Good afternoon, friend!

This whole page is one file. No build step, no package manager, no framework to learn - just HTML with a bit of <% ... %> mixed in wherever you need logic. That was the whole pitch back in 1999, and it's still true today on a server that still runs it.

Live stats (via Scripting.Dictionary)

Why this stack was fun to learn

• No compiling - save the file, hit refresh, done.
• Ran fine on a single shared host with a few MB of RAM.
• Mixed HTML and code freely, like early PHP.
• Had real OOP (classes, properties) years before most scripting languages bothered.

What each new trick bought you

RegExp

Real regular expressions with zero setup - New RegExp, set a pattern, call .Test. No hand-rolled validation loops.

On Error Resume Next

The whole error-handling model in one line: keep going, then check Err.Number whenever you cared. No Try/Catch ceremony.

Select Case

Cleaner than a chain of ElseIfs the moment you have three or more branches - reads like a real switch statement.

Application object

Application("x") is shared by every visitor, forever - a global variable for the whole site, with Lock/Unlock for safety, no server config needed.

Scripting.Dictionary

An associative array out of the box - .Add, .Keys, .Exists - without writing a hash map yourself.

Arrays + UBound

Declare, fill by index, loop to UBound(). Plain, predictable, and built into the language.

FileSystemObject

File I/O in a few lines - open, write, close - enough for a visit log without reaching for a database.

#include

Server-side includes pasted another file's contents in at compile time - the footer below came from footer.inc.asp. No templating engine needed.

With

Saved re-typing an object's name for every member access - .SayHello instead of g.SayHello inside the block.

Try it with a name: add ?name=YourName to the URL (try one with a digit in it and watch the RegExp catch it).