[REBOL] Re: Language Popularity & Network Effects; Ruby & Mongrel
From: edoconnor::gmail at: 21-Nov-2007 15:53
Interesting discussion. I like the notion of PHP finding its niche
with serving web pages.
I'm not sure what REBOL's niche would be. REBOL was designed as a
messaging language. I think I'd be struck down to hear someone say,
Boy, you need to get your hands on a good, solid messaging language!
Or, likewise, "Where can I find a dynamic, highly-reflective
metaprogramming language when I need one." :^)
I think that REBOL's strong point is it's convenience. I like the fact
that I can fire up the interpreter on Windows or OS X and use it to
manage my local data files with minimal fuss. Or that I can parse &
extract content from web pages quickly. In this personal
productivity/end-user programming space, I'd like to see stronger ways
of managing/launching automated scripts, like a cron-job on the *nix
platforms.
The areas where I find REBOL is not so simple is in managing errors,
networking, encryption, xml and building DSLs. I'm not saying the
power isn't there, just that you need to have a good deal of expertise
in these areas to leverage these features. Oddly, many of the
aforementioned features might be considered central to the idea of
messaging
. If REBOL could make these things much more accessible and
simple, and co-opt more of the SOA terminology, I think RT could enjoy
more acceptance as a quick & dirty scripting language for plumbing
enterprise architectures (as well as public ones, amazon S3, etc.).
REBOL needs to enable the type of programming experience and end-user
apps that people are not getting from current scripting languages and
tool-sets. See "We have lost control of the apparatus" for more on
anticipating the needs of future users:
http://weblog.raganwald.com/2007/09/we-have-lost-control-of-apparatus.html
Regards
