Mailing List Archive: 49091 messages
  • Home
  • Script library
  • AltME Archive
  • Mailing list
  • Articles Index
  • Site search
 

[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