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Bez: Generating a browser engine from specs and tests

126 points · 49 comments · nerdypepper

  1. Alacart · · focus · HN ↗
    This makes a ton of sense to me with the huge corpus of web standards that exist. In theory we should be able to generate a browser from those specs, it just took a massive amount of effort before. Maybe if things like this get some traction, some of the human time spent implementing the spec could be spent on creating more/better specs, allowing for even better generation too.

    Edit: replies are making good points about AI capabilities and where the effort really goes. Let’s just say that I meant this in an aspirational sense, rather than where the rubber actually meets the road today.

    1. nicoburns · · focus · HN ↗
      As someone who has spent the last 3 years implementing a browser engine from scratch full time (that currently passes ~half the 200k "css" tests that test style/layout/rendering), I find that (without a lot of close hand holding) the AIs are very far from being able to do this. They'll give you something that passes the tests, but it will do it a ridiculous way be far too slow to be useful (and is wrong architecturally such that it's not going to converge on a better solution).
      1. testerius · · focus · HN ↗
        Could you say which AI/LLMs you mean?
        1. nicoburns · · focus · HN ↗
          I've tried most of them. Certainly all the Open AI and Anthropic models. Fable is still the best I've tried. But it still struggles with architectural issues.
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