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[REBOL] Re: Rebol Framework suggestion

From: greggirwin:starband at: 10-Sep-2001 1:37

Hi Chris, I'm coming to REBOL from VB and I'm used to having an IDE myself. While there are certain things I would love to have in an IDE for building REBOL apps (like Intellisense and QuickInfo syntax help), and for helping me learn it as quickly as possible, I don't know if modeling REBOL tools after the things we're familiar with is the best approach. REBOL is revolutionary and I think, to take full advantage of what it can do, we need to focus on the end rather than the means. For example, we're used to having a way to ask an object what it is (typeof). If I know what kind of object it is, I know how to react, right? Well, that works if you know all the types of objects that you might be dealing with, but what if you don't? Imagine your REBOL script is an agent running around the internet. Will everyone you want to talk to be using the same type library? There will be times that we want to try to guarantee correctness to the n-th degree and tightly control things but what if we said "I want to talk to this guy so I ask if he speaks a dialect I know. If not, is there a mediator out there somewhere who can translate for us?" I don't care what kind of object he is. I only care if we can talk to each other. Maybe this comes full circle and dialects fill the position of IDL/ODL stuff but, wow, what a difference that would be IMO. I would love to help build some reusable libraries for REBOL but I don't know what the best approach might be due to my inexperience with it. So far I'm just working on some basic building blocks to get to know REBOL (stack, queue, dictionary, string manipulation functions). As I'm picking things to work on, I'm looking for those things that I really use all the time. REBOL has features built in which will eliminate a lot of the libraries I've written for myself over time. Rather than try to put a big OO layer on top of REBOL, I'd say "think small". What are *concrete* 3 things you rely on every day, or in every project? By concrete I mean avoid abstract concepts like inheritance. Reading ASCII files, mapping COBOL records, designing GUIs, one-off code generators, that kind of stuff. Just some thoughts (from my position of near ignorance <g>). --Gregg