[REBOL] The Industry Needs REBOL But Thinks it Wants Perl Re:
From: news:ted:husted at: 20-Sep-2000 13:46
On 9/20/2000 at 9:08 AM [princepawn--MailAndNews--com] wrote:
>So what do you think? My guess is that there is far too much
uninformed interest in doing things in Perl and that my Perl
inmplementation of REBOL/Core is the only way to hide the wolf of
REBOL in the sheep's clothing of Perl.
Jingoism aside, your boss did made a good business decision. If you get
hit by a bus, he can easily find a new Perl programmer to maintain the
script. Finding a new REBOL programmer might be more difficult. The
real cost of software is more often not development, but maintenance.
Something that REBOL needs but doesn't have is a killer app that can be
sold with a maintenance contract. A working enterprise portal, like
what the vaporific .COM site describes, would be great. Once a backbone
application is in place, it would be easier to then use REBOL for other
things.
Another growth area is control panels for ISPs or Webmasters, to make
it easy to configure a Web site without calling the help desk or
resorting to a command line. Several of these are now being done in
Perl, but could easily be done in REBOL, and would look great in /VIEW.
Again, if you are selling someone a real application with a support
contract, rather than a miscellaneous script, the dynamics start to
change.
Personally, I wouldn't feel good about writing something in REBOL and
then pretending it's Perl. Sounds like something the marketing boys in
Redmond might dream up.
-T.
