I have been away from the list for a while,
so forgive me if this has already been hashed to death.
I just a few days ago ran across references to Ruby,
a newish programming language invented by a
man in Japan (Matsumoto something...) and it seems
to have many features similar to Rebol.
http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/
Anyway, as I was reading about it I started making
a rough comparison to rebol. Weird how similar
the names are. Anyway, let's see...
They both have good web support, are interpreted,
support advanced data structures, have automatic garbage collection,
have context/closures, error-handling.
Platform
Rebol ++ great, easy install, works on lots of platforms
Ruby - oriented towards unix, can work on windows with effort.,
only works in places like unix, and windows and dos and a few
other platforms which can cobble together unix-like behavior
with various add-on support modules.
Multithreading
Rebol - I know the apache server has some threading, but not basic reb.
Ruby + good support for threads and semaphores
Grpahics
Rebol + graphics available now, no charge, and platform indep., easy to use
Ruby - still don't have it built in, only some links to tk and other
unix libs Open Source
Rebol - no open source
Ruby + strong open source community
OOP
Rebol ? rebol objects don't have real inheritance, you can do useful stuff,
but they often just act as nice containers.
Ruby + everything is an object, this is real oop, albeit single-inheritance.
(personally, I don't care that much about oop, but if you do, you will like Ruby's
oop)
Performance
Rebol ? Performance boosted at the loss of continuations and other niceties.
Ruby ?- Probably has perf. not quite as good, but still pretty good, and
they haven't jettisoned continuations, which is cool.
Packages - modules for large sw dev.
Rebol ? I haven't been following, but Rebol's are improving all the time
Ruby + they seem to have good support for modules/libs/namespaces
Size
Rebol ++ Nice and small and easy to install
Ruby ? Not sure how big, but probably not small like Rebol.
Syntax
Rebol + I like Rebol's syntax, don't suffer from endless parentheses and ;
Ruby -? Pretty good syntax, but lots of "end" keywords everywhere
Closures
Rebol - Boo, hoo, I miss them
Ruby + Yeah, they still got 'm
Web Protocols
Rebol + built in, could often use better doc. and examples,
and some stuff like support for cookies is still lame addon
Ruby ? seem to have good stuff, but as external package
it is not quite as built in and ready to go, but still not bad.
Object Serialization (saving and sending 'em)
Rebol - nothing on the map yet, and it would add a whole new
dimension, but problems as the definition of "binary" data
and other types is not defined.
Ruby + apparently, it is supposed to have good support for
serializing objects, which is pretty cool.
List as fundamental data element
Rebol + has them built in, and very useful with good performance.
Ruby ?- has great object support, but list support is an
afterthought not an inherent tool.
Ability to Link Foreign Code
Rebol ? can do somewhat with Rebol/Command only?
Ruby + supposed to excel at this
Perl-like features
Rebol + doesn't have 'em, I don't like perl much
Ruby ?- partly Ruby was invented as a much better perl,
has perl-like features
Built-in utility features
Rebol +/- platform isolation, but then you can't access some file attributes, etc.
Ruby + supposed to be strong at this, although very unix-oriented
Cost
Rebol +? Not expensive, basic rebol and /view are free!
Ruby + Hard to beat free
Globalization support
Rebol ? I always wondered why Rebol was not designed for an
international global world. Only ascii support apparently at this time.
Ruby + Partly because it's inventor is Japanese, this language is
supposed to have excellent support built-in for handling lots of
languages way beyond just plain 256 ascii codes.
Well, you know I am extremely fond of Rebol,
but it looks like Ruby has the edge in a few areas.
While it is harder to install and runs on fewer platforms,
lacks built-in graphics and simple installation, it does
however have full oop, perl (yuck), good library/ext packages,
international lang. support, serialization, and closures,
and free open source with strong user community.
I am sure some of you have run into this language,
what do you think of Rebol vs. Ruby and the future?
Note - I am just curious, not interested in flame-fights,
and would like to know what some of the intelligent folks on
the list here think about it.
-Galt
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