> I really love the power of Factor. It is probably the most powerful language I have ever come across.
What does that really mean? The power to compute any function? Or expressive power?
If you mean the former, it is certainly no powerful than any other Turing-complete language. Anything that can compute primitive recursive functions is as powerful as anything else (though not requiring the same time and space resources).
If you mean expressive power, then you seem to be saying that "the most expressively powerful language I have ever seen takes away my ability to focus on the problem, and spend my brain power remembering what is on the stack where".
Even decently well-structured assembly language doesn't have this problem! You do the subroutine frame linkage dance on entry and exit into your function, and then things are nicely at fixed offsets which can be given symbolic names.
What does that really mean? The power to compute any function? Or expressive power?
If you mean the former, it is certainly no powerful than any other Turing-complete language. Anything that can compute primitive recursive functions is as powerful as anything else (though not requiring the same time and space resources).
If you mean expressive power, then you seem to be saying that "the most expressively powerful language I have ever seen takes away my ability to focus on the problem, and spend my brain power remembering what is on the stack where".
Even decently well-structured assembly language doesn't have this problem! You do the subroutine frame linkage dance on entry and exit into your function, and then things are nicely at fixed offsets which can be given symbolic names.