[HN Gopher] Show HN: We built a terminal-only Bluesky / AT Proto...
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Show HN: We built a terminal-only Bluesky / AT Proto client written
in Fortran
Yes, that Fortran.
Author : FormerLabFred
Score : 16 points
Date : 2026-03-20 22:06 UTC (53 minutes ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| cat-turner wrote:
| out of curiosity, why fortran? no disrespect. I wrote a lot of
| scientific software in the earlier days of my career and I
| learned fortran to update ocean modeling software.
| pklausler wrote:
| maybe they weren't really concerned about portability or a
| decent standard?
| FormerLabFred wrote:
| It's keyboard navigation only, and we got the Bluesky
| firehose raw straight into the Rust decoder. Or we switch
| mode to Jetstream with m+EnTER :)
|
| You hit l+ENTER to like a post. If anyone replies from
| Bluesky, we hit n+ENTER and see the notifs. And so on
|
| Fortransky is 70% Fortran, rest is Rust, C and a tiny Python
| helper
| enriquto wrote:
| > why fortran?
|
| why not? the language is straightforward and loops are fast. It
| is portable and your code will work unchanged for the next 50
| years. It may be a bit verbose, but that's not a big deal with
| today's tooling.
| FormerLabFred wrote:
| Fortran will survive the cockroaches even, when the world
| 404s
| pklausler wrote:
| Your code will work unchanged until you try to change
| compilers or your compiler adopts a J3 breaking change to the
| language.
| FormerLabFred wrote:
| You are not the first one to ask :)
|
| We built Cobolsky. Will go public soon. Parallelly too curious
| on Fortran. The world is better with a Fortran-based social
| network client in it :)
|
| When we are building the feed composer, in next version,
| Fortran will be great for the algorithm etc.
|
| Keeping the ancient languages alive. I built some Cobol stuff
| many years ago. Back at it again. Rusty.
|
| Both Cobolsky and Fortransky looks great on Swordfish90's cool-
| retro-term, but we are building our own terminal for Fortransky
| too. There is a blog post with screenshots over at
| Patreon/formerlab
|
| Can't get enough Fortran
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > The world is better with a Fortran-based social network
| client in it
|
| If you don't mind me asking, why is the world better with
| more Fortran-based software?
| FormerLabFred wrote:
| Our modern languages are built on it, and it's incredibly
| fast,
|
| so it deserves to be kept alive. We owe a great deal to the
| people who wrote it in the 1950s I guess
| blundergoat wrote:
| fortran > cobol
| pklausler wrote:
| fortran .GT. cobol
| FormerLabFred wrote:
| > forever
| uberdru wrote:
| The world is a better place for this app. Wonderful!
| FormerLabFred wrote:
| :) I mean there are still some people alive out there who never
| saw a web UI when beginning dev. They get a bit nostalgic,
| missing their 286
|
| It's fun and it is appreciated by them, and the young ones who
| are curious
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