Factor Blog
factor-language.blogspot.com · Company blog · on HN since 2007
Slava Pestov, creator of the Factor language, wrote about its compiler, performance, and library design.
What HN saysHN links it as a view into language design and for old Factor benchmarks against V8, LuaJIT and SBCL; commenters note the blog is abandoned.
28HN people shared it
7linked it in comments
35stories submitted
399story points
8 years agolast shared
2007people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Factor: Comparing Factor's performance against V8, LuaJIT and SBCL3 people · 30 points · first shared 2010 · 2 comments on HN
- 2A survey of domain-specific languages in Factor3 people · 16 points · first shared 2009 · 1 comments on HN
- 3Performance comparison between Factor and Java on a contrived benchmark2 people · 7 points · first shared 2009 · discussion on HN
- 4Overhauling Factor's C library interface2 people · 4 points · first shared 2010 · discussion on HN
- 5Homepage2 people · first shared 2014
- 6Two things every Unix developer should know1 people · 88 points · first shared 2010 · 11 comments on HN
- 7Replacing GNU assembler with Factor code1 people · 38 points · first shared 2010 · 5 comments on HN
- 8Factor improves performance further - A collection of compiler improvements.1 people · 34 points · first shared 2010 · discussion on HN
- 9Advanced Floating Point Features (which most languages don't have) in Factor1 people · 27 points · first shared 2009 · discussion on HN
- 10Improved write barriers in Factor's garbage collector1 people · 23 points · first shared 2009 · 2 comments on HN
- 11Factor VM ported to C++1 people · 20 points · first shared 2009 · 10 comments on HN
- 12How Factor implements closures1 people · 18 points · first shared 2010 · discussion on HN
- 13Factor's implementation of polymorphic inline caching1 people · 18 points · first shared 2009 · 9 comments on HN
- 14Factor compiler improvements1 people · 15 points · first shared 2009 · 1 comments on HN
- 15Comparing the performance of Factor and V81 people · 10 points · first shared 2008 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
swah · 2015-02-06
IIUC the creator, which had already written a popular text editor (jEdit), and now a successful programming language, considered his objectives complete with Factor and moved on.
AFAIK he still works at Google, and never posted in his blog again (http://factor-language.blogspot.com/).
redline6561 · 2014-07-10
I always felt Slava Pestov's (now abandoned) blog on Factor's development was a good view into language design: http://factor-language.blogspot.com/
He and Andy Wingo (http://wingolog.org) both write very well on language issues though they may skew towards implementation concerns over design concerns.
saurabh · 2012-10-09
There is a Smalltalk implementation in Factor
http://factor-language.blogspot.in/2009/04/sup-dawg-we-heard-you-like-…
Also from that page,
"If you want to experiment with language design but don't want to spend five years implementing a language like we did, you should consider using an existing system to host your language on, and Factor is one of several great choices in this regard." - Slava Pestov, Creator of Factor
jlarocco · 2018-09-18
Like I said in a different reply, it was previously possible to compare right on Debian's language shootout page. Apparently they took out that feature, so here's an old link to somebody comparing SBCL, Factor, V8, and LuaJIT.
http://factor-language.blogspot.com/2010/05/comparing-factors-performa…
All four languages have improved over the last 8 years, but you can see SBCL and LuaJIT are in the same ball park, each winning on some tests. My recollection is that SBCL usually "wins" in the number heavy tests like Mandelbrot, but I don't have time to dig up the links.
pome · 2018-08-11
There are some old benchmarks (2010) - http://factor-language.blogspot.com/2010/05/comparing-factors-performa… , in 2018 sure, situation I think is different.
Avshalom · 2010-05-23
EDIT: whether anything I say below is actually true, making new syntax is totally supported in Factor both in the language and in the community.
http://factor-language.blogspot.com/2009/09/survey-of-domain-specific-…
pretty much the same as lisp's.
MACRO: defines a lisp style macro, http://docs.factorcode.org/content/word-MACRO__colon__%2Cmacros.html (MACRO:: defines a macro with local variables)
SYNTAX: defines a 'parsing word' http://docs.factorcode.org/content/article-parsing-words.html which I think is basically the same as a lisp Reader Macro
Though you don't seem to need macros very often because you tend to pass things around as lambdas, cond for instance is implemented as a normal function.
ArnoldLayne · 2010-01-28
It's an issue with the trig functions in Java. See this Factor vs Java comparison: http://factor-language.blogspot.com/2009/08/performance-comparison-bet…