# Factor programming language 14 Hacker News commenters recommended Factor programming language and 0 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 7 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule. **Verdict:** People recommend Factor, a free concatenative language, for its Lisp-like interactive development, metaprogramming and beautiful code. ## Why people recommend it - Loved by longtime users (3 comments): "For quite a while it was my go-to language for implementing things." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46237753)) "played with factor for a while in 2009 and loved the language" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46229703)) "absolutely ruined me for every thing else" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46220734)) - Lisp-like features and metaprogramming (2 comments): "It has a lot of the niceties that I like about Common Lisp, like restarting on errors and the compiled-but-interactive development approach." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46223381)) "has amazing metaprogramming features inspired by Lisp and Smalltalk" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47891014)) - Modern concatenative language design (2 comments): "you really want an APL-family language or a modern concatenative language like Factor" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48378198)) "Concatenative languages like Factor and Forth are very token-efficient in theory." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46585757)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Rust](https://hackerapproved.com/p/rust.md): 2039 recommend - [Go](https://hackerapproved.com/p/go-programming-language.md): 1254 recommend - [Python](https://hackerapproved.com/p/python.md): 1067 recommend - [Zig](https://hackerapproved.com/p/zig.md): 743 recommend - [TypeScript](https://hackerapproved.com/p/typescript.md): 574 recommend ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Factor programming language", https://hackerapproved.com/p/factor-programming-language/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).