What is Factor written in?
Programming language.
Quick Facts
- Designed by
- Slava Pestov
- First released
- 2003
- Typing
- dynamic
- License
- BSD licenses
- Website
- factorcode.org
About Factor
Factor is a programming language. It is a dynamically typed and garbage-collected language that compiles ahead of time to native machine code. It supports concurrent, functional, object-oriented, and declarative programming.
Factor first appeared in 2003 and was designed by Slava Pestov. Factor is now used mainly in specialized niches and by dedicated communities.
How Factor is implemented
In the Language Lineage dataset, Factor is self-hosting, so its own compiler is written in Factor itself and its runtime is implemented in C++. Reaching self-hosting — where a language is mature enough to compile itself — is a milestone that proves the language can handle a large, real-world program.
Factor in the language family tree
Factor drew on ideas from Forth and Lisp.
Sources: Wikipedia · Wikidata · Official site
Relationship Graph
All directly connected languages. Click any node to navigate to its page.
Runtime Implementation
| Language | Confidence | Notes | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| C++ | 85% | Factor's VM is written in C++. | Source |
Influenced By
- Forth — Factor is a modern concatenative descendant of Forth.
- Lisp — Factor borrows interactive and metaprogramming ideas from Lisp.