January 28, 2026
Teen vs Big Browsers
Show HN: I built a small browser engine from scratch in C++
High schooler builds a tiny browser in 8 weeks; commenters cheer and fear a one‑browser web
TLDR: A high school student built a tiny web browser in eight weeks that can display pages and images. Commenters cheered the achievement, warned about a future dominated by one browser engine, cracked jokes about big‑money AI, and dared the teen to build the internet’s plumbing next—equal parts hype and alarm.
A Korean high school senior just built a tiny web browser from scratch in eight weeks using the C++ programming language, and the comments went supernova. The student’s mini‑engine can read web pages, style them, and show images—proof enough for a crash course in how the web actually draws itself on your screen. The post lit up with standing ovations and a surprising dose of big‑tech anxiety. One fan urged a career in browser tech while warning we’re “dangerously close” to a world ruled by a single browser under Google’s open‑source engine, Chromium. Suddenly, this feel‑good project turned into a David‑vs‑Goliath moment for the open web. Repo link.
Then the peanut gallery did what it does best: escalate. Another commenter dared the teen to build a basic web server next—and even a simple version of TCP/IP, basically the plumbing that lets computers talk to each other online. Meanwhile, the spice hit when one user took a swing at an AI‑powered code tool, joking that a “$30B corporation” with “unlimited compute” couldn’t ship what this student did. Others called it “one of the hardest projects,” while the purest reactions were just “this is so cool, congrats!” The thread morphed into a rallying cry: celebrate small, handwritten tools and push back against a one‑engine web, all while hyping a teenager who just made the internet blink.
Key Points
- •A high school senior built a small browser engine from scratch in C++.
- •The project took about eight weeks to complete despite the author being new to C++.
- •The browser engine can parse HTML, apply CSS, and render images.
- •The work aimed to understand how browsers render HTML to the screen.
- •The GitHub repo includes source, header, test directories, and a CMake build file with README documentation.