Factor is a dynamic stack-based programming language. It was originally conceived as an experiment to create a stack-based language practical for modern programming tasks. It was inspired by earlier stack-based languages like Forth and Joy.
Factor programs look very different from programs in most other programming languages. At the most basic level,function calls and arithmetic use postfix syntax, rather than prefix or infix as in most programming languages. Factor provides local variables, but they are used in only a small minority of procedures because its language features allow most code to be comfortably written in a point-free style.
Here’s our recommended free tutorials to learn Factor.
1. Factor tutorial by Andrea Ferretti
This tutorial will guide you through the basics of Factor so you can appreciate its simplicity and power. The author assumes you are familiar with a functional programming language.
2. Learn Factor in Y minutes by hyphz
Take a whirlwind tour of Factor.
3. Your first program by Factor Code
In this tutorial, you’ll write a simple Factor program which prompts the user to enter a word, and tests if it is a palindrome (that is, the word is spelled the same backwards and forwards).
You will learn about basic Factor development tools.
4. Factor: an extensible interactive language by GoogleTechTalks
We don’t normally include videos in our tutorials recommendations, but this one is very informative.
All tutorials in this series:
| Free Programming Tutorials | |
|---|---|
| Java | General-purpose, concurrent, class-based, object-oriented, high-level language |
| C | General-purpose, procedural, portable, high-level language |
| Python | General-purpose, structured, powerful language |
| C++ | General-purpose, portable, free-form, multi-paradigm language |
| C# | Combines the power and flexibility of C++ with the simplicity of Visual Basic |
| JavaScript | Interpreted, prototype-based, scripting language |
| PHP | PHP has been at the helm of the web for many years |
| Ruby | General purpose, scripting, structured, flexible, fully object-oriented language |
| Assembly | As close to writing machine code without writing in pure hexadecimal |
| Swift | Powerful and intuitive general-purpose programming language |
| Groovy | Powerful, optionally typed and dynamic language |
| Go | Compiled, statically typed programming language |
| Pascal | Imperative and procedural language designed in the late 1960s |
| Perl | High-level, general-purpose, interpreted, scripting, dynamic language |
| R | De facto standard among statisticians and data analysts |
| COBOL | Common Business-Oriented Language |
| Scala | Modern, object-functional, multi-paradigm, Java-based language |
| Fortran | The first high-level language, using the first compiler |
| Scratch | Visual programming language designed for 8-16 year-old children |
| Lua | Designed as an embeddable scripting language |
| Logo | Dialect of Lisp that features interactivity, modularity, extensibility |
| Rust | Ideal for systems, embedded, and other performance critical code |
| Lisp | Unique features - excellent to study programming constructs |
| Ada | ALGOL-like programming language, extended from Pascal and others |
| Haskell | Standardized, general-purpose, polymorphically, statically typed language |
| Scheme | General-purpose, functional, language descended from Lisp and Algol |
| Prolog | General purpose, declarative, logic programming language |
| Forth | Imperative stack-based programming language |
| Clojure | Dialect of the Lisp programming language |
| Julia | High-level, high-performance language for technical computing |
| SQL | Access and manipulate data held in a relational database management system |
| Erlang | General-purpose, concurrent, declarative, functional language |
| VimL | Powerful scripting language of the Vim editor |
| OCaml | General-purpose, powerful, high-level language |
| Awk | Versatile language designed for pattern scanning and processing |
| Racket | Platform for programming language design and implementation |
| BASIC | Family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages |
| CoffeeScript | A very succinct programming language that transcompiles into JavaScript |
| LaTeX | Professional document preparation system and document markup language |
| Elixir | Relatively new functional language that runs on the Erlang virtual machine |
| Dart | Client-optimized programming language for fast apps |
| ABAP | Advanced Business Application Programming |
| F# | General purpose, strongly typed, multi-paradigm language. Part of ML |
| Chapel | Parallel-programming language in development at Cray Inc. |
| Dylan | Multi-paradigm language, supports functional & object-oriented programming |
| D | General-purpose systems programming language with a C-like syntax |
| Solidity | Object-oriented, high-level language for implementing smart contracts |
| XML | Set of rules for defining semantic tags that describe the structure and meaning |
| Vala | Object-oriented language with a self-hosting compiler that generates C code |
| ECMAScript | Best known as the language embedded in web browsers |
| Kotlin | Statically typed, general-purpose programming language with type inference |
| TypeScript | Strict syntactical superset of JavaScript, adding optional static typing |
| Markdown | Plain text formatting syntax designed to be easy-to-read and easy-to-write |
| Pike | Interpreted, general-purpose, high-level, cross-platform, dynamic language |
| HTML | HyperText Markup Language |
| Factor | Dynamic stack-based language |
| Objective-C | General purpose language which is a superset of C |
| Standard ML | One of the two main dialects of the ML language |
| Alice | Educational language with an integrated development environment |
| Agda | Dependently typed functional language based on intuitionistic type theory |
| Icon | High-level, general-purpose language |
| PureScript | Small strongly, statically typed language with expressive types |
| Tcl | Dynamic language based on concepts of Lisp, C, and Unix shells |
| Eiffel | Object-oriented language |
| ClojureScript | Compiler for Clojure that targets JavaScript |
| QML | Hierarchical declarative language for user interface layout with a syntax to JSON |
| VHDL | Very High Speed Integrated Circuit Hardware Description Language |
| OpenCL | Open Computing Language |
| Elm | Functional language that compiles to JavaScript |
| Haml | HTML Abstraction Markup Language |
| J | Array programming language based primarily on APL |
| LabVIEW | Designed to enable domain experts to build power systems quickly |
| Hack | For the HipHop Virtual Machine (HHVM), created as a dialect of PHP |
| Imba | Full-stack language that compiles to performant JavaScript |
| V | Statically typed compiled language to build maintainable software |
| PostScript | Page description language in electronic and desktop publishing |
| Arduino | Inexpensive, flexible, open source microcontroller platform |
| Nim | Statically typed compiled systems language with syntax resembling Python |
| Emacs Lisp | A dialect of the Lisp programming language. |
| Octave | High-level language, primarily intended for numerical computations |
| Bash | ‘Bourne-Again-SHell’ is both a shell and programming language |
| Limbo | Designed for applications running distributed systems on small computers |
| CSS | CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) specifies a web page’s appearance |
| Raku | Member of the Perl family of programming languages |
| Coq | Dependently typed language similar to Agda, Idris, F*, Lean, and others |