Hi Carl,
For a year or so, I really talked alot about Rebol with friends and =20 students while I was writing the tutorials, and was able to introduce =20 it to a number of people. I have watched several teenagers, college =20 students, and adults pick up Rebol and accomplish significant goals =20 with it. That's actually the reason for my long-winded plea :) One college student had taken a course in Java, and afterward didn't =20 really know enough to do anything practical in that environment. She =20 stopped studying guitar for a while, and took Rebol lessons with me =20 instead, because she had a specific programming goal in mind that she =20 couldn't achieve in Java. We wrote a program together that helped her =20 lay out knitting pattern diagrams. VID was so easy for her to =20 understand and work with, right away. I just helped her with some =20 general concepts, and helped when she ran into stumbling blocks. I've =20 also written a number of little scripts with music students that help =20 organize projects at the shop, and one student runs a web site about =20 duct tape art that uses a Rebol script we created together. One of =20 our teachers is a hobbyist C programmer. He dabbles in it, but is =20 frustrated, and hasn't built many useful apps. He's been curious =20 about all the practical code that runs the shop - I've already =20 introduced Rebol, he's hooked, and I'm working on him next :) Maybe it's just because I've actually tried to draw students' interest =20 personally, and also because I have a lot of organized material to =20 show off right away, but in my experience, the same type of people who =20 are curious about learning html, or who may have been interested in =20 code but never got much past "hello world" in another language, or =20 who've pasted javascript code into a web page - the intellectually =20 curious - those people seem to have an easy time learning Rebol (I =20 consider them "average people" - maybe I should qualify my rant to =20 include only "average people who've demonstrated interest in code, but =20 who haven't discovered satisfying results" :). It doesn't take much of an introduction - I just download and run this =20 little program, type in some functions, and it does something =20 interesting. I show people how to read their email and how to create =20 some simple GUIs. That's easy enough for anyone to "get" right away, =20 and it just takes a few minutes. I introduce functions, blocks, =20 variables, loops, conditional evaluations, data types, and network =20 protocols all in one shot with some short code examples. The =20 intellectual types who've had any other experience with any type of =20 code tend to be curious about the potential, just because it's so =20 simple to do eye-opening things, right away. I demonstrate the =20 mechanics of typing in some simple syntax, and then explain the idea =20 of assigning word labels to data (especially values returned from =20 functions), and they're off and running. People really enjoy creating =20 GUIs, and that gets them intruiged with Rebol quickly. There's hardly =20 any learning curve, and it's fun. In my experience, I've seen many curious young people have fun =20 learning Rebol basics. It's all about the simplicity of =20 implementation, and the quick ramping up toward visual results and =20 insight into conceptual potential. There's no big download or long =20 install process. There's no visually intricate IDE. There's no =20 learning about imported modules or OO concepts before creating GUIs =20 and network programming. The program's tiny, everything's built-in =20 and simple to start with. One-liners really accomplish something =20 tangible and it's easy to see some useful potential, right away. The =20 path towards real insight and satisfying capability is short enough =20 that passing interest and light curiousity yields significant results, =20 right away. That's the difference with Rebol. I show my students how =20 I created the variety of CGI scripts and GUI scripts we use on a daily =20 basis at the shop, and demonstrate how simple they were to create, and =20 they just see it right away as something they can do. That's why I =20 think we have the potential to attract more beginner users than other =20 development environments. I've seen it happen, and I think Rebol's =20 missing out by not connecting with that market in a bigger way... =20 That part is opinion, but it's based on my few experiences :) > Is that just your opinion, or have you watched 'average people' pick =20 > it up and use it? > -- To unsubscribe from the list, just send an email to lists at rebol.com with unsubscribe as the subject.
