Love seeing niche Show HN projects like this. The choice of Fortran is wild but that's what makes it fun. As someone building small Mac utilities, I appreciate any project that proves you don't need a massive stack to ship something useful.
out of curiosity, why fortran? no disrespect. I wrote a lot of scientific software in the earlier days of my career and I learned fortran to update ocean modeling software.
We built Cobolsky. Will go public soon.
Parallelly too curious on Fortran. The world is better with a Fortran-based social network client in it :)
When we are building the feed composer, in next version, Fortran will be great for the algorithm etc.
Keeping the ancient languages alive. I built some Cobol stuff many years ago. Back at it again. Rusty.
Both Cobolsky and Fortransky looks great on Swordfish90’s cool-retro-term, but we are building our own terminal for Fortransky too. There is a blog post with screenshots over at Patreon/formerlab
It's part of the lineage, yeah, probably started with Algol though? Fast I guess is always nice, but I'm not sure that's enough to keep it alive solely for that, at least to me.
I'd agree with all of those reasons! I do so myself as well, was just specifically curious about the "The world is better with a Fortran-based social network client in it" part. Don't get me wrong, I've spent too many nights learning "dead" languages too, but never with the idea that the world would be better if I published more code in these dead languages, it's just for my own gratification and learnings.
I came here to suggest COBOL as a better fit, then saw your comment a few levels up in this thread.
Out of curiosity, does your implementation use CODASYL?
(For people that don't pay much attention to historical software systems, most CODASYL implementations were similar to JSON document databases, so going that way isn't as crazy as it sounds.)
why not? the language is straightforward and loops are fast. It is portable and your code will work unchanged for the next 50 years. It may be a bit verbose, but that's not a big deal with today's tooling.
> your compiler adopts a J3 breaking change to the language
Like all the 3 of them they added in the last 30 years, and that compiler vendors are not enforcing anyway because they don’t want to annoy their users?
Windows’ backward compatibility is a joke compared to Fortran.
From my experience building browser automation tools, the biggest challenge with most Chromium-based solutions is that their TLS fingerprint is a dead giveaway. Firefox-based approaches tend to fare much better against JA3/JA4 fingerprinting.
The key insight is moving fingerprint spoofing from the JS level (which is itself detectable) down to the native C++ level. It's a fundamentally different approach.
Love seeing niche Show HN projects like this. The choice of Fortran is wild but that's what makes it fun. As someone building small Mac utilities, I appreciate any project that proves you don't need a massive stack to ship something useful.
Thanks for the feedback!
We got a spec for Assemblersky. Will be a weekend project. Cancel Easter :) And probably Midsummer too…
We got image composer and decoder plugged in in dev env, but will let this first open version breathe first. ASCII or early Apple algo
Fortran-fast feed builder probably in next open version. It crunches fast
Morning, 9 o’clock in Sweden, coffee and check-the-feed-on- Fortransky-time :)
out of curiosity, why fortran? no disrespect. I wrote a lot of scientific software in the earlier days of my career and I learned fortran to update ocean modeling software.
You are not the first one to ask :)
We built Cobolsky. Will go public soon. Parallelly too curious on Fortran. The world is better with a Fortran-based social network client in it :)
When we are building the feed composer, in next version, Fortran will be great for the algorithm etc.
Keeping the ancient languages alive. I built some Cobol stuff many years ago. Back at it again. Rusty.
Both Cobolsky and Fortransky looks great on Swordfish90’s cool-retro-term, but we are building our own terminal for Fortransky too. There is a blog post with screenshots over at Patreon/formerlab
Can’t get enough Fortran
> The world is better with a Fortran-based social network client in it
If you don't mind me asking, why is the world better with more Fortran-based software?
Our modern languages are built on it, and it’s incredibly fast,
so it deserves to be kept alive. We owe a great deal to the people who wrote it in the 1950s I guess
> Our modern languages are built on it
It's part of the lineage, yeah, probably started with Algol though? Fast I guess is always nice, but I'm not sure that's enough to keep it alive solely for that, at least to me.
I think the best answer you're really going to get here is that it's cool and fun to learn and use old languages.
I'd agree with all of those reasons! I do so myself as well, was just specifically curious about the "The world is better with a Fortran-based social network client in it" part. Don't get me wrong, I've spent too many nights learning "dead" languages too, but never with the idea that the world would be better if I published more code in these dead languages, it's just for my own gratification and learnings.
This thread makes me happy
I came here to suggest COBOL as a better fit, then saw your comment a few levels up in this thread.
Out of curiosity, does your implementation use CODASYL?
(For people that don't pay much attention to historical software systems, most CODASYL implementations were similar to JSON document databases, so going that way isn't as crazy as it sounds.)
Great comment! Thanks!
No CODASYL, the JSON parser is hand-rolled Fortran with a depth-tracking key scanner
CODASYL not a crazy direction for the feed composer
Got more depth to explore here, still early :)
How do COBOL and Fortran compare for something like this ?
COBOL is more painful, Fortran better.
Good you raised the topic, can write a blog post on it when we ship Cobolsky. Will be a proof of concept repo. Fortransky is the one
(If AT Proto did fixed-width records instead of JSON, COBOL would be formidable)
> why fortran?
why not? the language is straightforward and loops are fast. It is portable and your code will work unchanged for the next 50 years. It may be a bit verbose, but that's not a big deal with today's tooling.
Fortran will survive the cockroaches even, when the world 404s
Your code will work unchanged until you try to change compilers or your compiler adopts a J3 breaking change to the language.
> your compiler adopts a J3 breaking change to the language
Like all the 3 of them they added in the last 30 years, and that compiler vendors are not enforcing anyway because they don’t want to annoy their users?
Windows’ backward compatibility is a joke compared to Fortran.
Great, can we see some benchmarks?
Cobolsky holds the record for most surprised looks per line of code :)
Fortransky benchmarks pending
the feed scorer will have real numbers worth reporting
Whenever time allows in future: Fortran vs Go vs Python
maybe they weren't really concerned about portability or a decent standard?
It’s keyboard navigation only, and we got the Bluesky firehose raw straight into the Rust decoder. Or we switch mode to Jetstream with m+EnTER :)
You hit l+ENTER to like a post. If anyone replies from Bluesky, we hit n+ENTER and see the notifs. And so on
Fortransky is 70% Fortran, rest is Rust, C and a tiny Python helper
Brilliant in every possible way. Fortran was first language I learnt at high school in its "PORTRAN" variant.
:) We tried Abacus Fortran on the C64 back in the days and were allowed to stay indoors during breaks doing Basic stuff too on school computer.
One of the guys wrote 8xxROM some 10 years later.
Today known as U−Boot :)
It's always nice to see production codebases in languages that you've never used but are interested in.
Tangential, but to the author, are there any FORTRAN codebases you feel are well designed?
Good reminder to dig around. Will check. We picked up the Fortran manual and just went for it.
The original Manual exists as a PDF. Was it in a Stuttgart uni URL? Just a search away.
Late in Sweden, gotta Fortran tomorrow. Happy to continue discussion here tomorrow.
Are there any other AT protocol apps that aren’t derivatives of bluesky? By that I mean, not social media feed related, twitter clone.
Yep lots! Mine is a livestreaming service: https://stream.place
Also a great blogging platform: https://leaflet.pub
Here's a goal tracker: https://goals.garden
This one just dropped recently; it's 44 different atproto-related apps with a cyberpunk theme: https://www.aetheros.computer/
Lots others mentioned here: https://blueskydirectory.com/
AT conference in a couple of days. In Vancouver. Bet they are all there and the rest of the AT bunch.
Don’t know if people are building GitHub-like systems, offline-first app sync etc
Many devs reuse schema and write some twitter/bsky clone
Kind of search engine for my Blueaky likes
Gotta get off the timeline, germ has a messaging app, then there is Tangled and some more
We do Fortransky and Cobolsky now, got more ideas for the protocol than time :)
https://tangled.org/ <--- GitHub on ATProto
that's all I'm aware of
(edit) Oops, just saw that you mentioned it, confused by your first line then. Tangled is awesome!
i am currently working on a dropbox alternative: https://dropb.at
y'all gotta throw this up on https://tangled.org ;)
The world is a better place for this app. Wonderful!
:) I mean there are still some people alive out there who never saw a web UI when beginning dev. They get a bit nostalgic, missing their 286
It’s fun and it is appreciated by them, and the young ones who are curious
On ATProto: it’s funny how we never learn the lesson:
- VCs band together to fund something shiny.
- Devs love shiny, helping spread the something.
- VCs enschitify it to get their coins back.
Oh this is cool
thats COBOL :)
fortran > cobol
fortran .GT. cobol
> forever
From my experience building browser automation tools, the biggest challenge with most Chromium-based solutions is that their TLS fingerprint is a dead giveaway. Firefox-based approaches tend to fare much better against JA3/JA4 fingerprinting.
The key insight is moving fingerprint spoofing from the JS level (which is itself detectable) down to the native C++ level. It's a fundamentally different approach.
Multiple tabs open? :)