A couple thoughts --
First of all, as far as I can tell Factor is one big shared library; so much of
even the core language is implemented in library code that this is truer for
Factor than it is for many languages one encounters.
That brings a cost, however, as I've seen up to this point. It distributes
responsibility for documenting behavior across a community that like most
communiteis is uneven in its fulfillment of responsibility. The greater the
dependency on "just read the code to figure out what's going on", the greater
the barrier to entry to newcomers. I have talked to more than one such person
who has come to take a look and turned away for this very reason. The power
and flexibility is tremendous, no question. But power and flexibility aren't
always the only thing you need.
As a development manager managing a group of about eight individuals, I have to
say that one of the benefits of operating systems and runtimes like .NET and
Java is the shared vocabulary they give a team to develop working practices and
patterns. The value of this obviously varies from situation to situation, but
the greater difficulty that Factor and other flexible and extendible
vocabulary-based development platforms can bring with them in terms of
achieving standards and discipline is a concern that to me is very real and
potentially limits the scope of their adoption. Maybe it was never intended
that Factor become a mainstream language suitable for use in primarily
team-based environments and perhaps I am applying a standard to it that is not
appropriate. But wouldn't it be nice to have a platform that offers the power
and flexibility of Factor that also plays nicely with OSes and other runtime
environments?
Curious what others think about this.
Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2011 06:45:00 -0500
From: leonardne...@gmail.com
To: factor-talk@lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: [Factor-talk] Shared libraries considered harmful
Does anybody ever dream about returning to the early days of Forth, where "the
vocabulary" is "the system"?
http://www.colorforth.com/POL.htm
Does anybody ever dream about software that shares functionality with
"procedure calls", rather than with OLE, SOAP, or .so files?
http://blogs.oracle.com/rvs/entry/what_does_dynamic_linking_and
Is it even necessary to package code into "programs"?
Perhaps "namespaces" provide more flexibility than "programs"?
Does anyone dream about the Factor vocabulary becoming so rich than a "modern"
"OS" is unnecessary?
Cheers,
Leonard
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
All the data continuously generated in your IT infrastructure contains a
definitive record of customers, application performance, security threats,
fraudulent activity, and more. Splunk takes this data and makes sense of it. IT
sense. And common sense. http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-novd2d
_______________________________________________ Factor-talk mailing list
Factor-talk@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/factor-talk
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
All the data continuously generated in your IT infrastructure
contains a definitive record of customers, application performance,
security threats, fraudulent activity, and more. Splunk takes this
data and makes sense of it. IT sense. And common sense.
http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-novd2d
_______________________________________________
Factor-talk mailing list
Factor-talk@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/factor-talk
