REBOL vs The Dominant Paradigm [was Rebol vs Ruby]
[1/1] from: chaz::innocent::com at: 20-Dec-2000 0:02
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: