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Introduction

 [1/12] from: schaeper:hyperverse at: 27-Apr-2001 19:27


Hello all, May you only receive this post once. Yesterday I posted from my webhosts email browser and it got a little carried away and sent several posts. The webhost is currently head scratching on the problem. My name is Tom Schaeper and I'm and language junkie. I love new languages because the paradigm of each one forces a new way of thinking about a problem. I am at heart a Basic programmer and my profession is as a programmer in PICK/Universe/Unidata databases. I chose that vocation because the enviroment encouraged creating applications as opposed to writing code, much like REBOL. Over the years I have dabbled in: Forth: wrote a pong style game on an Atari 800 C: Not really my style Snobol: Kinda fun once you get the syntax APL: Wonderfully compact language LISP: Very powerful, but pretty ugly Fortran: I prefer BASIC COBOL: Just say no : ) PL/I : see COBOL PASCAL: Fun, but a lot of work Perl: Created dynamic replicating web pages REBOL is just amazing. So much power in so little space! Reminds me of Forth with a readable syntax. If it had a good multidimensional database behind it, I think it would rule the world. Thanks for your patience with my ramblings. I enjoy all your posts and read every one. Take care, Tom Schaeper

 [2/12] from: ryanc:iesco-dms at: 24-Apr-2001 17:50


Welcome aboard Tom! --Ryan Tom Schaeper wrote:
> Hello all, > May you only receive this post once. Yesterday I posted from my webhosts
<<quoted lines omitted: 29>>
> [rebol-request--rebol--com] with "unsubscribe" in the > subject, without the quotes.
-- Ryan Cole Programmer Analyst www.iesco-dms.com 707-468-5400 I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world. -Einstein

 [3/12] from: alan_otterstad:mikronvinyl at: 25-Apr-2001 8:40


haliluyah.....(i know..spelling)....finally...another mv database and basic pgmr in here......... welcome to the rebol group...i'm just learning rebol and read alot of these posts.... i'm hoping to eventually use rebol at work to make the mv work more effectively with the rest of the pc/unix world.... welcome Tom (stuck on sequoia pro fer now...porting to D3 soon (my project)....oracle (grrr) and synquest (who dey???)... anyway welcome to the reb group.... alan from Tom Hello all, May you only receive this post once. Yesterday I posted from my webhosts email browser and it got a little carried away and sent several posts. The webhost is currently head scratching on the problem. My name is Tom Schaeper and I'm and language junkie. I love new languages because the paradigm of each one forces a new way of thinking about a problem. I am at heart a Basic programmer and my profession is as a programmer in PICK/Universe/Unidata databases. I chose that vocation because the enviroment encouraged creating applications as opposed to writing code, much like REBOL. Over the years I have dabbled in: Forth: wrote a pong style game on an Atari 800 C: Not really my style Snobol: Kinda fun once you get the syntax APL: Wonderfully compact language LISP: Very powerful, but pretty ugly Fortran: I prefer BASIC COBOL: Just say no : ) PL/I : see COBOL PASCAL: Fun, but a lot of work Perl: Created dynamic replicating web pages REBOL is just amazing. So much power in so little space! Reminds me of Forth with a readable syntax. If it had a good multidimensional database behind it, I think it would rule the world. Thanks for your patience with my ramblings. I enjoy all your posts and read every one. Take care, Tom Schaeper

 [4/12] from: carl:rebol at: 25-Apr-2001 9:08


You'll have fun with REBOL then. REBOL is like a lake. On the surface, it is simple for beginners. You can write a lot of "one liners" that do useful things. But, there is great depth to the language, as it is the result of 20 years and over 50 languages. Programs can be very sophisticated. Learn REBOL series. That's the basis for the entire language. If you learn series first, the rest will come much easier. Here are the biggest errors that you will encounter: #1: if condition [do this] [do that] IF is a function that takes only two args! The second block is just data and not processed by IF. Used EITHER or IF/ELSE. Why not give an error? Because you may have written: reduce [if a > b ["item"] [1 2 3]] #2: test: function [n] [m] [ m: "" insert m "!" print m ] The string is literal, it persists over all calls to the function. So, you need to do either: clear m to clear the literal, m: copy "" to copy it first, or: m: make string! 10 to dynamically create the string. This rule applies to literal blocks, and data within blocks too. So, if you need to reuse a block: b: copy [] b: make block! 10 clear b #3: And finally, REBOL uses *very* simple precedence rules, so you don't have to memorize ** comes before * before + before = etc. It's left to right. 5 + 3 * 10 = 80 TRUE. What's interesting is how many time I've found that evaluation order to work better than precedence rules. I did not expect that. It was a delightful result. Suppose I should post this to our site? -Carl

 [5/12] from: b:tiffin:juxtacomm at: 26-Apr-2001 11:28


Hello Tom, Welcome to REBOL land...Life here rocks...and it gets better every day. Anyway, you also want to check out http://www.cs.arizona.edu/icon/ Icon is authored by Ralph Griswold, the inventor of SNOBOL. It has features I've not found in other lingos. Goal-directed evaluation, generators, co-expressions to name a few. You can't be a well rounded multi-lingual programmer without exposing yourself to Icon (and of course REBOL). Later, Blue ~~~~ Brian Tiffin, 613-228-0027 ext 116 JuxtaComm Technologies Inc. 6 Antares Drive, Suite 2 Nepean, ON, Canada, K2E 8A9

 [6/12] from: carl:rebol at: 26-Apr-2001 9:05


Yes... very familiar with it. It's been around for quite a while too... probably about 15 years. The Icon book is one of the few language books that rests on my desk, rather than the bookshelf. A number of Icon's features will be added to REBOL as dialects... some day. Very nice pattern handling. -Carl

 [7/12] from: b:tiffin:juxtacomm at: 26-Apr-2001 13:54


>The Icon book is one of the few language books >that rests on my desk, rather than the bookshelf. > >A number of Icon's features will be added to REBOL as dialects... some day. >Very nice pattern handling. >-Carl
Hi, One of my fondest wishes would be to get Carl Sassenrath, Chuck Moore and Ralph Griswold in the same room for a day/month or two to invent the end-all-be-all human machine interface...perhaps something like 'Forth assisted Iconic REBOL'. Thanks for REBOL Carl (and the RT team). Later, Blue ~~~~ Brian Tiffin, 613-228-0027 ext 116 JuxtaComm Technologies Inc. 6 Antares Drive, Suite 2 Nepean, ON, Canada, K2E 8A9

 [8/12] from: robbo1mark:aol at: 26-Apr-2001 14:00


I couldn't agree more!!!!!!!! Exceedingly talented & highly skilled each and every one of them. Larry Wall could join them too to explain the necessity why BUTT-UGLY Perl Unix Legacy syntax and interface might be the be all & end all of desirable language features. Nice thought! Marj Dickson 8-) In a message dated Thu, 26 Apr 2001 1:53:48 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Brian Tiffin <[b--tiffin--juxtacomm--com]> writes: << >The Icon book is one of the few language books
>that rests on my desk, rather than the bookshelf. > >A number of Icon's features will be added to REBOL as dialects... some day. >Very nice pattern handling. >-Carl
Hi, One of my fondest wishes would be to get Carl Sassenrath, Chuck Moore and Ralph Griswold in the same room for a day/month or two to invent the end-all-be-all human machine interface...perhaps something like 'Forth assisted Iconic REBOL'. Thanks for REBOL Carl (and the RT team). Later, Blue ~~~~ Brian Tiffin, 613-228-0027 ext 116 JuxtaComm Technologies Inc. 6 Antares Drive, Suite 2 Nepean, ON, Canada, K2E 8A9

 [9/12] from: karlr20:home at: 27-Apr-2001 1:07


On Thursday 26 April 2001 10:54, you wrote:
> >The Icon book is one of the few language books > >that rests on my desk, rather than the bookshelf.
<<quoted lines omitted: 16>>
> 6 Antares Drive, Suite 2 > Nepean, ON, Canada, K2E 8A9
I think it would be truly wonderful to have a book which does a complete breakdown of each of the 50 languages that Carl studied during his (legendary?) 20 year journey to REBOL. The strengths and weaknesses of each would be presented as well as the reasons for including or excluding each feature of the language in REBOL. Does a list of the 50 pre-REBOL languages exist somewhere? -Karl

 [10/12] from: petr:krenzelok:trz:cz at: 27-Apr-2001 12:21


Karl Robillard wrote:
> On Thursday 26 April 2001 10:54, you wrote: > > >The Icon book is one of the few language books
<<quoted lines omitted: 29>>
> feature of the language in REBOL. > Does a list of the 50 pre-REBOL languages exist somewhere?
you can try comp.lang.misc newsgroup :-) there is plenty ppl theoretizing about languages and their features ... :-) btw: are we ready to be slashdotted? :-) -pekr-

 [11/12] from: b:tiffin:juxtacomm at: 27-Apr-2001 9:13


>I think it would be truly wonderful to have a book which does a complete >breakdown of each of the 50 languages that Carl studied during his >(legendary?) 20 year journey to REBOL. The strengths and weaknesses of
each
>would be presented as well as the reasons for including or excluding each >feature of the language in REBOL. > >Does a list of the 50 pre-REBOL languages exist somewhere? > >-Karl
I assume Carl might remember :) but even if you only got the first 40, I'd buy the book. Later, Blue ~~~~ Brian Tiffin, 613-228-0027 ext 116 JuxtaComm Technologies Inc. 6 Antares Drive, Suite 2 Nepean, ON, Canada, K2E 8A9

 [12/12] from: stephens:epigraph at: 23-May-2001 12:06


I know, I know...this goes WAY BACK in the email queue, but I missed it the first time around... I'd just like to set the record straight, though... SNOBOL was invented by a gentleman that you may or may not know, but right now he's the United States' chief technologist -- Dave Farber! Dave Farber is also credited with having much to do with inventing, well, THE INTERNET! :) Seriously! Dave Farber was/is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and worked at Bell Labs, along with the likes of Ralph Griswold. BTW, SNOBOL, probably the FATHER of all serious string processing languages, is still available in commercial form of a SPITBOL compiler, and in freeware form SNOBOL4+ at http://www.snobol4.com . If you are old enough, you will remember the GREEN BOOK by Griswold, et al., which is about to be re-released after near obscurity at the same URL. Whether or not you know it, SNOBOL4 is STILL ALIVE on the internet -- Microsoft uses it internally for their software testing, the U.S. government is using it for parsing all their documents onto the web, Adobe is using the Green Book for their document testing! Anyways -- as always, I'm a SNOBOL adherent, having first used it in 1974 to write a complete macro-assembler in 600 statements in SNOBOL! BTW, if you check the AWK book, you will find a credit in there to SNOBOL4! (in the part documenting tables...), in other words, even the UNIX/C adherents have to give their due to the part SNOBOL4 played in the early days at Bell Labs... You will find "closet SNOBOL4" at the top in nearly every industry... Robert Dewar - the programmer/developer of SNOBOL4 was a primary impetus in the development of Ada, for example, and still provides GNAT Ada. -ron San Jose, California At 09:05 AM 4/26/2001, Carl Sassenrath wrote:

Notes
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