I love this link.
http://www-stz.dfki.uni-sb.de/~winter/sassenrath/computing.html
It was written by Carl in 1997, before he had Avalon venture capital,
before he had REBOL Technologies.
When I first read this, I felt like I was breathing fresh air after being
too long confined.
Whenever I see someone look at REBOL and say "it's not Scheme" or "it's not
Perl" or "it's not Ruby" or "it's not APL" I don't feel compelled to get
into some kind of useless sectarian partisan pissing match, because REBOL
itself isn't partisan.
To me, it seems that the reason REBOL is so small is because it has been
shaped and sculpted by powerful forces. Since we're talking about gems,
it's like a diamond that's been created out of great subterranean pressure
and heat
Since I stumbled across this language, I've tried to explore some of the
forces that I think shaped REBOL, and in that search I've been introduced
to denotational semantics (and incidentally EBNF) through 'parse,
functional programming through 'func, to network protocols through the
schemes, state functions through 'context, to Windows 32 assembler through
REBOL/Command, platform diversity through the many releases, and there is
so much more to discover...
I am no coder. But from the first day I stumbled across this language,
REBOL has shown itself to be small and fast and vicious and so far has
opened doors to everywhere I want to go. Sometimes it's been a key,
sometimes it's been a sword, sometimes it's been a club.
I don't see other languages, protocols, hardware, operating systems, or
applications as somehow being "competition" to REBOL, I see them all as
tools, that somehow, someday soon, I will be able to manipulate from within
my REBOL console. So keep coding in whatever language you desire and
creating wonderful tools. I will be there shortly to take advantage of them.
chaz
At 01:52 PM 12/19/00 -0800, you wrote:
>I don't like Perl or any Perl-like language. Period.
>
>Geo...
>
>
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>>
>> 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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