Yeah, it's enough to be infuriating. I've recently been thinking about what it would take to implement a lynx-like browser that had a better understanding of layout and could deal with the modern web.

Hurdle number one is that there's no "Web standard", but rather a great many interrelated standards. At a bare minimum, you need HTTP K₁, SSL/TLS K₂, HTML K₃, XHTML, DOM N, CSS K₄, and ECMAScript K₅. Several of those standards are actually multiple standards, so you'll have to do some digging. That's the easiest hurdle to overcome. Number two is that a few of the standards (including some really fundamental ones like the DOM) are maintained as "living documents", making them moving targets; even the—uh—"dead" documents are subject to speedy revisions (for example, there have been 3 new ECMAScript revisions in the last 3 years). Number three is all the up-and-coming experimental stuff that isn't standardized yet, but if at least one browser supports something, some website somewhere is already using it. Between two and three, you'll need to keep a finger on the rapid pulse of the Web. And on top of all that, you have to support legacy bullshit, deal with malformed documents, and be ever hyper-aware of security threats.

Allowing for off-the-shelf components like libcurl and duktape, I'm sure it's still doable by a single person, but it's a lot of work (much of it frustrating).