Factor: an extensible interactive language
Google Tech TalksOctober 27, 2008ABSTRACTFactor is a general-purpose programming language which has been in development for a little over five years and is influenced by Forth, Lisp, and Smalltalk. Factor takes the best ideas from Forth -- simplicity, succinct code, emphasis on interactive testing, meta-programming -- and brings modern high-level language features such as garbage collection, object orientation, and functional programming familiar to users of languages such as Python and JavaScript. Recognizing that no programming language is an island, Factor is portable, ships with a full-featured standard library, deploys stand-alone binaries, and interoperates with C and Objective-C.In this talk, I will give the rationale for Factor's creation, present an overview of the language, and show how Factor can be used to solve real-world problems with a minimum of fuss. At the same time, I will emphasize Factor's extensible syntax, meta-programming and reflection capabilities, and show that these features, which are unheard of in the world of mainstream programming languages, make programs easier to write, more robust, and fun.Speaker: Slava PestovSlava was born in the former USSR and emigrated to New Zealand at the age of 7. He moved to Ottawa, Canada when he was 18 to study for a Bachelors and Masters degree in Mathematics. He now resides in Minneapolis, Minnesota. An early adopter of Java, Slava wrote the popular jEdit text editor, then went on to design and implement the Factor programming language. At his day job he hacks on web apps, optimizing compilers, garbage collectors, and everything in between.
Channel: People & Blogs
Uploaded: November 30, 1999 at 12:00 am
Author: googletechtalks
Length: 36:39
Rating: 4.76
Views: 11983
Tags: education engedu google googletechtalks talk talks techtalk techtalks
Video Comments
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bootiack (November 30, 1999 at 12:00 am)
I remember mccarthy put smak down on ruby by asking his commentator if it was neccesary to iterate each time to do xyz in ruby. Guy said yes. Mccarthy then said ruby is not where lisp was in 1960.
leimy2k (November 30, 1999 at 12:00 am)
Haskell doesn't *really* have this problem. Classes are groupings of functions, and you can later make things instances of those classes by defining functions of that class for your new object.I don't see a major advantage yet to factor, but the Forthiness is neat.
cronin1024 (November 30, 1999 at 12:00 am)
boa constructor... nice :)
nathanjohnyoungman (November 30, 1999 at 12:00 am)
Thanks for the great overview of the Factor language. One thing, I should've clicked "watch in high quality" to make the editor screens more readable.Concerning scope and closures, Python 3.0 adds "nonlocal" and Ruby 1.9.x is adding block-level scoping.
jankoM2 (November 30, 1999 at 12:00 am)
Great talk! |
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