Learning Rust by writing a Markdown to HTML compiler
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Hi HN,I'm new to Rust and, after half of `The Rust Programming Language` I decided to delve into a project I would actually use: a markdown to html compiler that actually serves my micro-blog (I started just right after publishing the project hehe). The project is intentionally small and one-file contained: I wanted to have the full picture in mind.I'm open to comments, suggestions and PRs. If you asked me more convincing arguments to "why did you do it?" rather than "to learn Rust" I would respond with: LLMs are effectively a new type of web users today and will be more and more present in the future. Having a full, well formatted, .md interface of a website can make it easier for them to access the content.
HN · launched Jul 29, 2026 · 25 upvotes (top 24%) · 0 views
Niche: developer tutorials and guides · 34 launches, 0 in the last 7 days · Explore this niche →
Category and tags
- Horizontal
- Dev tools
- Developer
- Not AI
- Hobby / open-source project
Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗
More like this: all 34 launches in developer tutorials and guides →
Could you build this?
Yes Writing a basic single-file Markdown-to-HTML parser and static site generator in Rust is a straightforward compiler project easily generated by an LLM.
Discussion
3 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: React, LLMs for HTML generation
Concerns raised: HTML is notoriously complicated to parse correctly, Generating valid HTML documents is difficult, Modern frameworks have abandoned semantic HTML
Feature requests: Correct ordered vs unordered list handling
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one : 474 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #142 of 475 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 273 days after the earliest competitor.
- rust-learning-lab · github · 2026-09-25 · 49 upvotes · similarity 0.57
- Rustforge: Learning Rust = fun · ph · 2026-11-03 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.52
- Genotype: language that compiles to idiomatic TS, Rust and Python · hn · 2026-09-08 · 9 upvotes · similarity 0.49
- Lathe · hn · 2026-06-07 · 402 upvotes · similarity 0.49
- Ferrite · hn · 2026-01-11 · 241 upvotes · similarity 0.47
- rustcoach · ph · 2026-09-30 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.47
- Writemark, a dependency free web component for inline Markdown editing · hn · 2026-07-25 · 53 upvotes · similarity 0.46
- Nectar, a Rust-like React that compiles to WebAssembly · hn · 2026-07-06 · 29 upvotes · similarity 0.46
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