[HN Gopher] Factor 0.100 Now Available
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       Factor 0.100 Now Available
        
       Author : PaulHoule
       Score  : 109 points
       Date   : 2024-09-14 14:47 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (re.factorcode.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (re.factorcode.org)
        
       | prezjordan wrote:
       | Had no idea it was in active development! I spent a weekend with
       | Factor about two years ago and it was enlightening.
        
         | gre wrote:
         | Yes! And we have a Discord: https://discord.gg/QxJYZx3QDf
        
         | hinkley wrote:
         | I think Slava Pestov bowed out and ended up at Apple, or vice
         | versa. His GitHub traffic looks like he's working on the Swift
         | compiler? But others have taken over.
         | 
         | I used to use JEdit, and Factor was new during the era when
         | people still had blog rolls so I ended up hearing a lot about
         | Factor.
        
       | jna_sh wrote:
       | I spent a couple of weeks getting into Factor in 2022 and it was
       | the most fun I've had programming, probably ever. Language itself
       | aside, the dev environment and process of writing Factor is just
       | delightful.
        
         | foretop_yardarm wrote:
         | Yeah, I've never had a better experience with unit tests than
         | in Factor (to give an unglamorous example!)
        
       | Pet_Ant wrote:
       | Factor is a lot of fun. I have a dream of one day building an OS
       | from a Forth bootloader all the way up to a highlevel language.
       | Do wish it had a more expressive type system though.
        
       | quercusa wrote:
       | Factor is a concatenative, stack-based programming language with
       | high-level features including dynamic types, extensible syntax,
       | macros, and garbage collection. On a practical side, Factor has a
       | full-featured library, supports many different platforms, and has
       | been extensively documented.
        
       | Scene_Cast2 wrote:
       | I remember first seeing Factor more than a decade ago (maybe even
       | when it just launched, if memory serves correctly). It's really
       | neat to see it thriving.
        
       | mrbluecoat wrote:
       | You had me at scryfall:
       | https://docs.factorcode.org/content/vocab-scryfall.html
        
       | helix278 wrote:
       | Would it be feasible to build a larger application using a
       | language like Factor? I have no experience with concatenative
       | programming, and it seems interesting, but I also get the feeling
       | that larger systems would become rather complex and hard to read.
        
         | broken-kebab wrote:
         | I think questions like this cannot have an objective answer. I
         | dealt with code written in lisps, and Forth. There are plenty
         | of people who claim they are hard to read, but in my experience
         | once your brain starts to recognize patterns, and idioms it
         | becomes crystal clear and logical. At the same time I find
         | myself taking more mental effort parsing code in languages
         | which like to overexplain by repetitiveness, like Java with its
         | "Foo foo = new Foo". I have a colleague however who believes
         | that everything which is not Java is barely readable. Probably,
         | it's related to the fact that he writes Java exclusively for a
         | very long time.
        
         | carapace wrote:
         | Yes, it's feasible.
         | 
         | Wielded well (read "Starting Forth" and "Thinking Forth") the
         | concatinative languages are very good for eliminating
         | incidental complexity, so code approaches the Kolmogorov
         | complexity of the problem or task it's for.
        
           | codr7 wrote:
           | Feasible, but takes a lot of skills and hard work to break
           | the problem down into small enough pieces.
           | 
           | It's a different way of writing software.
        
         | foretop_yardarm wrote:
         | Here's a somewhat related, albeit casual, read - if you're
         | curious:
         | https://groups.google.com/g/comp.lang.forth/c/ThWiGXwKqv4
        
       | carapace wrote:
       | Factor is one of those projects that stands as a huge challenge
       | to other conventional languages and their runtimes (or it would
       | if anyone took it seriously that way.) The compactness and power,
       | the "bang for the buck" is staggering.
        
       | agumonkey wrote:
       | Was curious what slava pestov was doing, he's at Apple on the
       | Swift team (low surprise :)
       | 
       | https://factorcode.org/slava/
        
         | swah wrote:
         | He kinda moved to a farm life I think.
        
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       (page generated 2024-09-14 23:00 UTC)