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[REBOL] Re: DyBASE test

From: greggirwin:mindspring at: 24-Dec-2003 8:27

Hi Konstantin, Gabriele and Romano already pointed out some technical aspects, so I'll just add some comments. KK> That is why I said that language should be less error prone. KK> It can be less flexible, require redundant definitions, but it should KK> be safe and be able to catch at compiler time as many bugs as KK> possible. Certainly I am not experience Rebol user and that is why i KK> doing such stupid mistyping (like this or "hash append value") KK> But fro my point of view, compiler should be able to detect such KK> bugs.. First, we all do stupid things from time to time, it's not just people new to REBOL. After you start understanding REBOL, you can *really* get yourself in all kinds of trouble being clever. :) It's the same with many other powerful languages. Now, I can only give *my opinion* about why things are the way they are in REBOL, and why I can live with them (or not). I don't intend to preach here, but you triggered some thoughts with your comment, so I'll get them out of my head here. :) To me, REBOL as it exists today is a great starting point, not the end of the story. I would like a debugger and an IDE of some kind, and I think we'll see them someday; we just don't have them *yet*. It's like C before all the supporting tools were built up around it. Many aspects of REBOL development might be seen as crude compared to things like Visual Studio or various Java IDEs, but the foundation is the important thing. If we were to build an IDE for REBOL--one that worked like most other IDEs in existence--it might not be a bad thing, but it would hardly exploit what REBOL is really all about: communication. I want an IDE/debugger that knows what *kind* of code I'm debugging. That is, it should know if I'm developing a dialect and provide special tools and analysis for that. If I'm writing code *in* a dialect, it should know that too, and give me different kinds of help, suggestions, and support to catch my errors. If I'm defining an object, it could automatically create a visualization--showing words, their value type, etc. If I'm writing a one-liner, or simple script, I may not care about 'Design by Contract' support, but if I'm writing code to control a satellite, I probably do. So, it should be smart enough to know what I want, what standards to adhere to, etc. Because of the way REBOL works, we can go waaaaaaaayyyyy beyond things like a STRICT pragma and tools like Lint--at least I believe we can--such is the power of communication and dialects. We'll have to give it some help along the way, as we build and train these smart new tools. The opportunity is here and now, though, to start doing those things. For me, REBOL delivers a lot today, but what excites me most is that I see it as just the-tip-of-the-tip-of the iceberg. :) -- Gregg