A Forth-inspired language for writing websites

# A Forth-inspired language for writing websites Source: [https://robida.net/entries/2026/05/21/a-forth-inspired-language-for-writing-websites](https://robida.net/entries/2026/05/21/a-forth-inspired-language-for-writing-websites) I don't remember where the idea came from, but I decided that it would be cool if I could write websites using a stack\-based language\. Something like this: ``` : h1 ( s -- ) "<h1>" emit . "</h1>" emit ; "Hello, World!" h1 ``` So I wrote Forge\. I quickly built a library of word definitions that let me easily add microformats to the HTML: ``` : post-content "Hello, world! This is my first post with Forge!" p ; : post-body h-entry-start "<p class='byline'>" emit "2026-05-21T14:00:00Z" "May 21, 2026" dt-published " · by " emit "Beto" "/about" p-author "</p>" emit h-entry-end "On building a tiny stack-based web language." p-summary "post-content" e-content "/hello-world" "permalink" u-url ; "Hello, world!" "post-body" blog-post ``` Each site is a collection of pages, a library of words, and a stylesheet: ``` my-site ├── lib.forge ├── style.css └── pages ├── about.forge ├── hello.forge └── notes.forge ``` A single binary runs the website: ``` forge --log forge.log my-site/ ``` The binary does a lot\. It has a webassembly compiler that generates HTML from`\.forge`files\. When you visit a page the compiler runs on the backend, and you get the actual HTML in the source code, as well as the original`\.forge`source\. But when you navigate between pages, a service worker captures the network request to the page, say,`/notes`, fetches the source`/notes\.forge`\), and builds the HTML on the fly by running the compiler on the browser\. So we have server\-side rendering for crawlers and WebMentions, and client\-side rendering for a SPA experience\. I love the limitations of the language\. You can persiste things to state, localStorage, or to an append\-only log on the server\. For example example, I can add a "like" button to posts like this: ``` : like-button ( -- ) "❤" "do-like" on-click ; : do-like "1" "likes:demo" log-append ; : body "I liked this!" p like-button ; ``` When you click it, appends the value "1" to the topic "likes:demo" in the log\. It's just JSONL \(one JSON document per line\)\. Forms can submit to other`\.forge`pages, and they simply put the contents in the stack for them\. It's up to the target to use`log\-append`to store in the backend\. I like how weird it is\. I might use it for my site, who knows? For now I'm just exploring some ideas\.