Slashdot Mirror
Carl Sassenrath Talks About REBOL
Rebelos writes: "REBOL is a powerful software technology (ever thought that you could write a full blown GUI Instant Messenger in only 7 KB of source code?) optimized specifically for Internet usage. Rebol Tech, the company behind REBOL, consists of only 10 people and they claim they can compete and go against .NET and Microsoft's dubious plans. Their platform has been ported to 44 operating systems so far! Take a look as to what Carl Sassenrath, ex-AmigaOS/Commodore engineer and founder of Rebol, says at OSNews about the Rebol platform, its deployment, other programming languagees, Microsoft etc." The buzzwords are pretty thick in here, and the ideas are interesting, if a little vague. If the interview makes you curious, check out the previous stories touching on Rebol as well.
I hope this is a joke... Otherwise I am going into the corner to shoot myself once Linux based on VB (Thank you Microsloth) comes out.
And what's this about Perl being 'retired'? There are plenty of websites using CGI with perl code out there, not least Everything2 [everything2.com]. If you're going to present an 'argument', at least research your illustrations.
I can code a full blown GUI Instant Messenger in less than 100 bytes! apt-get install gaim. But seriously, if you can fit that much information in 7kb, hasn't someone already had to basially write the messenger first?
They seem to be able to write such a small executable by building libraries especially for this project. Is anyone else thinking that a similar projet in C by them would have the following line: #include <guiMessenger.h>
Hmmmm, that's some pretty bold claims they make... considering I've never heard of them or their products before...
Has anyone actually USED this that can elaborate on its effectiveness?
From the system side, we will add several new "dialect" engines for 3D graphics, inferencing ("AI"), additional network protocols, advanced sound synthesis, and more.
;-)
Call me cynical but IMHO claiming to make a 44 platform language and then creating "dialects" is shooting yourself in the foot while running a marathon with microsoft, the 1 thing they could really win on is FULL platform independece, this is NOT platform independence
he, next thing we'll see is that you'll have to run the windows version of the client to play online directX games in WINE(X)
Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity
Rebol is an interpreted language, it does not compile into anything. 7 KB will always be 7 KB.
All you need is the 800 KB runtime REBOL library, which is the same for ALL your Rebol applications. This is why REBOL will own your Java and C# crap. Because all its apps are SO SMALL. When the executable Internet, that Microsoft wants to deploy, will come, the C# applications will load slowly from your DSL modem, as they will be several MBs for let's say, a graphics manipulation app. But with REBOL, 7 KB will always be 7 KB ! The REBOL apps will download and run even from a 33.6 kbps modem *instantly*. Because you only download their small source code and interpret them on the fly.
As for "going against .NET", big efforts like that are not about technology, they are about marketing and people. And they are also about the long-term availability and tools support that a large company like Microsoft (or Sun, in the case of Java) brings to the table.
But even technologically, it is an error to confuse a scripting language with a system like .NET or Java. Yes, Rebol, Python, and Perl are much simpler to program than .NET or Java. Yes, they run a few important things somewhat faster. But .NET and Java are natively compiled, fast, general-purpose programming environments with static type checking and large libraries (written in Java itself in the case of Java), and that just makes them much more useful for large-real world problems. You see, another misconception is that the easier you make programming in a language, the more useful it is in real-world applications.
That's a real shame, because other than that, it is really quite impressive. They should think about a Transgaming-like business model, where users subscribe and the code becomes free when there are enough subscribers.
All these friggin ['s and ]'s.... Everybodies got to be original.
How is this any different from perl & tcl/tk? Couldn't the same be accomplished?
Don't think it will ever take off if you ask me...
int func(int a);
func((b += 3, b));
No matter what you think about Microsoft and its practices, the .NET strategy is more likely to attract a wide variety of developers because it allows them to use most any language they want. (.NET has an OS lockin problem, but the 90%/10% ratio is in MS's favor in that case).
REBOL may be extremely cool; I'm going to have to take a look at the language spec. However, I don't think that any single language will ever take over the whole world.
If it weren't for rebol I wouldn't have a 25 line script to grab the stock market closes every day from yahoo.com. If you want to get batches of web pages and parse them for useful information, use rebol. It rocks.
If it were more widely accepted, rebol would make a really sweet web language, too, allowing more control over the interface, with less garbage in the page's source code.
"Look at me, I invented the stove!" -- Ben Franklin
I mean, what happens if you don't happen to like the way that this thing handles TCP connections on your particular platform? You are basically screwed, as not only are underlying routines written in another language, but you don't even get to see the source! I'm shocked that Slashdot would even post such a thing here, considering that the closest analog that I can find to this is VB, and, honestly folks, we do not need more idiots of the using class writing their own AOL Instant Messanger or other crap like that that will probably kill the network I admin.
Is your company running tools written by ma
oh no! not another Perl!
Seriously, people should be more careful advertizing such toy scripting languages. Some managers take their words for real and then force us, developers write serious systems using them. What about concurrency/synchronization? memory management? OO constructs? how efficient are byte manipulations? Does tail recusion eats up stack? It is nice to have 'ftp' as language construct but that does not make it 'Internet' developement language.
Especially considering I've just downloaded the new version of messenger and it weighted 1.6 megs... MSN is going the same path that ICQ went to... small efficient, does the job, to getting bloated, bigger downloads and 3/4 of the stuff you'll NEVER use, all this without giving you the option to have a simple light-memory-usage solution still available (forcing you to go to alternatives or archives sites to download older clients, which eventually will become incompatible with a newer build that will change the protocol.
:) ).
.NET version of messenger has UGLY icons, man, the :) is scary, and you even have one smiley guy on crack (try :-| )
I'll support anything that is not following that path. Things don't have to be BIG to be good, (of course I am talking only software here
On another note, the new
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
Oh yeah - it does not exist. Rebol is proprietary, so why would anyone want to use it?
REBOL has done some real innovation here. Great work! To me, it seems like it is easier to create cool apps (applets) for the web in no-time.
...
Just too bad I have to learn "yet another programming language"
Another fucking messenger. I have
- icq
- aim
- msn
- ym
on my box right now.
Though I see the point. There should be no reason an instant messaging system be over one meg. Lets be honest, you're sending small bits of data between two boxes across the net.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
You're right, it's _not_ another Perl. REBOL code is actually _readable_ by human beings, and consistent in syntax. Too bad about the license, though. *shrug*
(our product) is a powerful new software technology by (our company) that is proprietary, commercial, and not Open Source, but will compete with Microsoft.
We only have 10 employees, and no advertising budget, so with the collapse of the dot-com hype machine I need a new way to generate press to show to venture capital companies.
I seem to recall that REBOL fame didn't even last for 15 minutes the last time around. I guess it still has time on the clock.
-=Maggie Leber=-
...about small development cycles and source files. If that was all it took, there a dozen much more established laguages and tools which should have ousted them long, long ago. It'll take more than YAP to beat the beast....
we speak the way we breathe --Fugazi
This is obvious fiction. Nobody ever had that much fun with VB.
-=Maggie Leber=-
Ever use Delphi? Anyways, I would hardly call that "full blown".
REBOL might be fantastic for all I know. But when I hear some-one say that something "was designed from a meta-circular view of language semantics" that sounds like the perfect description of bullshit to me.
"...we have a partnership that will be putting REBOL onto 30 million desktops within the next few months."
I just had images of millions of AOL cd's dance through my head. With the types of services this provides and their claims to be a .NET alternative, who else could they be partnering up with?
It is indeed a troll but the funny thing is it suspiciously sounds like a VB programming book from 1997 I saw. Microsoft couldn't pay for better marketing. The opening chapter deals with what a great guy Bill Gates is and how, now that Microsoft has blessed us with Visual Basic, all of the tedium associated with programming simply vanishes.
There's even a little remark in there (veiled threat is more like it) about how, if you're a traditional C programmer, you won't enjoy the book and will hate VB, but you'd better read it anyway because you still want to have a job. It's classic stuff.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
Okay, so I downloaded the viewer 362K (so far so good..)
Run the installer, took a few seconds (great!)
Took a look at the demos, only a few seconds to download and view (quick!), and then I quickly lost interest. The demos are rubbish!
Visited some of the other Rebol enabled sites, the demos did not get any better!
I just don't see anybody wanting to write any serious applications for this platform. JNLP the Java web application launching protocol has much better demo applications available. http://java.sun.com/products/javawebstart
Show me a serious application such as a paint program or a game and i'll take this seriously otherwise forget it!
Check out DrScheme from the PLT group. It's "an interactive, integrated, graphical programming environment for the Scheme programming language". It's cross-platform, released under the GPL, and includes cross-platform GUI support (*nix & Windows), a comprehensive help system, a bunch of useful libraries for graphics, Internet, COM access on Windows, etc., as well as some useful applications like a web server, web browser, Gtk interface, a graphical IMAP mail client, and some graphical games.
The underlying Scheme implementation, known as MzScheme, includes a fast interpreter as well as a compiler that can compile to bytecode or native code.
Why would any Slashdotter care about a proprietary language and its proprietary compiler that is far inferior to Perl? Point us to an informative guide to educating newbies on a real scripting language at least. Or if there's no news to post, don't post it.
A sort of basic clone for the good old Amiga. It seems like a cryptic language to me who are used to the C++/java style. The functions reminds me of AMOS, ie there are prebuilt functions for most simple stuff, however writing a simple Instant Messager in Java doesn't require extreme amounts of code either. I wrote an GUI Instant Messager in Java with the most common functions, incl. https connections, udpconnections, tunneling, etc and if I remember correctly it was just around 7000 lines of code in 8 sourcefiles (about 12 classes).
Love or hate Perl, Larry Wall has some interesting thoughts and comments on REBOL.
Mozilla's a nice operating system, but it needs a better browser.
We really need a SPAM moderation, perhaps with a -2 attached to it. I'm really fucking sick of seeing your god-damn ads for your Artificial Minds project. You try to link the stupid thing to any and every topic posted to Slashdot.
After the second such post you're just alienating Slashdot readers that might otherwise have been interested in your project.
For those who don't know what I'm talking about, look at Mentifex's user info:
http://slashdot.org/~Mentifex/
Click some of the links...Notice how every post he's made is an ad for his project, usually completely off-topic for the Slashdot article, but linked in with silly connections (ie. in an XP related post 'Artificial Minds (link included) will not use XP!').
Anyway, to keep THIS post somewhat on-topic, REBOL is a fairly nice language but it will never catch on with the silly greedy-licencing model they have. When is the last time a language that you had to pay royalties to use caught on? (Hint: Never).
Don't forget that our good old /. uses perl.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Oh, yeah...this topic is about programming, isn't it? If young master AC upthread wants eyecandy he's on the wrong site. I'd recommend spankoff.com
-=Maggie Leber=-
Okay, I see absolutely nothing useful here. It is a fat, disturbingly bloated high level language, with no perticular improvment in theory or concept over something such as java, but with even -more- built in functions. Is there anyone else here who would rather see something more interesting than a CEO trying to get his name out?
-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.12 GCS d- s: a-- C++ UL+++ P+ L+++ E--- W+ N+ o K- w-- O M V PS+ PE Y+ PG
check out the Rebol page of existing apps - all pretty small.
They have a desktop/OS app that looks cool but doesnt make much monetary sense to me on a desktop unless you custom design a cheap thin client to run it and only it on.
What does make sense though - is running these little apps on a wireless handheld. Build the Rebol assembler into an ASIC so it runs native code quickly - and let the application server do all the work.
Rebol looks cool but just like most java apps on the desktop are passed over for native code, I dont see this flying. Perhaps if they sought to fill the niche market of weak wireless devices theyd have more success. In either case good luck to them - I havent had the chance to do any cool machine level programming like this since I lost my TI and its various shells.
Ok, here's an example of someone who doesn't really understand what "really sweet" means.
.Net web service to grab the stock market closes from yahoo.com.
u ot esWebSvc.asp
.Net webservice in between the client and the yahoo stock pages.
I found this off the internet, it's a way to use a
http://www.dotnet101.com/articles/art031_StockQ
It's kind of an interesting kludge. You place a
Better yet would simply be if Yahoo(or whoever) provided a web service you could instantiate, pass it the stock you want a quote on and it would return a value. Makes life tremendously simpler and no need for about half the code that was written in the above article.
Enjoy
Looking at some of the text-parsing examples made me cringe...this was not made with Huffman optimization in mind...use "any" "all" "some" instead of "* . ?"!!! Even minor text parsing examples seemed to require way too much code.
Can anyone confirm this? Is text parsing in REBOL best done with regular expressions or some other means?
Take a look at the comments to the osnews.com article. Every frickin' one is incredibly positive and written in the same buzzword-rich, press-release style as the interview itself, extolling the virtues of REBOL. The only non-exuberantly-positive posts are ones asking about negative aspects to which there's no answer.. Is a response like that possible on a fairly moderated messageboard? It looks like the posters are selling the product instead of commenting on their experiences with it...
-Brendan
It can be distrubuted in bytecode, but it can also be compiled just-in-time into an executable that runs natively, without a JVM. This requires a more complete environment on the target machine to support this bootstrap, but then, you could also just distribute the resulting binaries. As an example, there's the Java target for GCC (gcj) which creates actual executables from java source code.
And compiled java is almost as good as compiled C (it won't win most speed tests, but the resulting code is pretty much insulated from the system, protected from buffer overflows, etc.)
Black holes are where the Matrix raised SIGFPE
Sorry, but you don't understand how Java implementations work. When you run "javac", you produce byte code. That byte code gets turned into native code before being executed when it is part of a performance critical section--the native code compiler is part of the Java runtime.
Python, Perl, or Ruby do not have anything comparable: they are implemented as strict byte code interpreters (except for Jython, which piggy-backs on the Java runtime). In fact, the Java approach is better than the kind of batch compilation found in C/C++ because it allows for a lot more optimizations. For example, the JDK inlines code among dynamically loaded components.
As for the libraries and penetration available for Java, do you not think that if Sun had developed and spend untold millions marketing Perl or Python that they would not be in the same position?
Python or Perl are no replacement for Java. With a few exceptions, Java code runs at speeds pretty close to C/C++ under the JDK. Python and Perl implementations are orders of magnitude slower and nobody has figured out how to compile them into efficient code.
It doesnt matter how good the language is, it has to have support, qualified developers (pref. with certification), people running courses for it, and get written up in some mags like Wired that management types are going to read if it is going to become something that mainstream software shops use. Personally I don't see the advantage over say using Java or even Mozilla as a GUI (using XUL) and Perl as a scripting language for this sort of thing.
Any sufficiently advanced man is indistinguishable from God
The Lisp-like language I was referring to is the one listed on this page - look for the heading "The First Known Interpreter". This language is not Lisp as we know it - it used McCarthy's M-expression syntax - and syntactically, it is not the S-expression language that the first interpreter was capable of interpreting. Hence my statement that "the very first computer language interpreter ever was a Lisp interpreter, written in a Lisp-like language".
In "The implementation of Lisp" by McCarthy himself, he describes the following:
This was why I said McCarthy wrote the interpreter as something of a mathematical exercise. He was writing his "universal Lisp function" to illustrate a point in a paper, and didn't even consider that he was writing an interpreter - apparently Steve Russell noticed that. So that's why I said it was written as "something of a mathematical exercise".Do I get that cigar now?
So in other words, they are a company of 10 employees, but they have about $147 billion in capital?
SIGFEH
Instant messaging in just 7K? Yeah. I just did it in Perl. Client and server each in under 1000 bytes, basic messaging.
I betcha if I throw in a GUI via Perl/Tk it'll bloat to 7k. Maybe.
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
I'm running eight different rebol apps on my system all at the same time. Each weighs in at between 6 and 12 MBytes. That's waay too much for such primitive apps (like that calculator using up 6,804K ). With such memory consumption this thing just eats memory like peanuts more so than Java. That's why I find Java unacceptable and that's why I think this stuff is crap too.
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
And to be slightly on topic, I don't know much about Rebol but I love the name "Carl Sassenrath". It conjures up the image of a bearded genius scientist type :).
Interesting point - why not just do this with Perl/Tk (for the interface) and Perl on the server?
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Thats odd, I was able to write a full-blown chat server in python, multithreaded non-blocking, with various commands and such, in less then half a KB of source (191 lines of code, to be exact)...
Languages such as python and perl are designed for this sort of thing - they have amazing libraries that let you concentrate on your app and its problems.
Rebol is not open sourced, yes?
Alternatives that are amazingly powerful exist, yes? And these alternatives are open source... and have huge communities behind them...
I'm all for Yet-Another-New-Language attempts, but please, make it open! Otherwise its just as bad as C#...
man is machine
http://finance.yahoo.com/d/quotes.csv?s=MSFT+ORCL+ INTC&f=sl1d1t1c1ohgv&e=.csv
6 3. 63,62.08,32257100
1 4. 08,13.40,46623900
2 6. 50,25.55,45507200
...will give you a nice comma-sepped response:
"MSFT",62.20,"10/26/2001","3:00PM",-0.36,62.32,
"ORCL",13.58,"10/26/2001","3:00PM",-0.37,13.71,
"INTC",25.86,"10/26/2001","3:00PM",-0.24,26.01,
Why would you endure HTML-parsing hell when Yahoo provides this interface?
Happy Halloween,
G. Sherman
If it weren't for rebol I wouldn't have a 25 line script to grab the stock market closes every day from yahoo.com.
What you describe would take about two lines of Cocoa/Objective-C code. NSString has an -initWithContentsOfURL: method, and searching for substrings is trivial with NSScanner.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Yeah, you get lotsa platforms if you define e.g. "Amiga 68000" as different from "Amiga 68020+" (when, in fact, it's just a matter of adding a compiler switch). A more realistic number is 25, or less -- go to their platforms page and see for yourself.
Unselfish actions pay back better
One of the many legends about Carl Sassenrath is that when Commodore aquired large parts of MetaComCo's TRIPOS OS subsystems for AmigaDOS, Carl locked himself into a room and lived off of flatfood and photons for three weeks and then emerged, holding a stone tablet with the source code to exec in his hands. This was the first pre-emptive multitasking OS kernel in a home/personal computer and he did it basically on his own, in less than a mythical man-month. It's a ueberhack and you gotta respect that.
That said, I've been looking at REBOL now and then for the last few years and while I haven't found any real use for it myself, I can see a few niche applications for it. It seems to be a neat system and I think is has a place. Then again, I will always miss ARexx...
Money for nothing, pix for free
These smaller devices are getting bigger every day
Oh wait, wasn't it the other way around?
It supports private and broadcast messages along with an command handler similar to IRC ("/nick" and such). This should handle over 10k messages a second easily. Here is the entire server source code (but me for the slightly longer client code if you care):
[ time x]"enter";Who,:_w;nicks[];(x;Nicks;Msgs)}
/k server -i port {oper}
if[~_p;."\\m i 1234"]
Oper::[0<#_i;*_i;""]
Who:!0
Nicks:()
Msgs:()
.m.c:"if[_w _in Who;bye Who?_w]"
.m.s:{:[(_w _in Who)&x[0]_in`msg`obj;. x;'`access]}
.m.g:{:[(~_w _in Who)&`hi~*x;. x;'`access]}
hi:{if[x _in Nicks;:_f""];if[0=#x;x:"guest",$_w];Nicks,:,x;sys
bye:{Who::Who _di x;n:Nicks x;Nicks::Nicks _di x;sys[time n]"exit";nicks[]}
nicks:{Who 3:\:(`Nicks;();:;Nicks);}
sys:{send[1;Who](`msg;(y," ",x;`blue;`gray;""))}
time:{x," (",({(1_,/"/",'x)," ",1_,/":",'y}.$+0 100 100_vs _gtime _t),")"}
msg:{[x;y;z;n]:["/"~*x;cmd 1_ x;txt[x;y;z]n]}
txt:{[x;y;z;n]send[0=#n;:[0=#n;Who;_w,Who Nicks?n]](`msg;(x;y;z;Nicks[Who?_w],">",n))}
send:{if[x;Msgs,:,z];(?y)3:\:z;}
cmd:{Cmd[`$i#x]{|((x=" ")?0)_ d:|x}(1+i:x?" ")_ x}
Cmd.nick:{if[(0<#x)&~x _in Nicks;n:Nicks i:Who?_w;Nicks[i]:x;_w 3:(`Nick;();:;x);sys["is now ",x]n;nicks[]]}
Cmd.me:{sys[x,")"]"(",Nicks Who?_w;}
Cmd.boot:{if[Oper~Nicks Who?_w;3:Who Nicks?x]}
My main problem with REBOL is pretty stupid, but annoying enough to stop me using it - it's Linux font support sucks!
They hadn't updated it to use the XRENDER/Xft framework for anti-aliased fonts when I last used it, and it completely ignores that fact that my X Server is running a 120dpi resolution, so all the GUI elements are nearly unreadable.
It also seems to use the first font it comes across - seeing as I have a lot of odd special-effect fonts installed, the GUI ends up looking even stupider...
Choice of masters is not freedom.
> This is why REBOL will own your Java and C# crap. Because all its apps are SO SMALL.
Umm... Appearently you're a jealous modem user. I have gigs upon gigs for storage of programs and I have a dsl modem for fast downloads. Small applications? I'm sorry, but if that was a goal in designing the language then they were trying to solve a problem that simply doesn't exist.
Oh, and what about runtime performance? Go ahead and tell me that it's anything besides utter crap.
Say what you want, but a language with "forever" as a keyword seems pretty darn circular to me.
While Rebol isn't exactly the most desirable programming language, the Rebol desktop has a well designed UI that is seamless and not half as clunky as your typical web browser. We keep hearing about all these people trying to market services and internet applications, and we hear about all these open source application servers, but when you get down to it, it's just substituting one backend with another. They all boil down to the same front end with the same impoverished user interaction capabilities we've had for the past 7 years.
If you can't help considering the Rebol Desktop's merits apart from Rebol's shortcomings as a "power-programmer" language, consider that a population of non-programmer internet users whose tastes and browsing activities are expanding might find a very simple scripting language that enables them to easily do a lot of useful stuff with web pages and e-mail quite useful.
I am not a big rebol fan, but claiming the it is crap becuase it deviates from C syntax is just stupid. C-family syntax is probably the worst syntax ever devised for a production language (production guys, brainf**k doesn't count). Like many of the unwashed open source masses (of which I am one) you believe that just becuase it is popular it must be the best choice. Well, I have never known a mob to make the best choice in anything, and the popularity of C just proves my point. I my opinion C syntax is nearly unreadable and horrible to maintain. It is a writers language not a readers, so it is terse and cryptic. This makes it really fast to type the code but going back and reading it six months later is a nightmare. There are alot better languages out there, my personal favorite is Ada95, but there are quite a few others.
I realize that there are quite a few coders out there who will probably respond with flames to this. I only ask that you objectivly evaluate some of the other syntaxes before flaming me here. You may just be suprised at the power some of these languages bring in the area of readability and maintainability. Also remember that writing the code is probably the shortest aspect of its entire life cycle, and therefore targeting that aspect in langauge design or in the choosing a langauge for a project is probably not a good choice.
I'm a programmer, I don't have to spell correctly; I just have to spell consistently
Oh good... because we all enjoy maintaining COBOL code so much, they thought we needed to try THAT again. Sigh...
sigs are for suckers
make a demo freely available for PalmOS- and Symbian-based devices. Or supply me with a source version I can compile on *nixen besides Linux on Intel.
If it's so incredibly simple in design and implementation, I would think those platforms would exist.
however, I would personally choose a language based on the problem at hand before I chose it based on syntax.
sigs are for suckers
Bander
What we need more of is science!
and found out I have two different small rebols. one does the graphics and the other does shelly things. so, half of the demos dont work on the first, and the other half on the second. i mean, if i had a new language without user base i'd try to spread it for free as much as i could..... doesnt seem so interesting after all. builtin functions look imprressive in made-for demos, but what if you need something a little different?
"Love, work and knowledge are the well-springs of our life. They should also govern it." - W. Reich
In the eyes of the beholder. Pretty slick... really quite inventive. At least they're trying to do something new and useful. Bet new perl uses a lot of these ideas, but not sure it can equal it. REBOL appears to have been designed.
A lot of next generation ideas in it and *small* binary, tiny apps, many many builtin datatypes, compression, encryption, interesting graphical hierarchy. I don't need tons of imports or includes.... and no libraries to lose on the download.
REBOL's cool here's why: It's not about programming, stupid. It's about communications. If you didn't get that, then you missed the point. That's the problem being solved, and it seems like a cool way about it. (Judging from your comments, you did not even look at it. 500K, no libs, lots-o-datatypes, fine encryption. Sure, still V1 but damn slick.)
What ever happened to innovation anyway? Us slashheads farts get stuck in the 70's with our long hair and TTYs (that always hurt). It's been stagnation since the www came out and perl ascended to the throne.
"Step aside old men; time to let the kids take over."
Hmmm. Let's see now. REBOL first released in 1997. Hmmmm. This is 2001. Hmmmm. Looks like you're wrong again.
REBOL was designed for semantic exchange and interpretation. It's quite good for distributed computing, it's been a 20 year gig, and you will be using it in a year or two. Sorry if that sounds too buzzy or technical, but it's a concise summary. Been watching your bashing party. Feels like driving through the southern US in 1962. I make my own wine and beer too, but I think I'd rather have what you guys are drinking. But then if it makes me beat up anyone who speaks with an accent, maybe not. -Carl Sassenrath REBOL Founder & CTO
Bashing languages with the usual "But you can also do that in language X!" comments and general defensive put-downs is misguided. Of course you can do the same thing in any language; that's a fundamental principle of computer science. The reason we have a variety of languages is because some languages make things easier than others.
In Perl, munging through text files is a snap. The syntax is succint, and regular expressions are supported at the language level. But that doesn't mean Perl is good for everything, though. Regular expressions don't scale up to what you'd need to write a full BNF parser in Perl. And, sure, you can hook to http and ftp libraries, but they aren't integrated into the language in the same way that the "file exists?" operator is.
REBOL has several strengths. One is that its parsing features effectively *are* BNF, so you can write complex parsers for mini-languages with great ease, and without resorting to lex, yacc, and such. The other advantage is that having language-level support for internet protocols is very convenient. Sure, you can get at them through a Perl module, but if you argue that then you have to ask why regular expressions shouldn't be a separate module as well.
All this blind bashing of languages is tiring. It's exactly like the kiddies who bash whatever game console they didn't get for Christmas.
I was very interested at first glance, I downloaded the Rebol Core, got on a few lists, and observed the dialog for a couple of months, and unsubscribed. Its still very early, I'd like to have seen some applications of size and complexity but what I mostly saw reminded me of the early Java applet phase. I wish I could remember a recent url where reviews of Rebol are discussed... it reminded me of a 30 minute info-merical... I've heard those George Forman grills are pretty good... Don't know about that juice guy though... the eyebrows freak me out
qbalus
pim.pl - "pimple"? Yuck! :-)