--NoDr - YGO--

Factor is a new programming language from Slava Pestov combining some forth, lisp and joy concepts in a great portable environment. Very good key features and a lot of good ideas .. I really like it.

But unfortunatly it is a bit too young to be really usable and there is still some important lack. Some reflexions on this below

• FFI :

  still the lack of callback (should be usefull for some external lib such as freeGLUT

• External LIB:

  I know Slava dislike the idea of external lib but it’s a term of time to market. Re write most of the things in Factor should take too long and use some existing library may be a first good approch awating for anything else.

  • XML:

    libXML2 & libXLST ?

  • SSL:

    open SSL ?

  • IMAGING:

    libpgn libtiif libjpg libmpeg ?

  • PDF

    ??? pdf writer/ exporter

  • ZIP-TGZ

    ??? libZIP

• GUI

  interesting job but very ugly presentation … need a lot of “graphics” improvement probably next step ?

• PRINTING Lib.

  most of language makers forget this very important area

• Asynchonous pre-emptive lite process (like Erlang one)

  - NO EVIL SHARED MEMORY
  - NO EVIL LOCK etc… (I fully agree with this post of Joe Armstrong main author of Erlang)
  but instead synchronous lite process with QUEUE MESSAGES paradigm, LOW MEMORY OVERHEAD, FAST SWITCHING context, like the Erlang one in a Pre-Emptive mode. Erlang can deal with hundred of thousand lite process exploding most of the OS thread system. I am quite sure Factor can do the same.

• DISTRIBUTED

  distributed Factor at interpretavive level (REPL) between multiple running VM through a SSL connection (should not be too complex re-using some trick of JEDIT)

• WINDOWS services:

  Shoult be great to have Factor runing as a ’services’ on windows

• MODULES:

  Partial load/unload of image part ???? plateform independant

My ultimate dream: Factor runing on MAEMO with ARM back end compiler. I plan to buy the NOKIA 770 by the end of this year and I really like to use it for Factor coding pending my long (3H) daily transport in the train to go to work. Factor need few sign for write code so it should be possible even with the tactile keyboard.

I also wonder if Factor permit easilly to write some WORD code using a direct virtual assembly level. I have not closely look a VOP and the doc seem limitated in this area, but it should be great to look closer.