This is why there is a book being written about REBOL.
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Thursday, April 27, 2000 8:32 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [REBOL] RE: REBOL and e-commerce Re:(5)
Thank you Allen. I plead guilty to not having fully studied the user guide
which is the closest thing to comprehensive documentation. At least I
scanned
it carefully (more than you can say for most programmers)!
The Guide takes a worm's eye view of the territory, not a bird's eye view.
It
reminds me of the old Inside Macintosh books. I tried to learn Mac
programming
from those books (thick as they were) and got absolutely nowhere. A
magazine
article hit the nail on the head when it paraphrased the Mac API as the
assembly
language of interface programming.
I work as a professional software engineer and know several languages,
compiled
and interpreted. Learning curves are not mysteries to me; I know what they
look
like.
The real point I am trying to make is that a dictionary-style documentation,
or
slew of examples, is the hard way to learn anything. I could tell you to
learn
the English language by reading the dictionary. Technically speaking it
covers
everything you need to know, but then again -- it doesn't. The Guide takes
an
approach that is just barely one level above a dictionary. It categorizes
REBOL
thingys into groups of thingys without saying what makes a REBOL program a
REBOL
program.
There needs an architecture discussion to lend coherence to the whole
situation.
Especially useful would be
- background philosophy
(why REBOL? what's better about it? white paper time!)
- comparison with another language doing the same task
(esp. Perl which seems to be the main competition --
comparative examples are often the most important)
- visual block diagrams instead of words
(show me the chain of evaluation in a flow chart
not a dictionary presentation which asks me to reconstruct
the flow based on dry definitions)
- clarification of the 31 flavors of REBOL
(/core, /view, /whatever /else) - what are they, when
are they planned to ship, what is the price tag,
why so many flavors
- clarification of exactly what things are done
behind the scenes and how
(memory alloc, run time typing, etc.)
These suggestions are given in a spirit of constructive critique. The point
here is to convey the mind of the language designer to the readers. Then
examples will fall neatly into place.
Mark
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Thursday, April 27, 2000 7:15 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [REBOL] REBOL and e-commerce Re:(5)
Hi Mark,
All Rebol scripts are documentation, don't look for all your answers in
manuals,
spend time reading the example scripts, each one is a mini how-to document.
[snip]
