[REBOL] Re: REBOL-SIMPLE dialect
From: moliad:g:mail at: 19-Aug-2008 20:06
hi Greg,
I will interceed in this discussion just because I understand both
where you come from and where Henrik is trying to steer you.
when you say:
I think you might have missed my point. I used REXX as an example
because it is a simple no fuss language that I am familiar with.
Perhaps that was a mistake. What I should have said was that
REBOL-SIMPLE could be a dead simple language that in all the
superficial ways looks like REBOL.
I used to program in AREXX, an amiga implementation of REXX, and it
was fun and simple, yes.
The point of using Rebol IS that its not a programming language in the
usual sense. Its an expression language, and the lexical datatypes
are an integral part of that which makes it simpler and more
productive. Stripping the datatypes would actually make it more
obscure, more like a traditional programming language.
Rebol's SYNTAX is based on a rich set of datatypes and expressions
which manage them, not declarations and statements with implicit
meaning of a generic data container like a string, or a lexically
shallow datatype like objects.
Changing this to make it different, to me, makes no sense in terms of
REBOL. To me you don't realize that you've already taken the folds of
a programmer. ;-)
In REBOL, a string means "text" nothing more. The type has meaning in
and of itself, and rebol capitalizes on that.
You see, what makes REBOL distinct is not the computing model it has,
or its functions, or library richness... its its syntax itself. and
since you already learned a language, you don't realize that you are
not thinking as a non programmer, hehe. your brain has already
aclimated itself to a set of rules and logic and that have become the
definition of simple.
I find you cannot simplify REBOL's syntax itself ... its REBOL's main
particularity. REBOL has very little syntactic rules.
what is simpler, a road or an open field? in rebol it doesn't assume
which and doesn't force you into any answer... it goes a bit further
than that, it thinks that a road is for cars, fields for all-terrain
vehicles, and plowed fields for tractors, its inherent in the type of
surface, the reason for the surface itself. so you could use any
generic surface and walk, but if you're driving a car, why not use a
road directly... it will should be faster... no?
have fun :-)
-MAx
