World: r3wp

Janko: I'm not a Factor expert (I started studying it 3 weeks ago). 
But the Factor learning curve is certainly higher than Rebol's one! 
Sometimes I have hard times remembering what's on my stack when I 
try to write non-trivial words.

( + if I will need gui for desktop server, rebol has lighweight software 
rendered gui, factor also has a gui but on windows it's opengl based 
which is not really practical for a gui.. even casual games on windows 
try to use DX7 renderer for maximum compatibitily and avoid opengl 
beacause of driver issues)

yes.. factor is whole another beast..

I prefer Cat, but Factor is cool too.

I haven't really decided, I go from totally loving the concatenativeness 
(the stack) for some very elegant solutions to hating for sometimes 
not seeing what is going on in even simple stuff

isn't cat made for .NET?

Janko: Cat is build on C# ?

The first implementation was, yes, but the language has nothing .NET-specific 
in it. There's many implementations.

aha, I don't like the .NET based stuff really .. if I had to choose 
I would much prever JVM based ones.. just personal preference

Like I said, many implementations. The lead author is currently making 
a new version written in C++.

Factor has very reactive/alive comunity... they make bindings to 
a lot of stuff quickly thats why I prefer it.. they have everything 
from web-server/web framework to opengl stuff, etc

google talk video from slava pestov is very interesting and shows 
you factor in an hour

we need powerfull binding layer too, or we stay rather isolated ...

None of these concatenative languages are practical for direct use, 
but some make good compiler targets. This is why the semantics of 
the language are more important than implementation details. Cat's 
strong typing wins out there.

aha, cat has strong typing .. I didn't know

The original implementation also runs on Mono if you are a purist.

BrianH: tWhy do you think concatenative langs cannot be used for 
pratical projects?

BrianH: well you clearly know tons more about languages than me, 
I know them only more from "user perspective"

I am not a purist , but if I see something .NET / Mono .. I am not 
that interested, but I see now that it has many implementaitons yes

Kib2, the model is too weird for most people to make work well, and 
the benefits don't outweigh the weirdness (unlike Erlang).

As for Cat, I was not as interested in any existing implementation 
as I was in the language semantics. I figured that I would make my 
own implementation if I wanted to use it.

(just btw.. factor is compiled, slava also posted a lot of info about 
how he compiles and optimizes the code etc ..  this is his talk I 
mentioned: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_0QlhYlS8g)

The author's blog posts about language semantics are more useful 
than the language itself, as with other concatenative langs.

I was talking about Cat there, but the same applies to Factor.

Concatenative techniques are good to apply to stack-based VM instruction 
models. User-level stack languages are best left to device driver 
writing, not app programming.

BrianH: there're not weird; people have to think differently from 
what they know (C,Python,Lisp, Haskell,etc.), and I can see some 
benefits : shorter code, CLOS system (in Factor).

I've found Erlang's syntax really weird compared to ie Haskell.

I hope you realize that every time someone says "people have to think 
differently" that excludes the vast majority of programmers.

People *don't* have to think differently, and most *can't*. This 
also applies to REBOL, I'm afraid :(

BrianH: in this case, don't call them programmers. A programmer is 
curious, and likes to think differently by nature!

Wouldn't that be nice? There is too much work to limit "programming" 
to such rare people.

:)

Talk to professional Java or Oracle developers and then see if you 
can claim programmers are curious :(

Or the VB crowd *shudder*

They're only curious about what libs could be added to their 150MB 
machine gun.

That's why I really like Rebol/Factor philisophy.

bbl

BrianH: I'm interested in studying Rebol with the parse dialect. 
Do you know good tutorials about it ?

There are 3 links to good websites in Parse channell , from Saturday

Janko: thanks, I have to check them!

So... now Carl has compiled R3 for OSX.

That's great. When will it be available?

I haven't asked. He posted less than 30 mins ago. Probably same time 
as the Linux version.

and now it's also running on his Linux router :-)

What distro?

R3 for OSX is for Intel only ...:(

yeksoon - what? I expected R3 running on Linux or OS-X not sooner 
than maybe in one year, and you are unhappy, that PPC ancient architecture 
is not supported yet? :-)

The OSX version won't let me log in to chat. I keep getting "invalid 
command or arguments".

never mind, I forgot to type the user name. :-) it's been a long 
time since I last had to log in.

can't belive it.. R3 for os x so cool 8)