July 28, 2026
Markdown? More like Mark-drama
Show HN: Learning Rust by writing a Markdown to HTML compiler
Rust newbie builds a blog tool, and the comments instantly turn into a fact-check party
TLDR: Andrea built a bare-bones tool to turn blog posts into web pages while learning Rust, mainly as a personal project. Commenters were split between cheering the DIY effort and immediately grilling the details, from mislabeled lists to whether the web output was really done the hard way.
A developer named Andrea jumped into the deep end of coding by building a tiny tool that turns simple blog posts into web pages, all while learning Rust, a programming language beloved by serious software fans. The vibe of the post is refreshingly humble: no artificial intelligence helpers, no giant website builder, no fancy extras — just 12 to 13 hours of stubborn DIY energy and a desire to stop arguing with themes and start making something personal. Andrea even showed off the behind-the-scenes structure of how the tool reads text and spits out HTML, which is basically the language web pages are written in.
But of course, the real show started in the comments, where the community immediately did what the internet does best: encourage you while also nitpicking you to death. One commenter politely spotted what looked like a mix-up between ordered and unordered lists — the coding equivalent of showing up to a bake sale and announcing the cupcakes are labeled wrong. Another came in with full professor energy, firing off questions about whether Andrea had underestimated how tricky HTML really is, what standards were studied, and whether any language model had been involved. In other words: the project was cute, but the comments were giving pop quiz.
The drama is low-stakes but delicious. Fans seem charmed by the homemade spirit, while skeptics are already side-eyeing the details. It’s a classic tech thread: one person says, “fun project, good luck,” and another basically says, “please cite your sources.”
Key Points
- •The author built a basic Markdown-to-HTML compiler in Rust as a learning project and to power a personal micro-blog.
- •The implementation scans files in a `post/` directory, parses block and inline elements, creates an intermediate representation, and renders HTML with templates.
- •Posts use front matter with required `title` and `date` fields, optional metadata such as `description`, `tags`, and `draft`, and `draft: true` excludes a post from output.
- •The current feature set includes support for headings, paragraphs, code blocks, lists, blockquotes, inline code, strikethrough, bold, italic, links, and images.
- •The generated site has a full-post index without pagination or client-side routing, plus filtering through a search bar and tags and vim-like navigation shortcuts.