Building a TUI in Fortran is genuinely impressive. The AT Protocol's HTTP/JSON API is well-suited for this kind of thing since you don't need a browser runtime — just HTTP calls and terminal rendering.
Curious about the rendering approach. Are you doing the TUI layout with raw ANSI escape codes or using a Fortran curses binding? The challenge with terminal clients for social feeds is usually the text reflow when the terminal resizes, since you're essentially building a responsive layout engine with escape sequences.
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.
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.
Building a TUI in Fortran is genuinely impressive. The AT Protocol's HTTP/JSON API is well-suited for this kind of thing since you don't need a browser runtime — just HTTP calls and terminal rendering.
Curious about the rendering approach. Are you doing the TUI layout with raw ANSI escape codes or using a Fortran curses binding? The challenge with terminal clients for social feeds is usually the text reflow when the terminal resizes, since you're essentially building a responsive layout engine with escape sequences.
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
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
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
This thread makes me happy
> 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.
> 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.
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
fortran > cobol
> forever
fortran .GT. cobol