REBOL is a powerful software technology (ever thought that you could write a full blown GUI Instant Messenger in only 7 kb of source code?) designed from the ground up to enable a new era of distributed Internet applications. The technology provides a ubiquitous, lightweight model of distributed computing that operates across all types of computer systems. REBOL is a true distributed computing architecture. Applications and data become distributed across all devices. REBOL is completely device independent, so it does not matter what operating system or hardware is being used. Every system of the Internet becomes an independent resource that can process and communicate information. The REBOL kernel currently runs on more than 40 different operating systems — everything from large Sun Solaris servers, to Windows and Macintosh PCs, to Linux, BeOS, down to CE handheld devices. And it is here to revolutionize the Internet, by introducing the X Internet (also called as ‘XNet’) through the REBOL Internet Operating System (IOS). Read more of what Carl Sassenrath, Rebol Tech’s CTO and founder, has to say about the future, Rebol and the race against Microsoft’s .NET Services.1. Which role Rebol/IOS will play for XNet, the new, “executable” Internet, which analysts say that it is a revolution that has already started?
Carl Sassenrath: REBOL/IOS will play a central role in the X Internet. REBOL was designed for distributed computing, providing not only the semantic exchange of information (data and metadata), but also the interpretation of that data. These are essential requirements of the XNet.
2. Is Rebol/IOS a low level operating system, or “sits” on top of existing OSes?
Carl Sassenrath: IOS defines a new type of OS, creating a common layer that currently spans 44 different OS/hardware systems and provides a standard environment for all REBOL applications (called reblets). It is to the Internet what a computer OS is to the devices of its machine.
3. I can’t help thinking that Rebol/IOS is very similar to the .Net and Mono strategy while the Rebol language itself plays the role of C# somehow. Applications launching through the internet and they are processing data found also on the net. How Rebol Technologies will be able to compete with Microsoft, AOL and/or Mono?
Carl Sassenrath: You uncovered our secret, but we started it long before .Net. REBOL is a .Net that works. That sounds bold, but REBOL will succeed because it possesses the same qualities that helped the web succeed. REBOL applications are only a few pages of text, and users can quickly modify and extend existing applications to meet their needs.
In REBOL, applications are agile. You don’t need SOAP, WSDL, SCL, NASSL, UDDI, UML, MSXML, XSLT, RMI, IIOP, DCOM, DNA, or anything else. You write it, and it works – just about everywhere. If you need object brokering such as Corba, you can use a broker such as Rugby. Rugby is advanced, robust, fast, and it is written in only 1500 lines of REBOL.
Also, and not to be overlooked, we have a partnership that will be putting REBOL onto 30 million desktops within the next few months. We’ll say more about that very soon.
4. Among your plans is the ability to run REBOL/IOS and REBOL to any device and to any operating system. Do you find the porting process of your technologies to smaller devices, like cellphones or PDAs, challenging?
Carl Sassenrath: These smaller devices are getting bigger every day. We have several PDAs running REBOL, and we have a wireless partner that now runs REBOL on a variety of cellular devices. The limits are no longer the memory or speed of devices, but more often their native operating systems. For instance, we would love to run on PalmOS, but its memory model is archaic, making the device unusable for advanced programs.
5. When will the mass deployment of your products begin? Are you preparing a marketing boost or will Rebol lean on its faithful developers? What is the key for IOS’ success?
Carl Sassenrath: REBOL’s use has been growing rapidly with developers and technical users — more than 500,000 in distribution so far. Over the next few months, we will focus on the collaborative network market, where the REBOL X Internet provides a great advantages. In addition, the massive distribution partnership I mentioned above should help a lot.
6. How is Rebol Technologies going to profit from the whole project? Will you be a service and tool provider, or will you only offer the development tools needed and help other companies to build such networks?
Carl Sassenrath: Actually, we’re not trying to profit directly from the tools. For more than three years users have been freely downloading REBOL from our website, and that will continue. The big revenue will come from our partnership agreements, VAR and OEM licences in collaborative communications and other domains.
7. What are the immediate plans for the new version of the Rebol language? Are you planning to add OS specific bindings, for example use of DirectX through Rebol?
Carl Sassenrath: The immediate plans are to expand REBOL’s networking capabilities by creating very secure private networks for collaboration, as well as enabling next generation peer-to-peer networks. On the collaboration side, we are developing more than 40 reblets that provide shared polling, messengers, alerts, whiteboards, calendars, brainstormers, and more. From the system side, we will add several new “dialect” engines for 3D graphics, inferencing (“AI”), additional network protocols, advanced sound synthesis, and more.
8. I always thought of Rebol at the same “programming level” as Python is, but going through your docs, I see that Rebol is very optimized and specialized to Internet programming. Please describe to us some technical differences between the two popular languages.
Carl Sassenrath: A friend of mine says it’s like the movie “Matrix” where you are offered either the red pill or the blue pill. Most programmers stick with the blue pill. The folks who take the REBOL red pill wake up and can never go back. I’ve had companies call me to complain that a few of their programmers started using REBOL and are now “ruined” because they refuse to go back. REBOL is a highly disruptive technology.
Python and Java are excellent for traditional computer languages. I’ve been involved in the design and implementation of many languages, and I can tell you that every language has its purpose. However, REBOL was designed from a meta-circular view of language semantics. That is, REBOL is what you need it to be. It morphs to provide the maximal expressive power for any problem. Look at how REBOL creates user interfaces as an example. The GUI system is not a low level API, but rather a dialect of the language. The Visual Interface Dialect (VID) is built on a fundamental compositing engine, but there is no reason why you can’t have any number of such GUI dialects, depending on the problems you need to solve.
In addition, REBOL breaks many other language rules. For instance, it includes 40 native datatypes (most languages have five or six), 14 Internet protocols, compression, encryption, and reflection built-in. You don’t need to remember what library to include or to link with. Some people underestimate REBOL because most of its programs are tiny. But, we think that’s an advantage, because it makes the code easier to write and maintain.
9. Are there any plans to create a web browser written in Rebol, or at least, a web browser that can interact with Rebol Internet applications?
Carl Sassenrath: There are many good browsers out there, so we’ll just find better ways to plug into them.
10. Are your products currently ported to more platforms/OSes? If yes, which are these platforms?
Carl Sassenrath: We are now on 44 platforms. BSD 4.0 is the most recent. We support about 150 binary distributions of our products. Of course, we could not do that without REBOL. It builds itself, it tests itself, it uploads itself, it builds our website, it handles our communications internally and with developers, etc. There’s no end to what REBOL can do or how far it will go.
I’ve always been impressed with REBOL on some level, yet the syntax is just so… wierd! I sometimes think REBOL is nearly impossible for a long time programmer to get.
The syntax of Rebol is a wonderful thing for me, I love it. (Warning! Possibly addictive.)
REBOL’s syntax was designed to allow a wide range of expressions, not just raw code. For instance, these examples are valid REBOL syntax:
Drive 2 hours north on highway 101
Or:
Buy 200 shares of “Insuratron” at $45.95
You combine groups of words and values into a sequence that gets interpreted according to the context. It’s actually quite natural… once you get the hang of it.
Carl’s comment about program size is spot on. The simple clarity of the language allows you to concentrate on the complexity of your problems, whether they be presentations, data miners, online games or full-blown network communication applications…
I find the whole thing plain amazing.
Where can one start?
People usualy stand in awe when they see the
effect of seven highly readable lines:
view layout [
across
Button “Send” [ send to-email address/text messageBody/text ]
Label “To:”
address: Field return
messageBody: Area “Type mail content here”
]
REBOL’s syntax is very free-form, and provides much more flexibility than most other languages. REBOL code can be as natural language like or as cryptic as you like.
<p>
REBOL uses a functional style, where expressions produce values that flow cleanly as input to the next chain of expressions. By building expressions in-situ, you can write code and build programs as quickly as your REBOL fluency permits. When you get good at it, you can seriously **crank** out programs.
<p>
The minimal punctuation, highly polymorphic functions, built-in datatypes, GUI capabilities, parsing, network protocols, etc. are all features that are integrated in the language in a convenient and intelligent way.
I have used about 6 programming languages over 20 years. Rebol is the “best” for networking pc’s in data sharing. Very easy to learn, and addictive.
Prior to REBOL I used Perl extensively for scripting type jobs and Delphi for “serious” GUI tasks. The most remarkable thing about REBOL is that it does a better job of these diverse tasks than languages specifically designed for such roles, and the REBOL distribution is just one small executable regardless of role. (A large application, REBOL included, easily fits [uncompressed] on a single floppy disk!)
This all or nothing approach ensures that “write once, run anywhere” with no module or library dependencies is the norm. Not since my first taste of programming nearly 15 years ago have I felt so excited about a technology!
There is only one thing I consider lacking…
There is not currently a development environment available for it. BUT with RIDE (REBOL Intergrated/Internet Development Environment) in the works there is not much to worry about. After all, what better place to build a development environment than in its own native language? . RIDE should be released within one month.
I’m a language junkie but nothing I saw, for 10 years, could pull me away from VB. Not Perl, not Python, not Ruby, not Squeak, not any of at least a dozen others (no, I don’t like C or its relatives either). I want a *human friendly* language, but also one that is powerful. REBOL is it.
An argument I’ve heard from many people is “What can REBOL do that the bash shell can’t do?” …
No one seems to get that a script run in rebol/core can run, unmodified, on over 90 platforms. Bash is -awesome- for linux, but Rebol is awesome for -everything-
The way I see, Lotus is way too bloated even though it comes with replication,
scripting and stuffs.
Rebol, specifically IOS, is just going to show the old boys from Lotus what
it meant to be collaborating on theNet.
And this is just one specific area which I think Rebol will come out top!
There are definitely more areas where Rebol win hands down.
My favourite language was c, because, I think
it was so powerful and popular. But just over two
years ago I started getting into rebol, and
haven’t stopped! I was sick and tired of
incompatibilities between compilers and platforms.
It’s a sickening waste to see your programs stuck
in one environment.
Rebol offered complete cross-platform compatibility
and it delivers. In light of the recent announcements
by Rebol Tech. I am glad I started when I did.
I started working with java recently, and even though
I see many improvements on C/C++, I am frequently
irritated by how much you have to repeat yourself.
Rebol allows you to munch down code with repetitive
patterns into simple expressions (usually simple,
anyway!:)
Rebol’s syntax is quite a bit different, but if you
look at enough examples (and it’s easy because they’re
usually short, and don’t require external headers that
need to be compiled with a certain compiler with
certain options…. blah blah blah) .. um.. if you look
at enough examples it will soon start to make sense.
Ah heck, just give it a go.
It’s easy to install.
Anton.
I never really studied REBOL but, in a couple of weeks, I was able to write my own mailer, CGIs and text processors thanks to the power of the language and to the great REBOL mailing list made of people enthusiastic about this amazing language.
Mario
REBOL is great and very addictive so be carefull
IMO this famous quotation describes the situation of REBOL quite good. It’s way underestimated and most people don’t see the power and opportunities lying in REBOL. To many are narrow minded on new things… well, they will see the light one day. Gallileo’s knowledge needed a few hundred years to be accepted. With Internet-Time there is a good chance that the entrepreneurs of REBOL will have a great success-story ahead.
I’ve not given a damn for programming since the death of the 16-bit era. Rebol, however, revived my interest. I use it for countless work and play related projects where I bang out quick and working applications in a fraction of the time someone might take in other languages.
Probably my killer app is an IRC bot that I’ve constantly added on to since last year. I can quite safely say that no other IRC bot comes near doing the whacking stuff mine does. If anyone comes up with a cool bit of data that can be mined off the web or elsewhere on the Internet, I can add it in minutes.
Rebol is the best kept secret of enthusiast programmers that like to get jobs done quick.
I like REBOL alot, it’s very easy for me to use (so far, i’ve just started programming REBOL a few days ago), unlike C/C++…
We’ve heard lots about its good side, but does Rebol have any faults/problems?
I just downloaded and had a play with REBOL. Wow! Wow! Heh – took about 5 minutes to build a program to read in images from a website, change them all and write them back. The same program in C/C++ or VB would have been huge. In REBOL its just a matter of a few lines.
If you are interested in Web Programming and haven’t tried it yet you should – its an amazing tool for rapid deployment.
Gotta go now – writing myself some web template designers in REBOL
Because REBOL is so capable, it has managed to spring into a full
blow platform in its own right, REBOL IOS/Express. I can’t think of
any language out there that has evolved something like this, a
seamlessly integrated, fully network enabled vessle for exchange and
execution of itself.
The whole array of REBOL technology is an exponential graph, if you
think about it. You begin with REBOL/Core. After some short amount
of time, you are hacking out powerful, platform independent scripts
with a vengeance. Then you move on to View, and in a snap, all your
scripts have nifty GUIs. Then you move on to Command and
View/Command and suddenly your scripts are talking to databases,
exchanging secure web data, loading in and executing dll code,
spawning other processes, and doing a million other serious tasks.
Now you reach Express, and all your REBOL scripting capabilities hook
into a robust realtime shared environment. Express is a million
times more powerful because of all that leads up to it. The platform
has such agility and capability because it’s made out of the most
malleable material known to humankind: REBOL.
Guys, Rebol is great!
This thread sounds like a tv advertisment for some abdomen training machine, no interactive communication, just an enumeration of how Rebol has changed your life. Is this true, aren’t there any drawbacks?
There are always drawbacks with languages. But rebol is constantly expanded and enhanced to fix those ‘missing piecies’.
A drawback that cannot be solved…once you actully use (as opposed to play) Rebol, you will never go back or seriously use another language again.
You will also rewrite all your perl programs in Rebol as well as any previously written games and tools you have written before.
Be warned…your life will change forever.
But remember, as in anything, you get out what you put in.
Life is not without trade-offs, there are some drawbacks. Here are a few, depending on your POV:
* REBOL is not open source
* REBOL cannot be compiled
* REBOL is quite fast for most operations, but it’s not like C or Pike
* REBOL does not support what many consider to be a “true” OOP model
* REBOL sacrifices some features (such as Ping) to maintain true cross-platform compatibility
* REBOL has rudimentary XML support
* Dialects (for GUI, parsing, etc.) are built in REBOL, but are different from REBOL
* REBOL has a functional, free-form (arity) syntax which is different from what many programmers are used to
* REBOL Technologies is a small company (less than 10 people)
Despite these trade-offs, I’d say that REBOL is an amazing piece of work. I use several languages at work, but REBOL is the language I always *want* to use.
I have used many languages over the last decades.
It’s clear that I have been much more productive with REBOL
than with any other language.
Download it now: http://www.rebol.com
programming for my own use was fun, but took longer
than repeating some clicks for some items.
now its worth to write/customize a script for that.
does not need more time than the clicks,
and is not so boring.
ah yes, and all this net-activities which need a lot of clicks..
Since apparently everyone here but me is a REBOL worshiper, I’ve got some questions…
(I would look for the answers on my own, but I have to leave in a about 2 minutes, so I figured this would give all of you something to do
Can REBOL do audio? Does it support MP3 native? How about more obsure audio formats? If not, is it fast enough to decode it if you wrote the decoder in REBOL itself?
What about movies? Can it play sorenson quicktimes? Does it have support for AVI? Once again, you should be able to add in movie support or codec support by writing it in REBOL itself assuming it truely is a complete platform like they say it is.
I thought I had some more questions, but I can’t think of them now. Gotta run.
FlireSkye, that’s a good analysis of the drawbacks of Rebol although I don’t view dialects as a drawback – more of a feature!
One thing I might add, many see the use of Rebol as a programming productivity tool. However Rebol Technologies has realised that giving away Rebol free (as they do) isn’t going to pay the bills. The grand visions of Carl Sassenrath you come across in the various interviews and wierd new corporate products couldn’t be further removed from what it is I, and everyone else I know who uses Rebol, do from day to day.
I think the greatest barrier to Rebol is Rebol Technologies finding some sort of killer application which will continue to fun the development of Rebol.
I mean, we’ve all just spoken about how cool Rebol is but does anyone actually buy into Rebol/IOS and all that stuff? I couldn’t give a damn other than hoping it works so Rebol keeps going!
I’ve read about rebol when it first came out and I always get the same impression. So please straighten me out. What I always come out feeling is that Rebol is powerful because its libraries are powerful.
For example, Rebol claims to make writing an email client easy. But that is just because it has email address as a datatype and SMTP built-in. You can do the same with the appropriate libraries in any language.
Another example is the parsing stuff: while it provides the possible to parse input, I’ve never seen an example where the syntax was really augmented vs. the basic Rebol syntax. They always end-up with some keywords, some modifiers introduced by a slash and block ([]). Would it be really possible to create an entirely different syntax as a dialect? Could I write for example a PostScript dialect that would read pure PostScript, except for an enclosing context?
What about performance and control? Could I write an image processing library that would process CMYK images (instead of RGB)?In short, all I’ve read about only reflects that the Rebol syntax is simple and the bundled libraries are internet-oriented. To me Rebol code looks like a slightly more evolved LISP: replace ( with [, ‘ with ! and , with /
The way I understand it, Rebol is an internet language. If you want to write a Photoshop or Office alternative you are much better off with Python than with Rebol (I am mentioning Python and not something like C or Java, because it is similar to what rebol can do for the Net for Python to do as a standard and simple *interpreted* language for the desktop).
Ok, I’d like to do some application development (powerful net features
and simple GUI’s) but..
there doesn’t appear to be any way to do type checking. This is a big drawback.
Everything is implicit types and I can’t enforce them. Yes, I’m sure it could
be made to work, but.. debug through type checking is pretty important.
Debug environment in general is also pretty important. I learned to program
ages ago on an interpreter, but ‘modern’ runtime debug features are still handy.
Docs for some of the more obscure dependencies seem sketchy. i.e. should this modification to a UI element go before or after the others.. some combinations just don’t work.
Plus..
I truly do need to share some C code definitions due to the need to talk to a deeply embedded device.
Hesitating because of these issues for starters.
writing bnf-like parse rules instead of regular expressions is priceless.
bit twiddling is difficult.
a few bugs on platforms not found other platforms.
when saying rebol works on X platforms that is rebol/core
the more full featured /view and /command work on progressivly fewer platforms
mail-list though highly educational is too much traffic for me to subscribe to, archive site (eScribe) is annoying and stripts headers so it is difficult to respond.
documentation, but who doesn’t need better docs
jumping to new things/products before following thru on old ones
(unannounced change of focus) , I geuss you could call that agile
and as pointed out repeatedly … can make programming fun again
P,
I am not sure what exactly do you mean by type checking and what do you see as implicit. Rebol is pretty dynamic language, very expressive. If you want to check for certain datatype, of course you can:
>> integer? 123
== true
I also don’t understand your UI problems from your description.
As for C, you of course can link to external libraries, but you need to own /Pro license, which is not free, but doesn’t cost too much on the other hand.
If you want to know something concrete about the language, join its mailing list, and you will find both helpfull and skilled rebol developers there …
Cheers,
-pekr-
Anonymous wrote:
> Another example is the parsing stuff: while it provides the possible to parse input, I’ve never seen an example where the syntax was really augmented vs. the basic Rebol syntax. They always end-up with some keywords, some modifiers introduced by a slash and block ([]). Would it be really possible to create an entirely different syntax as a dialect? Could I write for example a PostScript dialect that would read pure PostScript, except for an enclosing context?
I wrote a Rebol script/dialect for converting plain text into HTML pages and then constucts a site. You can see my site at:
http://valley.150m.com/
Every HTML page (except two) were constructed from plain text. The plain text version of each HTML page is on the site as well. Just substitute .txt for .html in the URL in your browser’s address.
I’ve also got the script online as well, in my rebol section — except that it’s not easily accessible at the moment! You need to know the name to get it.
Rebol is much more than a quick and dirty solution. I use it for all my mySQL interfaces. It’s very good and cool.
It sems the REBOL has an amazing syntax: very plain english.
Very reminsient of small talk, just so much more geared for the internet
I have to agree w/ Zsolt Marx (above) — this thread sounds like 5 of the 10 guys working on REBOL started astroturfing the message boards. Perhaps I will check it out, but the level of ass-kissery on this board has definitely raised my level of skepticism.
Also, I would argue that one of the noted drawbacks from above — REBOL is not open source — is a pretty key point, and not just a minor drawback. If some technology is going to be the lynchpin of the next generation Internet, do you really want one company controlling it? I mean, I’m half willing to say yes, just because they’re not Microsoft, but a) that doesn’t guarantee anything about their future business practices, and b) they could very well get bought out by MS, and then it would be the same damn thing.
Anyway, I’m curious and I will play around w/ it to see for myself.
REBOL is total crap.
i have to say, the postings above dont belong here, they belong in an incomercial. cause thats exactly what they sound like.
plus, to the 10 or so people working on rebol…good luck competing against $150+ billion and some of the best developers money can buy (Microsoft).
*First of what the hell is the point of posting partial IP’s and hostnames?…*
I would like to see a usefull example app… this is sincere request.
Andrew Martin wrote:
>I wrote a Rebol script/dialect for converting plain text into HTML pages and >then constucts a site. You can see my site at:
>http://valley.150m.com/
>Every HTML page (except two) were constructed from plain text. The plain text >version of each HTML page is on the site as well. Just substitute .txt >for .html in the URL in your browser’s address.
…….WHY?
listen guys,
i too was a doubter, i thought “how can it be all that?” and how come i’ve never before heard about it? and how can i begin to take advantage of it?
Well, after reading the osnews article, i decided to check it out, and wow! let me tell you, i was truelly surprised. impressive… this is going to change the way you program, forever! Its definately changed me, and now i’m not only a better programmer, but because of REBOL, i’ve been promoted at work and doubled my salary!!
but you are probably wondering how you can benefit from REBOL. Well, read on my fellow programmer.
Here’s how this works. All _you_ have to do is tell your fellow programmers about REBOL. They undoubtedly will tell all their friends about REBOL too, and … well you get the picture. Now, here’s where the money comes in. Out of every dollar your friends make programming REBOL, you will personally receive 50 cents. If you have 10 programmer friends, at an average salary of $50k, in the first year, you can bring in $250k! wow!
And that’s not all! once your programmer friends tell their programmer friends, well you get the picture… $$ for everyone. Start programming in REBOL friends!
And i haven’t even started to tell you how programming in REBOL can revitalize your sex life… ahh, well, i suppose programmers don’t care about that anyway
Hi all,
I understand that rebol is a easy to use and develop language but, as it stands, it just a language. How does it enable usage of web services any better than other
languages? Carl Sassenrath said a lot about X internet and taking on .NET and such stuff, but how does rebol make a difference here? What is that is fundamentally different or what is the techonogical advance here ?( As you can see, Carl’s verbiage has got me totally confused ;-)).
This thing totally sucks. You have to pay for the Pro version, which includes support for such essentials as sound or big numbers. This language should be open source and freely available, otherwise it will NEVER have a major impact on the Internet.
How stupid can Carl Sassenrath be?
What about support of other languges than english? E.g. in Rebol/View yext boxes I cannot enter any of non english language characters. It also cannot correctly display text in my locale.
The same for email, if your email contains 8bit characters(i.e. from 128-255 ASCII range), to correctly send email message simple ‘send’ will not work(it may work if server does not comply with standarts).
How to configure what fonts rebol uses for output?
I’ve followed REBOL since it’s inception (coincidentally they actually asked me to interview for the job of programming the UNIX version(s)). I recently evaluated it properly for a web based application service I’m developing that will have many concurrent users. I really wanted to use it, for all the reasons that have been promoted, but regrettably had to turn it down, mainly because of performance concerns:-
* As I understand it, it handles CGI like Perl, PHP etc. i.e. a new process gets launched for every concurrent web user. I am really not sure (and don’t have the facilities to prove) how it stands up providing a web service under heavy load with lots of users. This also applies to session persistence.
* I doesn’t connect to enough databases.
* It won’t compile, again affecting performance.
* The BIG ONE: I have to pay a licence fee for every copy I produce. No problem, ultimately, but my distribution model requires free distribution of my software followed by a per-usage charge. REBOL wants payment up front, and it seems to be expensive per user.
I don’t want to contradict the praise REBOL has already received – I agree, but this is just an example of areas it needs improvement in: cost and performance. Stacking it against Java Servlets, I know they will take longer and be harder to write, but I am much more confident of their performance, efficiency, connectivity, price and load balancing capability. If REBOL addresses these concerns I’d be delighted to switch across.
Alex
I’m fairly new to REBOL, and very excited about it. I don’t work for them. I just like their stuff.
<< Can REBOL do audio? Does it support MP3 native? How about more obsure audio formats? If not, is it fast enough to decode it if you wrote the decoder in REBOL itself? >>
Only WAV support so far. I haven’t seen anyone write a decoder yet, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done. Just translate all those huffman tables…
<< What about movies? Can it play sorenson quicktimes? Does it have support for AVI? Once again, you should be able to add in movie support or codec support by writing it in REBOL itself assuming it truely is a complete platform like they say it is. >>
You could probably write *anything* in REBOL, though performance might not be acceptable in all cases. The REBOL folks face the challenge of keeping the size down, while cramming in all the features people want. Something’s gotta give and I think video support is that something. They may add it, and some of the issues are political (if you can called patented formats and such a political issue).
<< . What I always come out feeling is that Rebol is powerful because its libraries are powerful. >>
Yes and no. It does have powerful libraries but its reflective and dynamic capabilities are, IMO, much more important.
<< For example, Rebol claims to make writing an email client easy. But that is just because it has email address as a datatype and SMTP built-in. You can do the same with the appropriate libraries in any language. >>
That’s true, but in those other languages, can you just type an email address, with no extra syntax, and have it recognized as such? That’s a big difference IMO.
<< Another example is the parsing stuff: while it provides the possible to parse input, I’ve never seen an example where the syntax was really augmented vs. the basic Rebol syntax. They always end-up with some keywords, some modifiers introduced by a slash and block ([]). Would it be really possible to create an entirely different syntax as a dialect? Could I write for example a PostScript dialect that would read pure PostScript, except for an enclosing context? >>
REBOLs dialecting capabilities are very cool. The dialects we’re seeing so far (e.g. layout and parse) have been designed for use by REBOL programmers, so it makes sense that they were designed to be syntactially similar. The thing that excites me most is the ability to *easily* create little languages (dialects) that let people type in human terms and yet can be processed programmatically.
<< this thread sounds like 5 of the 10 guys working on REBOL started astroturfing the message boards. Perhaps I will check it out, but the level of ass-kissery on this board has definitely raised my level of skepticism. >>
REBOL has a small but vocal following.
Can you blame us for being excited about what we think is a *great* tool? I haven’t seen posts from anybody who works at REBOL. It’s just us rabid fans.
<< Also, I would argue that one of the noted drawbacks from above — REBOL is not open source — is a pretty key point, and not just a minor drawback. If some technology is going to be the lynchpin of the next generation Internet, do you really want one company controlling it? >>
I hear this one a lot, as if open source is the be-all, end-all way to develop software. In some cases it might be. In others it absolutely won’t. You can fault their business plan, and their product, but the two are really exclusive of one another (bound together by association, but not the same).
<< I would like to see a usefull example app… this is sincere request. >>
OK. What would you consider to be a useful example app?
<< I understand that rebol is a easy to use and develop language but, as it stands, it just a language. How does it enable usage of web services any better than other languages? >>
Web services are an unknown commodity at this point, though they are taken as existing technology because of powerful marketing. To me, this makes them the object of many comparisons which may not be appropriate.
Can you write web services with REBOL? Yes. Maarten Koopmans has written a nifty piece of middleware (best term I can manage at the moment) called Rugby which lets you do this kind of thing HOWEVER, we shouldn’t confuse web services with REBOLs core concept of being a “messaging” language. That’s its strength, its trump card, its ace-in-the-hole and it is almost completely unexploited in that regard so far. We compare REBOL to other languages because we need a common Universe of Discourse. Unfortunately, it’s really an apples-to-oranges comparison at best IMO.
<< What about support of other languges than english? E.g. in Rebol/View yext boxes I cannot enter any of non english language characters. It also cannot correctly display text in my locale. >>
Now, this is a valid point! I think RT is working on international character support, and I *hope* they are, but it isn’t there yet AFAIK.
–Gregg
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Hi, this is just some example (game), what you can do in Rebol as well…
RebSite: http://oldes.multimedia.cz/index.r
Apps: Rbox2.r
It’s not perfect, but I did it in less then 1 month for a few bottles of Becherovka
With rebol you can do a lot of things:-)
I started to use Rebol on January this year. With Rebol/view’s powerful GUI and scripting capabilities, I quickly replaced my HTML, javascript and browser for my WEB-based data application. In my old developing environment, I used Frontpage for HTML editing, javascript to keep HTML page active. I always hated to see my well-designed WEB pages display differently in another user’s WEB browser environment. Rebol resolves this problem for me. I am using Rebol’s win95 skin for my GUI development. It looks and feels like VB and Visual C application. It is easy to develop and maintain. It is the best thing can ever happen to me for my software progamming career.
What is the bad things about REBOL?
It’s not in widespread use yet, though things are looking up for it distribution-wise.
It is different enough from the widely used imperative languages out there that it may take you some time to adjust and see the elegance it allows. The code I write with REBOL is *totally* different from the code I would write in any other language but you have to be able to “let go” if you really want to make the best use of it. Trying to force it to act like “regular” languages will probably lead to frustration.
One complaint I’ve heard, which seems is valid at this moment in time, is that the licensing scheme is somewhat unclear. Hopefully they can resolve that issue because the technology is really terrific IMO.
i ‘d like to know what is the basic language , rebol is written with ?
c ?
Hi,
REBOL is great, and I love it, but…
– As some others said in this forum, (all versions of) REBOL should be free.
Any other interpreter that counts (Perl, TCL, Python, …) in the internet
world is free, and offers the features of REBOL/Command natively.
– REBOL should be open-source, because RT is too small a company to face
all the expected developments, to cope with the huge number of existing
(or coming) platforms, and to resist the attacks of competitors (see what
I mean) . Using the manpower of internet would be a tremendeous advantage.
– Finally, the documentation is awfully scarce, sparse and incomplete.
One cannot expect REBOL becoming the language of choice of the internet
with so few clues of how to develop. Someone like Danny Goodman should
write “the definitive Rebol guide” …
I discovered Rebol by chance and the very first version I used was 1.1.1…
I also thought that VB was going to be it for me.
Having played around in the first beta of View and even experimentetd with the first beta of Command, I had to conclude that I had finally found something, profound and revolutionary.
Rebol has the potential to become the next web browser of the newly conceived XNet.
SUN says that one day the Internet will go away (meaning that it will be like using a phone).
With Rebol the OS and the Internet will go away.
VIVA REBOL!
From a devout Rebol Pioneer.
I’M LOOKING FOR A JOB BECAUSE I’M ONLY 14 AND I’M TRIED OF STAYING HOME AND DON’T HAVE NOTHING TO DO?
dear sirs,
plz if u dont mind i would like to know how to write a program in c ++ to do an advertisment
plz if u could with source code in c ++
with lots of appriciations
mohammed jarrar