because they are great educational tools for quickly experimenting and as communication tools by sharing shortlinks that reproduce bugs for instance. I would love for every open source project that publishes a container to get their own playground for free. I'm…

    2025 · programexplorer.org · its alternatives →

  22. 22

    Hi HN, I have created a webpage that displays all C++ features since C++20 in a simple, searchable table. It is intended to serve as a quick reference for C++ developers, whether as support for cross-platform development or simply to track the current support status out of curiosity. I created it as a simpler, more structured, and more up-to-date alternative to the cppreference compiler support site. Please note that the page intentionally does not list LWG and CWG papers. This might change as I am continually updating the site and trying out new ideas. Questions, feedback and suggestions…

    2025 · cppstat.dev · its alternatives →

  23. 23

    Modified C++ Inspired by the paper "Some Were Meant for C" by Stephen Kell, I decided to show that it's possible to iterate C++ to be safer, more explicit, and less error-prone. Here's a possible starting point: I didn't invent a new language or compiler, but took the world's best compiler, clang, and modified it to begin iterating towards a new furture of C++. Naming things is hard, so I call this 'Modified C++'. Some of the following could be implemented as tooling in a linter or checker, but the idea is to update the compiler directly. I also wanted to learn more about clang. This…

    2022 · github.com · its alternatives →

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