A Forth-inspired language for writing websites | Hacker News Reader

A Forth-inspired language for writing websites

robida.net

162 pointsspeckx19 comments

> I like how weird it is. I might use it for my site, who knows?

If there's a place to use a weird and fun language it is certainly one's own personal blog. Sounds like a great opportunity, I think you should do it.

> Something like this:

> : h1 ( s -- ) "<h1>" emit . "</h1>" emit ;

> "Hello, World!" h1

So, what’s the difference between . and emit? It seems both take a string and output it to the HTML of the page. If so I don’t see why that couldn’t be

  : h1  ( s -- )  "<h1>" . .  "</h1>" . ;

We also have:

  "2026-05-21T14:00:00Z"  "May 21, 2026"  dt-published

where, I think, the idea is to always have the two strings consistent with each other. If so, why require the blog writer to do that conversion?

There's no docs or implementation, but I'd say that `.` in Forth is a generic way to print something, and `emit` may do more work, like HTML escaping.

It looks like it's the opposite: `.` does HTML escaping, whereas `emit` is raw.

Dot is Forth convention for "print" where a single . means print integer.

.S (pronounced "dot S" or "print S") is for strings.

Both expect input from the stack.

." Begins a literal string you want printed immediately.

.S is a word that prints the stack (not destructively) pronounced "print stack"

EMIT in Forth prints one ASCII character (which byte value comes from the stack).

You are free to redefine whatever you like --it's your own language! Most of the punctuation in Forth has conventional meanings that help (a little) reading comprehension.

DECIMAL

: STAR 42 EMIT ;

: STARS ( n -- )

  0 DO STAR LOOP ;

Type

5 STARS

***** ok

HN Hug of Death: https://web.archive.org/web/20260522134016/https://robida.ne...

Forth's postfix model is genuinely underrated for DSL design

Time for productivity to skyrocket.

LLM-based coding is enabling so much! The crazy weekend project now can have compilation to native code and web assembly, allow server-side or client-side rendering, manage multiple types of persistence, include adaptive compression, and do all of this without breaking a sweat.

It's scary but I love it.

For all its worth this could just be an AI generated blog post. There is no code, no repository, no link to any use.

And yet people keep using React, relying on a fractal pattern of kludges.

This post isn't offering anything better.

React (and the unidirectional FRP approach in general) is the only known sane way to describe complex GUIs. It's the same approach that powers spreadsheet calculations.

Most websites are not complex GUIs though, and do not need React.

It's not "the only known sane way". In many cases, it's not even an appropriate approach! MVC, PAC, and self-contained widgets which make asynchronous calls to an API surface, are perfectly cromulent alternatives, each with their own strengths, but I've yet to see a situation where React was actually the best way to go.

React is very different from dataflow computation - it rebuilds a component subtree upon a property update; it also doesn't quite understand what "property update" means because it's defined on top of JS semantics. It's a hodgepodge of leaky abstractions and outright insanity.

I've been making GUIs (among other things) for 25 years, including 12 years using React, so you don't need to tell me how amazing it is. There's nothing particularly wrong with using React for rendering (although there's a whole lot of gotchas), the real problem is when people use React hooks for business logic - that's like you decide you need to fetch something in a middle of rendering screen.

I didn’t see anything about LLMs here.

If you’ve never written or worked in a Forth-like language, it’s not a hard system to bootstrap up. If you’ve done it before and know assembly, you can even get something that compiles to (stack-heavy and pretty unoptimized) native code in essentially a weekend. No LLM needed.

Forth-likes are almost magical in ways that are hard to describe. You start with primitives and literally build the language out of them. The interpreter and compiler are two different modes of the same REPL loop.

It’s just a very different paradigm than most programmers know.

Fuck LLMs. People should focus on actually learning stuff instead of destroying their brain and environment with LLMs. Especially a Forth is really doable.

Fuck umbrellas, people should focus on actually enjoying swimming and being at the beach, instead of destroying the environment by eventually throwing away their umbrellas.

They said FORTH!!

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