Factor programming language
Hacker ApprovedShares rank 82 of 163 programming languages by recommenders
People recommend Factor, a free concatenative language, for its Lisp-like interactive development, metaprogramming and beautiful code.
People recommend Factor, a free concatenative language, for its Lisp-like interactive development, metaprogramming and beautiful code.
14 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 14
- criticize it
- 0
- approval share
- 100%
Recommended in 7 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 14 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- Nobody criticizes itNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 7 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Loved by longtime users
“For quite a while it was my go-to language for implementing things.”
Comment from 11 Dec 2025 in “Factor 0.101 now available” “played with factor for a while in 2009 and loved the language”
Comment from 11 Dec 2025 in “Factor 0.101 now available” “absolutely ruined me for every thing else”
Comment from 10 Dec 2025 in “Factor 0.101 now available” Lisp-like features and metaprogramming
“It has a lot of the niceties that I like about Common Lisp, like restarting on errors and the compiled-but-interactive development approach.”
Comment from 10 Dec 2025 in “Factor 0.101 now available” “has amazing metaprogramming features inspired by Lisp and Smalltalk”
Comment from 24 Apr 2026 in “Spinel: Ruby AOT Native Compiler” Modern concatenative language design
“you really want an APL-family language or a modern concatenative language like Factor”
Comment from 3 Jun 2026 in “HP re-releases classic computer science calculator: The HP-16C” “Concatenative languages like Factor and Forth are very token-efficient in theory.”
Comment from 12 Jan 2026 in “Which programming languages are most token-efficient?”
Other programming languages people recommend
The four most recommended other programming languages, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 163 programming languages, rankedWhat people said
All 15 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“heavily underrated, batteries included language”
“That was an amazingly professional offering in a weird and dusty corner of the programming languages.”
“you really want an APL-family language or a modern concatenative language like Factor”
“a full-featured optimizing compiler and a simpler, faster non-optimizing compiler for eval-like functionality”
“has amazing metaprogramming features inspired by Lisp and Smalltalk”
“Concatenative languages like Factor and Forth are very token-efficient in theory.”
“Arguably Crystal, Odin, Nim, Zig, V, Vale or Factor are even better!”
“a contemporary language to python3 that completely blew Python out of the water”
“For quite a while it was my go-to language for implementing things.”
“played with factor for a while in 2009 and loved the language”
“It has a lot of the niceties that I like about Common Lisp, like restarting on errors and the compiled-but-interactive development approach.”
“absolutely ruined me for every thing else”
“Factor supports ARM64 now? Nice.”
“Factor code can be extremely beautiful”
“i also love joy and factor”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.