Factor 0.101 now available | Hacker News Reader

Factor 0.101 now available

re.factorcode.org

135 pointsbirdculture26 comments

Factor was the first language I ever 'played' with and it absolutely ruined me for every thing else (except maybe prolog and apl).

I'm really impressed by Factor. It has a lot of the niceties that I like about Common Lisp, like restarting on errors and the compiled-but-interactive development approach. On top of all of this the development environment is presented as a very cohesive package, including standardized project structuring styles, a documentation system and a UI library.

The last time I tried to learn it I stopped because I found the concatenative syntax even harder to parse than s-exprs when any math was involved. I'm giving it another go now.

https://docs.factorcode.org/content/word-%5Binfix%2Cinfix.ht...

I suppose https://docs.factorcode.org/content/article-infix.html is actually the better link.

Thanks! I didn't know it was possible to use infix notation.

I played with factor for a while in 2009 and loved the language. I hung out in the #concatenative irc channel for a few months with many of the factor devs.

I stopped using it because it was a bit too niche, I realised I’d likely never get to use it in any serious context, and instead I learned a slightly less niche but still niche Clojure.

I don’t regret the switch at all and have learned a lot from Clojure, and used it extensively for over a decade. Lately I’ve moved away from it though. Mostly to typescript, a little rust, and Gleam, which is an absolute joy to use.

I still have a soft spot for Factor and am happy to se wits still worked on. It was one of the most interesting languages I at one point played with.

The OP link is overwhelmed. You can catch the release announcement on Planet Factor. https://planet.factorcode.org

I got my start programming in Forth - we were making PC games for the Japanese market in the early 80s - Epson and Sharp machines... and Forth was just magic - I've missed it - must check Factor out!ppl interested in a concatenate audio synthesis DSL should check out SAPF https://github.com/lfnoise/sapf

I was wondering yesterday why it vanished.

Does anyone know if it supports inline assembly?

https://docs.factorcode.org/content/article-alien-assembly.h...

Thank you

It's not something I've dabbled in but I think you could do something like that.

If you look at https://re.factorcode.org/2015/06/bit-test.html and the vocabularies it links over to I'm sure you'll be better able to figure it out.

Edit: This article says you can and shows how, https://re.factorcode.org/2010/11/estimating-cpu-speed.html .

Thank you

Does anyone know of larger apps built using Factor? The closest I found is examples at https://www.concatenative.org/wiki/view/Factor

Are there non-trivial projects using the graphics? Games?

Is there a collection of awesome things built using Factor somewhere?

Years ago I built a website in Factor for testing HTML 5 video in browsers using the Theora codec. It allowed uploading videos, playing them in the browser, converting to Theora, transcoding YouTube videos, etc. It operated for a few years.

About the same time I wrote an 8080 emulator in Factor and emulated Space Invaders and a couple of other games using the Factor UI code.

For quite a while it was my go-to language for implementing things.

Ah, yes that's exactly the sort of things I was looking for. Are any of those still around and runnable?

> Does anyone know of larger apps built using Factor?

The Factor build farm, the website, and the concatenative wiki are all built in Factor, if that counts.

Man, it would be helpful if they explained what a concatenative language actually was (maybe it's common knowledge?) - every link is just a page of other concatenative languages rather than an explanation.

https://concatenative.org/wiki/view/Concatenative%20language

I haven't been paying attention to this, glad it's still going.

Reminds me I need to check on rebol/red and a few others.

Factor supports ARM64 now? Nice.

Almost, but not quite yet. Hoping it comes in the next dev cycle.

Has there been any evolution on a type-system, even third-party?

I wish it was available on Android, could be great on a phone.

Back in the days of Windows mobile (the old Windows phone, not the newer OS Microsoft made), Factor could run on some Windows phones: https://bluishcoder.co.nz/2007/02/17/factor-on-windows-mobil...

Never heard of Factor but quite intriguing!

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