Microsoft killed VBScript, so I built a custom Go VM to bring Classic ASP into 2026

Lucas Guimarães — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 19:55:19 +0000

Hey DEV community! 👋

I don't have a formal IT degree—my day job is actually as a Doctor —but I am a self-taught Go developer with a massive passion for 90s retro-computing and legacy software preservation.

Recently, with Microsoft officially pulling the plug on VBScript and Classic ASP having been neglected for years, I realized a lot of legacy code was going to be left in the dark. Instead of letting it die, I decided to do something a little crazy: I completely rewrote the engine from scratch in Go.

Let me introduce you to AxonASP 2.0.

It’s an open-source project designed not just to keep legacy code alive, but to allow Classic ASP to actually evolve into the modern web era.

⚡ The Go Architecture: Why it's so fast
Writing an interpreter in Go has been an incredible engineering journey. I wanted to achieve extreme performance, so I threw out the traditional Abstract Syntax Tree (AST) approach.

Under the hood, AxonASP features a single-pass compiler that emits bytecode directly to a highly optimized, register-based Virtual Machine (AxonVM). By aggressively avoiding reflection and minimizing heap allocations in Go, the script execution overhead is practically zero. It’s insanely fast and memory-optimized, mimicking an IIS-style VM pool using Go's native concurrency (goroutines).

🛠️ Bringing ASP to the Modern Age
I didn't just want a 1:1 clone; I wanted to build the tools that ASP developers wished they had 20 years ago. Here is what the runtime currently includes:

Native AI Integration: It has a built-in MCP (Model Context Protocol) server. You can hook your AI agents/LLMs directly into the runtime to autonomously write and refactor ASP code based on your local environment.

A Real CLI & TUI: You can finally execute ASP and VBScript directly from your terminal! It features a Text User Interface, making it perfect for running cron jobs or system admin scripts.

Modern Workflows: AxonASP comes with a native test suite (axonasp-testsuite) so you can write automated assertions for your old ASP scripts.

Truly Cross-Platform: It runs natively on Windows, Linux, and macOS across most architectures. You are no longer chained to Windows Server.

Flexible Serving: It ships with both a FastCGI daemon (perfect for Nginx/Apache) and a built-in HTTP server.

📦 Try it out!
I would absolutely love to get feedback from this community. What do you think of the architecture? What modern features would you add to a language from the 90s?

You can check out the source code, the complete documentation, and architectural examples (yes, MVC in Classic ASP!) right here:

👉 https://github.com/guimaraeslucas/axonasp

Ah! You can also import and convert Access databases in Windows, and create prompts for IA Agents to code the ASP pages you want.

Note: If you just want to take it for a spin, the repo includes a simple Windows installer and a fully configured Docker setup so you can run it in seconds.

Let me know what you think in the comments! 💻🩺

DEV Community: Lucas Guimarães

Microsoft killed VBScript, so I built a custom Go VM to bring Classic ASP into 2026