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[REBOL] Re: Gregg's Article in OnLamp

From: greggirwin:mindspring at: 31-Oct-2003 14:06

Hi Andrew, AJM> I discovered a little problem when I went to "correct" a problem here:
>>> languages: [
AJM> [ REBOL Java VB Perl Python Ruby Tcl PHP C C++ C# AJM> [ Delphi Smalltalk Lisp COBOL AJM> [ ] AJM> ** Syntax Error: Invalid word -- C# AJM> ** Near: (line 2) REBOL Java VB Perl Python Ruby Tcl PHP C C++ C# AJM> I think it would have been better to use strings instead of words. It also AJM> has the side benefit of reducing the number of words in the script as well. I actually thought long and hard about that, and I opted to both use words, and still include C# in the list. I could easily have left it out, but I actually hope that people will do what you did and find that not everything can be a valid word. I don't want to encourage people to stick with the old mentality of "just make it a string" that you have with most other languages. We can do better with REBOL. If you look at the options side by side, do you really like the second one better? languages: [ REBOL Java VB Perl Python Ruby Tcl PHP C C++ C-sharp Delphi Smalltalk Lisp COBOL ] languages: [ "REBOL" "Java" "VB" "Perl" "Python" "Ruby" "Tcl" "PHP" "C" "C++" "C#" "Delphi" "Smalltalk" "Lisp" "COBOL" ] Hopefully people will look at the first version and think "Hey, where are those defined? They're not strings...how does it do that?" To me, one of REBOL's greatest strengths is the ability to use words-- not to mention all the other native datatypes--and I want to encourage people to be aware of them and how important they are. Thanks for bringing it up! -- Gregg