Talk:Factor (programming language)

Notability

Is this language really notable? There isn't much information about it besides from their own site, a few blogs, and random content aggregators. 64.191.188.252 (talk) 18:03, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it is notable. Factor is the product of 6 years of work, is the work of over 30 people and has been mentioned in at least two academic papers. It's not helpful to go around to articles about programming languages and call them non-notable. LittleDan^talk 02:39, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

How long it has been around is irrelevant. How many people it is the work of is irrelevant (my website is the work of hundreds of people, but it does not have its own Wikipedia article). Academics invent programming languages all the time; most of them are non-notable. I'm not convinced Factor is notable.

You're an Asshole. Find a topic that you know to fuck with. 139.80.123.36 (talk) 01:12, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Furthermore, I don't appreciate the hostility of your tone. Assume good faith. I put all of those tags because Wikipedia is overrun with pet project programming languages that don't really meet the notability criteria. I have placed the tag back on this article, please do not remove it without better evidence. 64.191.188.252 (talk) 15:12, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

If everything is irrelevant, then you are just trolling Wikipedia. And for the people who take you serious: One evidence is "Factor includes a large standard library". As can be seen here: http://docs.factorcode.org/content/article-vocab-index.html --Stesch (talk) 08:43, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

I have restored the notability tag. After some more googling I still have not found much of what I would call reliable, secondary sources about Factor. Besides the Factor homepage there is the Factor mailing list, there is the planet-factor Atom/RSS aggregator, there is a mostly empty subreddit, there is some content at the concatenative wiki. Factor gets mentioned quite a bit at the programming subreddit. Factor seems to get mentioned here and there, and the standard library does look impressive. I am now borderline convinced of the notability of the language. However, I still would like to see some secondary sources added to the article, if only to avoid having this discussion again. —Tobias Bergemann (talk) 11:20, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Google is interested: Google Tech Talk "Factor: an extensible interactive language" (Link in the "External links" list.) --Stesch (talk) 13:52, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

I just noticed that the notability of the language had been questioned on this very page before but that that discussion had apparently been seen as "useless and harmful". —Tobias Bergemann (talk) 13:14, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Factor has influenced at least two other programming languages, Cat and Concat. Cat has an article whose notability is not questioned, even though it has had much less code written in it and has a much less developed implementation. Concat was described in a paper published in July at an international computer science conference. Both of these are now cited in the article. It seems that these should imply notability. LittleDan^talk 16:48, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Re: "Cat has an article whose notability is not questioned". Well, the notability of Cat could be questioned as the article has very much the same problem as this article as there are no references to secondary sources that would help establish notability.

Don't get me wrong: the technology behind Factor and its VM are impressive technological achievements. Still, I found it hard to find articles on Factor that were not written by either Slava Pestov, Phil Dawes, or Daniel Ehrenberg, who in my eyes are too close to Factor to be considered secondary sources.

Anyway, as I wrote above I am now convinced that Factor is notable. I won't revert if anybody removes the notability tag from the article again. — Tobias Bergemann (talk) 07:28, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Factor creator Slava Pestov gave a talk at the Boston Lisp Conference: http://groups.google.com/group/plt-scheme/browse_thread/thread/ab773a06e6fd73cf?fwc=2 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.230.164.105 (talk) 04:56, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Interpreted language?

Quote: "Factor was originally only interpreted, but it can now also be compiled. The compiler is written entirely in Factor, and it does not output standalone executables but rather merely a faster image."

So in other words....the compiler optimizes the code, which is still in Factor? Or am I missing something here? Bjelleklang - talk Bug Me 23:59, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

No, the compiler converts Factor into machine code (currently supporting PPC, x86, x86-64 and ARM), which is nevertheless stored in the image with non-compiled Factor code. Maybe the wording was unclear. LittleDan^talk 17:21, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

History

should a section on history be added to the article? I heard that factor was made with the intention of being used for a game http://factorcode.org/pics/snap2.png 203.158.58.75 (talk) 09:31, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Ideone

External link suggestion: Ideone due to WP:CONFLICT.

To the best of my knowledge Ideone is the only online compiler available for the Factor programming language. Online compilers might be of programmers interest due to several reasons (mobile devices usage, forum integration, programmers testing, programmers forum discussions) it does not google well. Ideone does not require registration. Some third party site statistics: xmarks, alexa, kuszi (talk) 13:30, 5 September 2010 (UTC).

Notability 2

I suggest that you just google "Factor programming language". In my opinion, those results are sufficient and it certainly does not need a separate Wikipedia page. Maybe add it to some programming language list and link to homepage? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.155.33.248 (talk) 15:33, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

It appears that the Factor article has been declared non-notable again. I don't understand why this is. There have not been more secondary sources on Factor, but there are now peer-reviewed academic publications on Factor in addition to the secondary mentions that have already existed. How has Factor become less notable in this time? LittleDan^talk 19:03, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

As I wrote in this edit summary, the Diggins source seems to be reliable and have substantial coverage, but it's barely used. Relies on primary sources elsewhere, and lots of unsourced material. Maybe after the referencing problems are fixed notability will be obvious. --Pnm (talk) 01:04, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Edit: my previous entry was a bit harsh, but in a nutshell: the notability rules should be modernized. Factor is an well established and advanced programming language, one of the most modern ones today. It plays in the same league as Clojure and REBOL, other languages beamed back from the near future. Please read into the matter in a bit more detail before you judge. This discussion should have never started in the first place since it has absolutely no grounds.

I'm a bit mystified how the list of academic papers with six different authors at the bottom of this article does not establish notability. I actually come from a mathematics background, and as far as I can tell, people don't stick notability tags all over articles about maths subjects just because they don't know much about them yet. Mr Monsanto: you should not be surprised that Factor's web presence is mostly at factorcode.org. It includes a wiki, so maybe people consider adding info to that, rather to blogs. Moreover, you discount anything that appears in a blog post ending up on Planet Factor. Has it occurred to you that interesting articles about Factor get included in the planet's blogroll? So if an author writes articles about the language and then they subsequently get aggregated, that means that they "shouldn't count" as interest across the internet? Maybe you mistakenly believe that linking to something gives Planet Factor some sort of ownership of the material to which it links? Rswarbrick (talk) 01:16, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

This post has a nice testimonial,

http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=26979561

--FGrose (talk) 01:30, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Some useful reading here:

• General notability guideline
• No original research (particularly primary, secondary, and tertiary sources)
• Primary sources and statements about living persons
• Reliable sources

Most of the sources are closely affiliated with the topic (primary). Only two of the references are not (secondary). Primary sources don't indicate notability. This makes sense, actually. A couple people can write all they want about their own ideas. If their own writing is published in academic journals, maybe it's great research, but it doesn't belong in Wikipedia until other people write substantial amounts about it, and that material is also published in reliable sources. (This means blog posts are usually out, but if blog posts link to magazine articles, published theses, academic articles, of course the linked content can be used.) There are probably thousands of programming languages. I think this one probably meets Wikipedia's guidelines for inclusion. However, the article needs to:

1. Attribute its statements to reliable, secondary sources
2. Use reliable primary sources for straightforward, descriptive statements, without adding analysis or synthesis
3. Be especially careful in statements about living persons

--Pnm (talk) 04:17, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

The real reason Factor is "not notable" to Wikipedians is that Factor has nothing to do with pornographic Japanese cartoons. Add a "hentai/ecchi" angle to Factor and it will suddenly be very notable to the point of keyboards getting sticky. Alternatively you could instead make it about video games. There's more space wasted on Wikipedia for minor characters in Sonic the Hedgehog games than there is actual useful information. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.175.36.236 (talk) 05:49, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

So... aren't you the equivalent contributors for Factor? Find the sources which have written about it. --Pnm (talk) 16:27, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

It would be nice if Wikipedia could be purely a collection of information not derived at all from sources by the people involved, but that's not always possible. If you look at the citations for the Python article, a large proportion of them are to the main Python website or written by Python developers, and almost all of them are written by Python users. Another article which lacks secondary sources is exec (operating system); only three sources are cited, and all of these were written by developers or standardizers of Unix systems. There have been many blog posts written by Factor users who are not involved in the core development, and even a couple university classes taught which incorporated the Factor language. Code in Factor is present in Wikibooks and and Rosettacode, and it is listed as a solution language in Project Euler; syntax highlighting for Factor is provided by Github and many other things. Would providing proof of these help the page's notability? I think they are facts that would be rather boring to list in the article; the exec article does not go to great lengths to talk about how many university OS courses explain how to use it. Or are they insufficient because they haven't been printed on paper? LittleDan^talk 20:38, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Do you think this article adds too much synthesis, or does anything bad with statements about living persons? LittleDan^talk 20:42, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Re the living persons, I think the guidelines are there to prevent people advertising themselves (or close associates) or libelling others. The only references I notice here are those about Slava, which are factual and don't fall into either category. So I would be surprised if anyone thought there was a problem with them. Rswarbrick (talk) 10:58, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

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