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[REBOL] REALLY DISCOVER THE POWER OF REBOL

From: edinburgh:veitchi at: 21-Sep-2000 19:26

Foreword: Here's a private email I sent in response to Ryans comments about my post to this list. Ryan, I hope you don't mind me making this public, Mark ******************* original e-mail******************** I agree with the points you made regards my post to the Rebol user list. However one minor point that I take issue with is that an open source Rebol would somehow open up REBOL to software competitors. I don't think this is a valid point, Microsoft & other software companies have the finance & the resources to implement a lookalike of ANY software product. They can hire the brains to do so or just buy out the said company. Rebol at the high end is a Lisp/Scheme like interpreted language built I believe on a Two Stack Forth like engine. These are mature technologies and have been implemented in various dialects & languages over the years. There is nothing in the underlying technology that Microsoft or any other capable language programmer could not re-implement if they so wished, the fact that they haven't done so either means they do not see REBOL as significant (a gross under-estimate in my opinion ) or they have big sunk costs & investment in existing technologies like Java, C++, Visual Basic, Delphi etc. REBOL's magnificence in my opinion comes from it's simplicity & correctness of design. It is a human centric programming language & a very powerful one at that. However I believe that to protect our users interests from predatory competitors like Microsoft an Open Source REBOL / OSCAR released under the Gnu Public License - copyleft, would prevent any malevolent force taking REBOL away from us at some future date. I also think Carl & the Gang need as much help & support as they can get. They will make their money from selling high end corporate & professional REBOL products. Rebol/core is free and is stated to always be available for free. So if it's already free then why not totally free in the open source sense. ANSI C "printf" and Pascal "Writeln" are compiled commands which work almost identically to the REBOL 'prin & 'print words both of which are Rebol natives! and almost certainly based on something similar to either of the above C or Pascal code. The Rebol community I feel would learn a great deal about REBOL by re-implementing it in C or Pascal or Scheme etc, Brian, Gabriele Elan etc from the list all have deep language & computing knowledge & experience in various languages as well as having worked on language implementations so the skills are there. It is your choice as to whether to participate or not. I hope you will reconsider & hope you will remember I don't want to fragment REBOL or hurt Carl or the REBOL team in anyway, I support & will continue to support REBOL. I believe in Carl's design skills & technologies, he is a proven master. I & others merely aspire to emulate such wizardry & gain a deeper understanding in the process, improve our skills etc. Regards programming in C - I agree - Yuck!!!! I would much rather write OSCAR in REBOL but until and or if Carl ever writes a compiler for REBOL, then unfortunately there is no choice but to get your hands dirty in a more cumbersome language like C or Modula/Pascal etc. We're on the same side. Fellow Rebol friend, Mark Dickson ********************************************************************** Veitchi (Scotland) Ltd 31-37 Pitt Street Leith Edinburgh EH6 4BY Direct Tel : (44) 0131 554 7661 Direct Fax: (44) 0131 555 0951 E-Mail: [edinburgh--veitchi--co--uk] ********************************************************************** IMPORTANT NOTICE: This email is confidential, may be legally privileged, and is for the intended recipient only. Access, disclosure, copying, distribution or reliance on any of it by anyone else is prohibited and may be a criminal offence. Please delete if obtained in error. Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender, except where the sender specifically states them to be the views of Veitchi (Scotland) Ltd. **********************************************************************