How AngleSharp, a Spec-Compliant .NET HTML Parser, Went from a Plane Ride to OSS Success

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AngleSharp is a .NET library that parses HTML, SVG, MathML, and CSS, exposing a fully spec-compliant W3C DOM API in C# without requiring a browser. Its creator, a Microsoft MVP, began writing the HTML5 parser from scratch during a flight to the MVP Summit in 2013, armed with a printed copy of the spec. What started as groundwork for a cross-platform GUI toolkit quickly revealed the true complexity of the HTML5 specification, where error handling and edge cases make up roughly 80% of the standard. After a period of frustration and near-abandonment, the developer published a CodeProject article and pushed the code to GitHub. The project woke up to over 120 stars overnight, reigniting motivation and setting AngleSharp on the path to becoming a widely used open-source library.

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