World: r3wp

I think Jaime is trying to speak more in the terminology you understand 
from other languages, but by "symbol" he really should say "word!".

The interpreter does the memory management for you.

Reichart, you are working on defining the paradigm of the language. 
I think that is the right direction to follow to generate a faster 
learning map of Rebol.

No pointer math, like in Java. But maybe they are pointers anyway, 
of similar.

Words usually automatically "decay" (in rebol terminology they "reduce") 
to their associated value (if they have one).

Ok, Anton, word is the word :-)

On last form is 'MY-WORD (Notice the single quote) it is a way to 
way to 'quote' a symbol this is useful when doing DATA as CODE. Another 
major concept in rebol.

If that value is a "hot" one (like a function!) then the get-word 
syntax  (:word)  will prevent the evaluation whilst still allowing 
you to get the value.

And the idea of a graph giving the family tree of the language is 
terrific.

That is in rebol the data remains data until it is interpreted. It 
is not transform into some bytecode or something else it is just 
data.

you can always probe system

Yes Jaime, what you are explaining is indeed a fundamental concept 
in Rebol. And one that has to be mastered early.

denismx regarding the books I mention even though they are not about 
rebol. They introduce a lot fo the concepts of Rebol.

Rebol is a decendant of Lisp the first functional programming language. 
So understanding this it will help you get the gist of rebol.

I see. Hum... but that would add up another language to the too many 
I have in my head now :-)

I'm starting to mix them up sometimes. Not good in class! :-))

Yes, if we have a word set to a value like this:
	word: 123
then there is a series of possible "reductions" possible:
	'word  ->  word  ->  123

Likewise for a function:
	word: func [][print "hello"]
The reductions:

 'word  ->  :word (gives unevaluated function)  ->  word (evaluates 
 the function to print "hello")

>> source send   ;you can get the source code of a function by using 
the source command.  Documentation is built-in.

One very small but interesting thing about Rebol that makes it different 
than almost 20 languages I can think of………..that is that it helps 
to learn Rebol like you would a spoken language in sentences, not 
words.

An alternative is to learn denotational semantics, or lambda calculi, 
but this is only useful to CS major trying to proof properties of 
a language, it doesn't help build the intuitions of the language. 
But I will not discourage to go that route if you please.

I start writing code in C while talking, and suddenly I'm writin 
Pascal... !!!

Yup!

:-)

Oh man, have you ever done any web development ?

LOL

Should anyone mention that Rebol is very addictive? It may be too 
late for denismx.

: )

As far as I understand, rebol is written in C, incidentally.

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhh.......................first one is free.

LOL

The reason that University of Uppsula in Sweden teaches Scheme first 
(and Grinnel College as well) is that you don't learn the bad habits 
of C/C++ and you learn the process of abstraction, and the beauty 
of elegance, and purer algorithms.

web su.ks ... just tinkering with css, html, and all that MLs, which 
do give you different results in different interpreters, ehm, browsers 
:-)

R, and you call it "SafeWorlds!"

Once they discover REBOL, they will move to it.

Because C is a good abstraction of current hardware architectues. 
(It is a just bit better than assembly).

I've given up on web dev about 10 years ago. Used to teach it then.

james: LOL

and to I've just been  "reintroduced" to web dev...

Still in constant contact with one of my students of that period. 
He's become quite an expert at web dev . I ask him when I need something 
;-0

heuristics.  If you had taught him REBOL, just think where he would 
be today.  You could ask him anything.

to I've -> to think I've

part of my jog nowadays is get into XML, XSLT and that stuff ... 
we just upgraded SAP, and it generates some docs for us, which are 
ok in IE, not in FF (totally screwed) and on friday I visit IBM to 
see XForms and I will ask those guys, if it makes sense to go that 
route ... it seems like going to hell ... :-)

denismx I really recommend you to read at least the free chapter 
of the CTM Book http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/chapters/0262220695chap1.pdf

I'm addicted to Rebol since a few years back in fact. But never got 
to the point of the newcomer stage in the learning process. One excuse: 
to many distractions elswhere.

no prob.  REBOL is more than 20 years ahead of its time.  If it takes 
you 5 years, you are still way ahead of the crowd.

eFish... that's my plan: to learn just enough to start teaching it. 
Then I'll actually start learning it, in fact ;-)

eFishAnt - I always liked your optimism :-)

If I had time I will translate the examples there to Rebol. Maybe 
you can do that while you learn. I can help you. My first attemp 
was to make the Class Factory from the book. I got it. However Oz 
the language of the book has bit better security than Rebol. But 
any how I was able to do this and in the process I learn a lot of 
good programming techniques.

Pekr, given your level, what is there to learn in XML.  "you" site 
down for 1 hour, read about, furrow your eyebrow, and your done.

Ok, Jaime... will read that chapter.