A Forth-inspired language for writing websites

Coder builds a bizarre blog tool, and the internet is weirdly obsessed

TLDR: A developer built Forge, a strange custom tool for making websites in a stack-based style, complete with page rendering, likes, and forms. Commenters were split between delighted applause for the weirdness, awe at how fast solo projects are growing, and classic internet nitpicking over the design.

A developer showed off Forge, a homemade way to build websites using a quirky, old-school style of coding where words get stacked and popped like little command blocks. In plain English: instead of using normal website tools, they made a strange little language that can spit out a page on the server, then rebuild pages in your browser as you click around. It can even save things like likes and form posts. The creator’s own sales pitch? “I like how weird it is.” And honestly, the comments ran with that energy.

The biggest mood from the crowd was a mix of “this is gloriously unhinged” and “actually… I kind of love it.” One commenter basically crowned personal blogs the perfect home for this kind of chaos, arguing that if you’re going to be weird anywhere, your own website is the place. Another zoomed out and turned it into a bigger tech take, saying modern AI-assisted coding is making these once-impossible weekend experiments explode into full-blown mini platforms. That got a little spooky-fast-future energy going: terrifying, impressive, exciting.

But not everyone just clapped and moved on. One commenter immediately went into nitpick mode, questioning why two commands seemed to do almost the same thing in the sample code. Translation: even in a fun mad-scientist project, the internet will still show up asking, “Okay, but why is this designed like that?” Meanwhile, the funniest recurring reaction may have been the classic “Hacker News Hug of Death” joke, with someone posting an archived copy because the original site apparently got swarmed. Nothing says "you made it" like your weird little web language getting loved so hard it needs a backup link.

Key Points

  • The article introduces Forge, a Forth-inspired stack-based language created for building websites.
  • Forge pages are written as `.forge` files, organized with a shared library and stylesheet, and served by a single `forge` binary.
  • The Forge binary includes a WebAssembly compiler that generates HTML from `.forge` source files.
  • Forge uses backend compilation for initial page loads and client-side compilation through a service worker for navigation between pages.
  • The language supports persistence through state, `localStorage`, and an append-only server log stored as JSONL.

Hottest takes

"It’s scary but I love it." — jng
"If there's a place to use a weird and fun language it is certainly one's own personal blog" — WorldMaker
"HN Hug of Death" — hvs
Made with <3 by @siedrix and @shesho from CDMX. Powered by Forge&Hive.