90 pointsby FormerLabFred14 hours ago16 comments
  • cat-turner14 hours ago
    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.
    • FormerLabFred14 hours ago
      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

      • embedding-shape13 hours ago
        > 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?

        • FormerLabFred13 hours ago
          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

          • mountainriver13 hours ago
            This thread makes me happy
          • embedding-shape13 hours ago
            > 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.

            • mathieudombrock5 hours ago
              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.
              • embedding-shape2 hours ago
                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.
          • hedora11 hours ago
            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.)

            • FormerLabFred3 hours ago
              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 :)

      • Melatonic4 hours ago
        How do COBOL and Fortran compare for something like this ?
        • FormerLabFred3 hours ago
          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)

    • enriquto14 hours ago
      > 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.

      • FormerLabFred13 hours ago
        Fortran will survive the cockroaches even, when the world 404s
      • pklausler13 hours ago
        Your code will work unchanged until you try to change compilers or your compiler adopts a J3 breaking change to the language.
        • kergonath12 hours ago
          > 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.

      • deadbabe8 hours ago
        Great, can we see some benchmarks?
        • FormerLabFred3 hours ago
          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

    • pklausler14 hours ago
      maybe they weren't really concerned about portability or a decent standard?
      • FormerLabFred13 hours ago
        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

  • lzhgusapp5 hours ago
    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.
    • FormerLabFred4 hours ago
      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 :)

  • zoom66287 hours ago
    Brilliant in every possible way. Fortran was first language I learnt at high school in its "PORTRAN" variant.
    • FormerLabFred4 hours ago
      :) 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 :)

  • h4ch112 hours ago
    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?

    • FormerLabFred12 hours ago
      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.

  • hk133713 hours ago
    Are there any other AT protocol apps that aren’t derivatives of bluesky? By that I mean, not social media feed related, twitter clone.
    • iameli13 hours ago
      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/

      • FormerLabFred12 hours ago
        AT conference in a couple of days. In Vancouver. Bet they are all there and the rest of the AT bunch.
    • FormerLabFred12 hours ago
      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 :)

      • linolevan12 hours ago
        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!

    • tjuene12 hours ago
      i am currently working on a dropbox alternative: https://dropb.at
      • Hamuko5 minutes ago
        How do you plan on differentiating it from just a trivial FTP account that's mounted locally with curlftpfs and has files in a SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem?
    • 12 hours ago
      undefined
  • nerdypepper9 hours ago
    y'all gotta throw this up on https://tangled.org ;)
  • isodev7 hours ago
    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.

  • uberdru13 hours ago
    The world is a better place for this app. Wonderful!
    • FormerLabFred13 hours ago
      :) 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

  • Ashkaan6 hours ago
    Oh this is cool
  • arunakt5 hours ago
    thats COBOL :)
  • blundergoat14 hours ago
    fortran > cobol
  • DaleBiagio11 hours ago
    [dead]
  • dualblocksgame11 hours ago
    [dead]
  • aimarketintel10 hours ago
    [flagged]
  • patapim12 hours ago
    [flagged]
    • ccmcarey11 hours ago
      AI slop comment
      • dymk10 hours ago
        HN is getting legitimately difficult to use with how much AI spam has been flooding the comment section recently
  • youhai6 hours ago
    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.