[REBOL] Re: MIT article on rebol and other languages
From: tbrownell:shaw:ca at: 18-Feb-2002 3:21
Interesting article.
But I can't help thinking that that there's something fundamentally
wrong with all languages. Instinct would tell me that dialects are on the
right track.
Somewhere out there must be the killer dialect.
Here's a question. What is the end of all this? Or... if your
hardware/software could do anything, what would it be?
Personally I would like to see...
- Software that writes itself.
- If not write itself, a pseudo code dialect, or something that a child
could program.
- An OS that knows what I'm going to do before I do it, and does it for me
flawlessy (eg: when i first sit down, i usually check my email... why
doesn't the stupid thing know that??? or when given an option for the
billionth time, for which i always choose "Cancel", to just cancel already.)
- An AI Organizer for everything. Got so much info goin on that I end up
making backups of my backups.
Here's an interesting white paper on a technology timeline
http://www.btexact.com/white_papers/downloads/WP106.pdf
I find most of it humorous. It picked AI doctors to arrive last year, but
makes one think... where are we going with all this?
But what intrigues me more is the lack of cooperation to accomplish
ANYTHING. There is 1000 times more talk on which is the better language,
then doing something truly constructive with any of em.
<begin rant>
I've made numerous attempts on this list to get organized and form some
think tanks or whatever, with nay a single response??
What gives? My only guess is that the Rebol community, or at least the
part that actually reads these posts, is really rather small. The "law of
big numbers" would have kicked in had their been a big number of readers,
and someone, anyone, would have responded... surely.
Another example is the www.Rebols.com website. Really, an experiment in
potential Reblet type commercialization... numerous posts here... and not a
single sale??? I mean, theres a developer reblet there that turns any script
into the world's easiest macro creation utility ever!
I've taken Rebol and created a 'bot' that can read, comprehend, and
answer questions on whatever it's just read (In discussions with
biography.com on that one) ... developed the world's most advanced
chatterbot, the world's most HAL 9000ish system on the planet to date (check
out a demo conversation at http://24.77.230.151/lfred/demos/lfred.mp3) and
yet no one seems to care?
And IOS seems to be (although im not in the loop to really answer)
suffering from the same problem as Rebol itself... you build a better mouse
trap, and the world DOESN'T beat a path to your door.
So I guess my question would be.. why not? But then the responses would
stumble and fall back into the discussion realm with things like the "Rebol
should be open source" garbage.
Which really, like everything else, is just talk. Lots of talk, and no
killer apps.
<end rant>
Yours truly, the 3 a.m. philosopher...
T Brownell
