# On UI as Code

**URL:** <https://forum.malleable.systems/t/on-ui-as-code/313>\
**Category:** General\
**Created:** [27 March 2025 18:07 UTC](https://forum.malleable.systems/t/on-ui-as-code/313 "2025-03-27T18:07:10Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 18

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**Author:** ![Offray](https://forum-cdn.malleable.systems/user_avatar/forum.malleable.systems/offray/32/48_2.png) [@Offray](https://forum.malleable.systems/u/Offray)\
**Post date:** [24 September 2025 23:14 UTC](https://forum.malleable.systems/t/on-ui-as-code/313/18 "2025-09-24T23:14:37Z")

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I was brought here from [A minimalist hypertext browser](https://forum.malleable.systems/t/a-minimalist-hypertext-browser/316) post… and as I said in [Community agency and metatools insertion strategies](https://forum.malleable.systems/t/community-agency-and-metatools-insertion-strategies/375), the problem with arriving at this forum, is that I can loose myself in it for hours (today I spent almost all the day here, “catching up”).

Anyway, just two small notes on this engaging conversation:

1. On @Bosmon UI as code post and substrates, my experience working with Pharo was to find a substrate where web and desktop UIs were expressed as Pharo code from the beginning in projects like [Seaside](https://github.com/seasidest/seaside) and [Spec](https://books.pharo.org/BuildingApplicationsWithSpec/), respectively.
2. On @akkartik LuaML2, it remembers me of [lua-html](https://github.com/RussellSprouts/lua-html), in the sense of having a Lua powered DSL to produce documents/interface, of course with the difference of the first running on LÖVE and the second running on a web browser.

On a related matter, I hope to use lua-html at some point in [Cardumem](https://mutabit.com/repos.fossil/cardumem/dir?ci=tip), so my web interfaces can be expressed as code more fluently. We’re not yet there, as this is a pretty young project, but I like how wiki engines/practices are simple enough to be a seed for (inter)personal agency meaningful to particular contexts.

I find the explorations of Cardumem pretty resonant with this thread, in the sense that is a way to explore how to give a collective a practical malleable tool that can be meaningful for its members in their day to day life, using the web browser as a vehicle for that exploration but switching from JavaScript to Lua, now that [Hypermedia Systems](https://hypermedia.systems/) are getting visible after two decades of JavaScript monopoly on modern web interfaces.

An inviting quote from [Cardumem’s source code repository](https://mutabit.com/repos.fossil/cardumem/dir?ci=tip), to tease interested readers in knowing more about it:

> Cardumem is a wiki engine that continues [TiddlyWiki](https://tiddlywiki.com/)’s pioneer and long lasting exploration of an “algebra of hypertext”, but goes beyond the JavaScript ecosystem, by reimagining such exploration from a [Hypermedia](https://hypermedia.systems/) Metatools approach. In a sense, Cardumem is a homage to TiddlyWiki, while (re)thinking/extending its deep ideas from another angle.

Cheers,

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