Posted in factor on Jun 9th, 2008 1 Comment »
Slava proposes a new syntax for multi-methods in factor which just happens to be a total re-invention of the way normal words work by turning everything generic. As a side-effect we then wind up getting optional static type checks and compiler dispatch-elimination optimisation across word boundaries.
It’s stuff like this that makes factor an exciting language […]
Posted in programming, factor, compiler on Apr 8th, 2008 2 Comments »
I wrote this post partly as an advocacy piece and partly to put down a bunch of things I’ve learnt about the factor compiler over the last few weeks. I should point out that I’m no expert in this area and so there are probably inaccuracies and omissions - hopefully Slava or one of the […]
Posted in programming, factor on Mar 12th, 2008 4 Comments »
Yesterday I was musing over why it took me so much longer to get going with Factor compared to the other languages I’ve learnt over the years. I came up with this:
Factor’s base language is very fundamental and primitive in nature. Programming it is similar to programming with assembler language: you have to keep track […]
Posted in workfriendly, programming, factor on Mar 10th, 2008 No Comments »
Dan Ehrenberg completes a second short post on garbage collection, expanding on his excellent ‘Quick intro to garbage collection‘ post. Although Dan’s focus is on research prior to implementing a better collector for the factor language, the lucid explanations and chatty style make this a must-read for anybody with a passing interest in language runtime […]
Posted in programming, factor on Jan 15th, 2008 1 Comment »
A little utility I wrote for clearing up code: words-not-used. You give it a word and a vocabulary and it tells you all the definitions in the vocab that aren’t used by the execution of the word. It’s handy for clearing up old code that is no longer used.
(n.b. the word doesn’t have to be […]
Posted in General, programming, factor on Nov 23rd, 2007 5 Comments »
It’s been a couple of months and I’m still slower writing code in Factor than in Python or Scheme. So why am I still writing code in Factor? Well it turns out that the problem is also the attraction:
You can’t hack in factor.
In python you can hack out code in multi-line functions, parking results […]
Posted in General, programming, factor on Oct 11th, 2007 6 Comments »
I’ve been playing with Factor for a couple of weeks. I’m finding that it takes me quite a bit longer to write stuff with factor than with other languages, but the process is enjoyable and I get the feeling that I’m learning something useful each time. The question is: will programming speed improve with experience. […]
Posted in programming, factor on Oct 2nd, 2007 No Comments »
I got round to writing my first factor module tonight: a csv parser.
Actually there’s already a csv parser written in factor by Daniel Ehrenberg, but it’s been removed from the latest factor releases. I found a copy of that code here but I don’t know for how long it’ll stay there.
Unfortunately I had two […]
Posted in workfriendly, programming, scheme, factor, forth on Sep 28th, 2007 No Comments »
Last year I embarked on somwhat of a journey to find a better language for my home projects after getting a bit frustrated by python’s lack of blocks and general cruftyness. After a couple of months of trying various different things I settled on Gambit Scheme for my spare-time data indexing project. A minimal core […]
