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[REBOL] Re: [ feature request /intelligence ]

From: greggirwin::mindspring::com at: 10-Apr-2002 11:35

Hi Norman, << I would expect that a variable not defined could automaticly be assigned. ie -> >> It certainly could be, but REBOL isn't designed to do it (though I'm sure they could change it if they wanted to). While that kind of thing can be helpful in building very small scripts, it's also hard to find bugs that can come from that behavior. E.g. you type a name incorrectly but REBOL doesn't warn you, and creates the new word silently. Now your code "runs" but doesn't work correctly. REBOL actually goes further toward "intelligence" than any other language I know in many ways. By that I mean it works in such a way that makes your life easier, and works as expected. I often find when I have a problem and start debugging it, by the time I've eliminated half the code, it works correctly. I just try to make it much too hard. REBOL almost always provides a simple solution. Often times the people on the ML will tell me about a built-in function that does what I want already, or will show me how to do something with 3 or 4 words that I wrote 20 lines of code to do. Just my 2c. --Gregg