Bill, lets rearrange your list of languages a little and add a few more.
ActionScript and JavaScript are pretty much the same language. My guess is that
for every person who actually "programs" in these languages there are a hundred
more who cut and paste scripts. Especially with the growing popularity of
JavaScript libraries, very few people are using these languages for
"programming." If they are, they don't care how many lines it takes because
they need it for their web pages.
Visual Basic and REALbasic go together. This is where RR could make some
headway. Instead of promoting a code contest I would just invite the Basic
coders to come over and have a look. There are a lot of disgruntled VB6 coders
who don't want to mess with .NET. REALbasic has its ups and downs.
C/C++/Java/C# are cousins. For these people I'd emphasize rapid development. If
they start using RR then they'll keep using it.
The program that markets itself as the champion of the one-liners is REBOL. Its
website features a hundred one-liners O.K. you won the one-liner contest but
where are the programs that actually do something useful? REBOL reminds me of a
trailer to an action movie that contains all the good parts. When you watch the
entire movie you wonder what the hell that was all about. As for me, the only
selling point for REBOL is that Pierre Sahores thinks highly of it. (But he's a
lot smarter than I am.)
Perl is like a family business without any competitors. An outsider peeks in
and thinks "it can't really be that bad, can it?" Layers and layers of gotchas
and unnecessary crap. People used it because that was all there was. Probably
no chance to get those people.
Ruby and Python people are way too cool to use RR. Forget about them.
Just thinking about those other languages makes me want RR to be a huge
success.
Enough already.
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