[REBOL] Re: Need help for justification of using REBOL as dev language
From: gjones05:mail:orion at: 11-Apr-2001 9:03
From: "CRS - Psy Sel/SPO, COUSSEMENT Christophe, CPN"
<snip>
> I have found many args
> in the J. K. Ousterhout's article too:
>
> http://dev.scriptics.com/people/john.ousterhout/scripting.html
>
> About this article: a very interesting comparison is given by the figure
1 -
> level/typing -
> Has anybody any idea where to situate REBOL on the graph ? I assume it
> should be similar to Tcl/Perl ?
> Perhaps there are any folk at RT who could tell me what the range of
> instructions/statement for REBOL is ?
I would place REBOL around the C, C++ range on the x coordinate, and
somewhat higher than Tcl on the y coordinate based on my knowledge (and
opinion ;). In that everything starts as a string in Tcl code (the bytecode
compiler apparently makes some assumptions about type in order to improve
performance), it is considered fairly typeless. C is typed on the face, but
allows type coersion/conversion almost too easily (accounting for the ease
of making errors). What I know/recall of Java is that it is strictly typed,
and in fact sets fairly tight constraints on type conversions.
As far as the amount of work done by any given statement, REBOL is clearly
more "efficient" than Visual BASIC and usually more efficient than Tcl (by a
guestimated
factor of 25 to 50%). Some of the efficiency lies in REBOL
being more "functional" in that more commands can be strung together and
thereby avoiding the explicit assignments. And other portions of the gain
are in the inclusion of clean abstractions of a number of protocols,
including file and http manipulations.
Glad the reference was helpful.
--Scott Jones
