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In the last submission, someone said "> With the exception of Go, every language that has become popular in the past 10 years, built on something else.", which

In the last submission, someone said "> With the exception of Go, every language that has become popular in the past 10 years, built on something else.", which is funny, because Factor has such an extensive set of libraries from just ~4 active developers. Sure, it an old language now, but if you check the commit history, you can see that MANY of these libraries have been developed by one guy (lead dev of Swift for a while now) only. I was surprised at how extensive it really is. More so than Go. Now imagine it actually had more developers and a much more active and vibrant community. :P https://github.com/factor/factor/tree/master/basis/ https://github.com/factor/factor/tree/master/basis/ https://github.com/factor/factor/tree/master/core https://github.com/factor/factor/tree/master/core https://github.com/factor/factor/tree/master/extra https://github.com/factor/factor/tree/master/extra Heck, they even implemented CBOR: https://github.com/factor/factor/blob/master/basis/cbor/cbor.factor https://github.com/factor/factor/blob/master/basis/cbor/cbor.... Look at the code, seems elegant and simple, IMO.

riffraff 1y ago
to be fair, Slava Pestov appears to be one of those legendary 100x programmers, or perhaps a pseudonym for a group like Nicolas Bourbaki, or some form of non-human being.
- johnisgood 1y ago
  I agree. I remember his talk on Factor. I wish people gave enough support back then so he could work on it full-time. Here is his talk on Factor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_0QlhYlS8g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_0QlhYlS8g, back from 2008.
jerf 1y ago
I'm not sure what point you intend, since Factor has never been popular. No offense intended to the authors and no shade intended, but I think that's pretty clearly the case. There are other not-popular languages that build up from scratch. I'd hesitate to go too crazy in assigning causality to this particular characteristic. Being stuck to an existing ecosystem has disadvantages too. But it's not a counterexample to the statement you quoted.
- johnisgood 1y ago
  What I am saying is that Factor has had an extensive ecosystem despite it never catching on. I cannot imagine how many libraries there would be were it had a vibrant community and ecosystem. Sometimes I do ponder. In any case, "Factor has such an extensive set of libraries from just ~4 active developers." is nuts, in a good way.
iaaan 1y ago
As someone who does a lot of Go, glancing over Factor's syntax in your links makes my eyes glaze over. I'm sure it's perfectly understandable if you take the time to learn it, but languages like Go and Python have the benefit of being nearly immediately understandable for anyone with prior experience
- johnisgood 1y ago
  I do love Go for that. Python less so, lots of syntactic sugar, less immediately understandable than Go, IMO, just the list comprehension is less understandable, i.e. I would rather have a for loop when I am reading a reference implementation. As for Factor, of course, it is a concatenative language. You not only have to learn it, your brain probably has to work in a certain way. Common Lisp vs. Forth vs. Haskell vs. C. They are all at the different end of a spectrum I would say.

riffraff 1y ago

to be fair, Slava Pestov appears to be one of those legendary 100x programmers, or perhaps a pseudonym for a group like Nicolas Bourbaki, or some form of non-human being.

johnisgood 1y ago
I agree. I remember his talk on Factor. I wish people gave enough support back then so he could work on it full-time. Here is his talk on Factor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_0QlhYlS8g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_0QlhYlS8g, back from 2008.

jerf 1y ago

I'm not sure what point you intend, since Factor has never been popular. No offense intended to the authors and no shade intended, but I think that's pretty clearly the case. There are other not-popular languages that build up from scratch. I'd hesitate to go too crazy in assigning causality to this particular characteristic. Being stuck to an existing ecosystem has disadvantages too. But it's not a counterexample to the statement you quoted.

johnisgood 1y ago
What I am saying is that Factor has had an extensive ecosystem despite it never catching on. I cannot imagine how many libraries there would be were it had a vibrant community and ecosystem. Sometimes I do ponder. In any case, "Factor has such an extensive set of libraries from just ~4 active developers." is nuts, in a good way.

iaaan 1y ago

As someone who does a lot of Go, glancing over Factor's syntax in your links makes my eyes glaze over. I'm sure it's perfectly understandable if you take the time to learn it, but languages like Go and Python have the benefit of being nearly immediately understandable for anyone with prior experience

johnisgood 1y ago
I do love Go for that. Python less so, lots of syntactic sugar, less immediately understandable than Go, IMO, just the list comprehension is less understandable, i.e. I would rather have a for loop when I am reading a reference implementation. As for Factor, of course, it is a concatenative language. You not only have to learn it, your brain probably has to work in a certain way. Common Lisp vs. Forth vs. Haskell vs. C. They are all at the different end of a spectrum I would say.