Hidden in this Concatenative IRC Log from 6.1.2012 you can find something from Slava, the Factor developer, about its (so Factor, not Slava) future - a few bug fixes for 0.95 he still plans, but then for him the project is basically finished. Too bad, because Factor was always interesting to play around with and one of the more exciting language projects, but in recent times it has become somewhat quiet around it. Now I know why. Whether the community has enough power to continue where he stops is rather questionable given the size of the community - yes, a few people are active and also quite more active than him, but Slava was often the driving force (haha) in the development and integration of new concepts and ideas.
factor
Re: Factor: Mail with GUI. Nice to see how a more general approach to GUIs makes the code nice and compact - this whole thing reminds me very much of CLIM in terms of structure.
Re: Factor: XKCD. If you want to get an impression of one of the crazier languages - John Benediktssons Blog has a lot of example snippets in Factor, which are usually directly usable in the Factor REPL (or create manageable vocabulary extensions). I am always impressed by the compactness of Factor code. John's code also has the advantage that I can usually understand what is happening - Slavas code, for example, is often much more idiomatic and therefore cryptic for me. But this is certainly also due to the fact that Slava usually writes about the internals of the language, while John simply describes small tricks.
Re: Factor: Google Charts - I really should use Factor more often. Every time I see how practical a visual REPL is (in Factor, graphical representations of objects can be embedded in the normal output, similar to old Lisp machines), it tempts me.
denkspuren: Factor @ Heilbronn University - someone has used Factor as a programming language in university courses and seems quite impressed. I myself also like Factor - in a way, the Factor-IDE gives off that old Lisp machine vibe and the language is just nicely compact. However, I often notice that when I play around with it, I end up spending a lot of time finding the right abstractions - there are just mountains of included code and while the documentation is good, there's a bit of a lack of tutorials on how to use the code. Best practices and cookbooks would be in demand. Factor is still fun, though.
Useless Factor: Bitfields in Factor structs and the special style - and again a Factor link. I am always amazed. In this case, an implementation of efficient bit structures. Yes, memory is cheap, but there are enough situations where you still need this today - and if you already implement something like this, why not do it right like here?
Sup dawg, we heard you like Smalltalk so we put Smalltalk in your Factor so you can send messages while you roll - an implementation of Smalltalk in Factor. Quite extensible and could also bring this nice environment to people who don't know Factor yet (sometimes starting with a known language is easier).
Factor: a practical stack language: New optimizer - very interesting description of the new optimizer in Factor. An advantage of the language: the main programmer documents very well in blog posts how he works on the system and what motivation is behind the changes. Always exciting to read. And the language is just nice.
Factor: a practical stack language: - why I love following Factor development: the programmers have no qualms about radically redesigning the language and making massive changes to semantics, even shying away from redesigning defining words. This of course makes the use of the language for real purposes a bit hairy, but it's simply thrilling to see how language constructs are juggled and the path to an optimal language is sought. And since they adjust the entire included library every time, the transition pains are not quite as great (and the included library is already absolutely impressive and currently has one of the best Unicode implementations I've seen so far)
Digging into Factor’s compiler - very nice overview of how the Factor compiler works. I'm having more and more fun with Factor, I think I'll play around with it a bit more.
Factor programming language
Once again something from the corner of obscure programming languages. And this time it's a Forth descendant again, but one that borrows more heavily from Lisp and functional concepts and also orients itself more toward Lisp in its system architecture. Looks quite interesting and of course speaks directly to an old Forther and Lisper like me. The author also has a weblog where he occasionally writes about his language and its implementation - currently, for example, about type inference in Factor. Here's the original article.
Factor Example Server
Chris Double has set up a Factor server that anyone can play around with. Factor is interesting because it has a development environment completely built on web browsers with inspectors, browsers, and editors - so you can change everything via a web browser, including the running code of the server. However, it's not like Zope - so a CMS interface. Instead, they are rather Smalltalk-oriented tools, that is, low-level programming tools. Very nice overall. The language also strikes a chord with me: a mixture of Joy, Lisp, and Forth. Given my affinity for Lisp and Forth, it's clear that I have to engage with something like this. At Planet Lisp you can find the original article.