[REBOL] Re: REBOL Books
From: mat:eurogamer at: 22-Jan-2001 12:30
Heya Tim,
TJ> I must respectfully differ with Matt's opinion here. His opinion provides
TJ> *no* real information as to the content of Elan's book, nor does he do
TJ> any credit to the enormous amount of work that went into it.
<shrug> I wasn't writing a critique. I was writing a recommendation on
what books I think he should buy in order to best learn Rebol.
TJ> If you want to learn how to put together a distributed database system
TJ> using rebol , AND learn rebol at the same time - this is for you. But
TJ> it will take some time, and is for the serious student of both rebol AND
TJ> database programmer.
Well that's true. However it says Rebol the Official Guide on the
cover. It doesn't say Rebol and Distributed Databases. I guess that's
what annoyed me. It has skimpy documentation of network protocols,
pretty much no reference section at all which as an 'Official Guide' I
would have thought mandatory. I bought this before that User Guide PDF
became available.
IE when I wanted to know about X in Rebol, I flipped to the index and
tried to look it up and more often than not it wasn't there at all.
TJ> "Rebol the Official Guide" is a book for the advanced and needs advanced
TJ> discipline. "Rebol for Dummies" may be for the less adbanced.
The official guide is for the advanced? Now it's my turn to
respectfully differ.
Chapter 1. The Rebol Programming language (because you didn't know
before you bought the book apparently)
Chapter 2. Installing Rebol (yes it's that hard)
Chapter 3. Taking the First Steps (which includes such classics such
as 'Loading Rebol under Windows' and 'Using Print')
Chapter 4. Rebol Basics (etc et etc)
It reads like a highschool guide to BASIC (along with how to complete
your first project) quite frankly. Granted the entire sections on
handling data are good, well that's basically the bulk of the book.
Now in *my* opinion there's no way you'd use Rebol for coding a
database anyhow - it's just not suitable for that sort of thing. What
it *is* good for is advanced data mining of the Web and utility
scripting etc especially the native net support. That's not catered
for very well here at all.
IE it doesn't even tell you how to delete a mail from a pop3 box
except to say that you need to use low-level port functions to do it.
It's not a bad book at all, it just wont suffice as an only book.
Is that a better critique?
TJ> If I were to make a recommendation to some who wished to earn money
TJ> with rebol, then I would recommend both books above, as well as the
TJ> PDF and this mailing list.
Fair comment. For an enthusiast, I recommend Rebol User Guide and this
mailing list and possibly the Rebol for Dummies as the CGI section
example on rebolpress looks good.
--
Mat Bettinson - EuroGamer's Gaming Evangelist with a Goatee
http://www.eurogamer.net | http://www.eurogamer-network.com
