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Factor 0.100 Now Available

re.factorcode.org

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Re: Factor 0.100 Now Available

#11

Post by hinkley »

prezjordan wrote: post #2

Had no idea it was in active development! I spent a weekend with Factor about two years ago and it was enlightening.

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.

Re: Factor 0.100 Now Available

#12

Post by broken-kebab »

helix278 wrote: post #9

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.

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.

Re: Factor 0.100 Now Available

#13

Post by carapace »

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.

Re: Factor 0.100 Now Available

#14

Post by carapace »

helix278 wrote: post #9

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.

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.

Re: Factor 0.100 Now Available

#16

Post by codr7 »

carapace wrote: post #14
helix278 wrote: post #9

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.

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.

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.

Re: Factor 0.100 Now Available

#17

Post by foretop_yardarm »

jna_sh wrote: post #3

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.

Yeah, I’ve never had a better experience with unit tests than in Factor (to give an unglamorous example!)

Re: Factor 0.100 Now Available

#18

Post by foretop_yardarm »

helix278 wrote: post #9

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.

Here’s a somewhat related, albeit casual, read - if you’re curious: https://groups.google.com/g/comp.lang.forth/c/ThWiGXwKqv4
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