Gregg, I agree with your thoughts. I am one of those casual Rebol users. I don't have the experience or knowledge to be a power-user of Rebol; but I have been able to use Rebol to solve some simple problems regarding updating websites, ftp content and a few other things.
You are right on the mark At 09:44 AM 7/10/02 -0600, you wrote: >Carl, et al > ><< There's a problem with understanding REBOL scripts written >by others though, in that they can be full of words defined by the >programmer and that you won't find in the user guide. This can make >other people's scripts difficult to figure out. >> > >Isn't that true of any programming language that let's you define functions, >subroutines, objects, etc.? I think the same thing goes for the argument >about how hard it is to learn REBOL, but I think REBOL will be used in >different ways than most other langugages, thanks to dialects. > >In IEEE 'Computer', July 2002 issue, Neville Holmes (University of Tasmania) >has an article called "Seven Great Blunders of the Computing World" which >had one item I found particularly interesting given my current view of REBOL >and how it will/should/can/might be used. > >The blunder, per Mr. Holmes, was the end of macrocoding, the division of >labor between system and application developers. The macrodefinitions >written by system programmers, for use by application programmers, were like >components or objects as they are used today, providing namespace protection >and encapsulation. > >How I see this relating to REBOL, and dialects in particular is how those >components will be used. In most languages, you may have low level and high >level coders to some degree, but they all need a more-than-minimal skillset >to provide value. I.e. they have to learn quite a bit about programming to >be useful. Now, on another level, non-programmers are able to do nifty >things with macro and domain specific languages. I.e. dialects. > >So, with traditional langugages I think there are one, or maybe two, levels >of programmers (two if you have expert and non-expert users). With REBOL, >there is at least one more level: the dialect user. With REBOL, there might >also be a super-guru category but there are definitely expert and non-expert >users. Now, you could argue that dialect users aren't really REBOL coders, >but I think they are. They're just using a highly abstracted toolset on top >of it. > >Most of us here are also tainted, in some way, by experience with other >languages. I can certainly see REBOL being used casually, much as BASIC has >been in the past, by people who aren't programmers, but are able to solve >problems with it. It would be hard to be a casual Java, or now even VB, user >I think. > >--Gregg > >-- >To unsubscribe from this list, please send an email to >[EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe" in the >subject, without the quotes. -- To unsubscribe from this list, please send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe" in the subject, without the quotes.
