Hacker News Reader

You want to create a web browser from the ground up and C was a massive hurdle for you?

Oh boy.

C itself wasn't the problem but rather learning to use Xlib and Cairo was very difficult. A massive amount of code that I found on the internet was un-compilable. The documentation is extremely old and I was relying a lot on taking already existing code and playing around with it until I learn the intricacies.

Any program written using Xlib will be tied to X Window.

Xlib is very low level.

Changing languages won't solve the problem. E.g. if you have Rust or Go bindings for Xlib, Xlib is still Xlib.

There are a lot of requirements going into a browser. Think about, oh, rendering HTML + CSS: the whole ultra-complicated model. Fonts. Javascript engine. Handling a myriad image formats. Video. TLS security. Javascript engine!

Xlib is the least of your problems.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com