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Comment by gorkaerana | Hacker News Reader

I think it's fair enough to consider porting a subset of rewriting, in which case there are several successful experiments out there:

- JustHTML [1], which in practice [2] is a port of html5ever [3] to Python.

- justjshtml, which is a port of JustHTML to JavaScript :D [4].

- MiniJinja [5] was recently ported to Go [6].

All three projects have one thing in common: comprehensive test suites which were used to guardrail and guide AI.

References:

1. https://github.com/EmilStenstrom/justhtml

2. https://friendlybit.com/python/writing-justhtml-with-coding-...

3. https://github.com/servo/html5ever

4. https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/15/porting-justhtml/

5. https://github.com/mitsuhiko/minijinja

6. https://lucumr.pocoo.org/2026/1/14/minijinja-go-port/

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As the author, it's a stretch to say that JustHTML is a port of html5ever. While you're right that this was part of the initial prompt, the code is very different, which is typically not what counts as "port". Your mileage may wary.

Interesting, IIUC the transformer architecture / attention mechanism were initially designed for use in the language translation domain. Maybe after peeling back a few layers, that's still all they're really doing.

This has long been how I have explained LLMs to non-technical people: text transformation engines. To some extent, many common, tedious, activities basically constitute a transformation of text into one well known form from another (even some kinds of reasoning are this) and so LLMs are very useful. But they just transform text between well known forms.

And while it appears that lots of problems can be contorted into translation, "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail". Maybe we do hit a brick wall unless we can come up with a model that more closely aligns with actual human reasoning.

Note that it's not clear that any of the JustHTML ports were actually ports per se, as in the end they all ended up with very different implementations. Instead, it might just be that an LLM generated roughly the same library several different times.

See https://felix.dognebula.com/art/html-parsers-in-portland.htm...

More vibe coded browser modules:

V8 => H8 - JavaScript engine that hates code, misunderstands equality, sponsored by Brendan Eich and "Yes on Prop H8".

Expat => Vexpat - An annoying, irritating rewrite of an XML parser.

libxml2 => libxmlpoo - XML parsing, same quality as the spec.

libxslt => libxsalt - XSLT transforms with extra salt in the wound.

Protobuf => Probabuf - Probably serializes correctly, probably not, fuzzy logic.

Cap'n Proto => Crap'n Proto - Zero-copy, zero quality.

cURL => cHURL - Throws requests violently serverward, projectile URLemitting.

SDL => STD - Sexually Transmitted Dependency. It never leaves and spreads bugs to everything you touch.

Servo => Swervo - Drunk, wobbly layout that can't stay on the road.

WebKit => WebShite - British pronunciation, British quality control.

Blink => Blinkered - Only renders pages it agrees with politically.

Taffy => Daffy - Duck typed Flexbox layout that's completely unhinged. "You're dethpicable!"

html5ever => html5never - Servo's HTML parser that never finishes tokenizing.

Skia => SkAI - AI-generated graphics that hallucinates extra pixels and fingers.

FreeType => FreeTypo - Introduces typos during keming and rasterization.

Firefox => Foxfire - Burns through your battery in 12 minutes, while molesting children.

WebGL => WebGLitch - Shader compilation errors as art.

WebGPU => WebGPUke - Makes your GPU physically ill.

SQLite => SQLHeavy - Embedded database, 400MB per query.

Vulkan => Vulcan't - Low-level graphics that can't.

Clang => Clanger - Drops errors loudly at runtime.

libevent => liebevent - Event library that lies about readiness.

Opus => Oops - Audio codec, "oops, your audio's gone."

All modules now available on GitPub:

GitHub => GitPub - Microsoft's vibe control system optimized for the Ballmer Peak. Commit quality peaks at 0.129% BAC, mass reverts at 0.15%.

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