March 20, 2026
Grandpa code goes viral
Show HN: We built a terminal-only Bluesky / AT Proto client written in Fortran
Retro shocker: a Bluesky app in Fortran has devs cheering, groaning, and memeing
TLDR: A developer dropped a text-only Bluesky app written in Fortran, sparking equal parts delight and confusion. Commenters memed “fortran > cobol,” praised the quirky throwback, and debated whether the AT Protocol needs apps beyond Twitter-style feeds—making this retro experiment a lightning rod for bigger platform ambitions.
Someone just built a text‑only Bluesky client in Fortran—yes, the grandparent of programming languages—and the internet did a spit take. The thread opens with pure disbelief: “why fortran?” asks one veteran who used it for ocean models, capturing the crowd’s mix of curiosity and nostalgia. For the uninitiated, Bluesky runs on the AT Protocol, a network for social apps; this tool is a throwback terminal interface you drive with commands, not clicks, and it even ropes in some modern muscle with a Rust helper under the hood.
Then the vibe flips from “why?” to “why not?” as fans cheer the audacity. One commenter beams, “The world is a better place for this app,” while another fires the day’s meme cannon with “fortran > cobol,” reigniting the eternal language wars for absolutely no reason other than vibes. There’s a real debate brewing too: a user asks if there are any AT Protocol apps that aren’t just Twitter clones, nudging devs to think beyond timelines and likes.
Between the jokes and jaw‑drops, the community’s split is clear: skeptics question the point, minimalists adore the no‑frills terminal aesthetic, and nostalgics just want to see old‑school code crash the modern party. Verdict: it’s part art project, part flex, and 100% conversation starter—exactly what Show HN lives for.
Key Points
- •Fortransky is a terminal-only Bluesky/AT Protocol client written in Fortran with a Rust-based native decoder for the relay-raw stream.
- •Architecture layers a Fortran TUI over a C libcurl bridge and a Fortran iso_c_binding module that links to a Rust static library for decoding.
- •Two stream modes are supported: Jetstream (JSON over WebSocket) and relay-raw (binary CBOR over WebSocket), with a Rust CLI preferred over Python fallback.
- •Build requires gfortran, CMake, pkg-config, libcurl, and a Rust toolchain (rustc ≥ 1.70); Python cbor2 and websockets are needed for the relay-raw path.
- •Known limitations include a lightweight JSON parser, relay-raw surfacing only post creates, lack of DID-to-handle resolution, and line-based TUI input.