Introducing Factor

I have known about Factor for some time now and have played around with it. I haven't used it to do any serious projects yet (but i'm hoping to . In this post I will try to highlight the things I think makes Factor worth-while.

Features

• Good Platform Support - Factor supports the following major platforms:
  
  • Linux
  • FreeBSD
  • OpenBSD
  • NetBSD
  • Solaris
  • Mac OS X
  • Windows
• Compiler - Factor has a compiler which compiles Factor words to machine-executable binary code. This means that your Factor code executes relatively fast.
• Factor UI - Factor comes with a GUI that allows you to browse documentation, write and debug code interactively, etc.
• Libraries - The Factor programming environment comes with a lot of libraries that can be used to solve common problems easily, without needing to write the functionality from scratch.
• C-Bindings - Factor also includes C-bindings for a lot of existing c-libraries, including (but not limited to):
  
  • PostgreSQL
  • OpenSSL
  • OpenLDAP
  • ... and more
• Easy-to-Use FFI - Factor has a very easy-to-use foreign-function interface (FFI) that allows you to write bindings to existing C-libraries of your own. This is a very important feature to me and I consider it a must in any serios development platform. (you can find a simple tutorial on using the Factor FFi here.)
• Online, Integrated Documentation - The Factor UI allows you to browse all the documentation for Factor easily. It is cross-linked documentation, which means you can easily navigate the documentation and you always have the documentation with you, even when you have no internet connection. The documentation is also thorough, but it needs to better organized.
• GUI Widgets - Factor provides mechanisms for writing GUI applications using its built in GUI widgets.

Getting and Installing Factor is EASY

Following the instructions on the Factor website is simple and in a few steps you can have a working factor system installed on your PC. It usually takes me about 10 minutes to clone the git repo to my local machine, do a make, and bootstrap the Factor image.

Community

One very important thing to me is that any development platform should have a friendly online-community, that helps newcomers get into gear with the development platform.

Factor has a small community, but they are very friendly and always answered my questions, or pointed me to documentation that could help.

There are a few blogs for Factor (which can be viewed here) and also an IRC channel on irc.freenode.org named #concatenative that can be used to communicate with other Factor programmers.

Factor is Active

Factor is actively maintained and improved by a few dedicated people. This is also important because you know that you are working with a technology that will always improve. Factor has been around for about 5 years and hopefully it will be available for quite a long time.

Conclusion

Factor is an awsome development platform and language and it has a great package to offer developers. Hopefully I have said enough to convince you to take a look at Factor and join the evolution

|| zenHacker_rouan ||