REBOL rolls forward

March 16, 2001, 09:19 AM —  Unix Insider — 

REBOL is a proprietary scripting computing language invented by Carl Sassenrath, founder and CTO of REBOL Technologies of northern California. This week, we'll look at the progress that REBOL and its language have made in the last six months, and their future prospects.


Not just another language

Regular Expressions subjects seem to fall into two extreme categories. One category contains subjects with a single, simple idea accompanied by technical details. PyQt, for instance, is Qt bound to Python. The content of this kind of article fits in the headline; the body contains the who, what, and where: licensing, release dates, name, places, and so on.


The other category consists of topics that require considerable context. For example, to write about how exception handling is qualitatively different for scripting languages, you must have a good background in scripting, exception abstractions, and subtleties of syntax and semantics just to express the main point.


REBOL is in the latter category. Newcomers typically need to learn a lot before they understand REBOL. For now, concentrate on three keywords: technology, tool, and product.


Sassenrath's technologic vision

Our three previous columns that focused on REBOL emphasized that most of the credit for REBOL's technology goes to Sassenrath. REBOL's executives all have deep industry experience, but Sassenrath is the celebrity, mostly for his design and implementation of the Amiga OS. REBOL combines ideas that appeared in Amiga with other insights Sassenrath has been cultivating for up to 20 years.


The result is a messaging language that is succinct, quick to learn, and almost heroically portable. (REBOL works as universally as Java is supposed to: on BeOS for PPC, Open VMS, Amiga, MPE/iX, and dozens of other platforms.) It is also, as Australian developer Allen Kamp exults, "more fun" than anything in the last 20 years. REBOL knows about the most important networking technologies, and is designed for readability. This makes for compelling one-liners, such as:

 
    do ftp://ftp.rebol.com/hello.r
  


This retrieves the hello.r REBOL script from the ftp.rebol.com FTP server and executes it as a local application. REBOL incorporates knowledge of HTML, networking protocols, and email, as well as the usual data and control structures.


The real excitement, though, comes from applications that are more than just illustrative samples. Sassenrath encapsulates his ideas on source development and reuse in REBOL's dialecting mechanism.

Sign up for ITworld's Daily newsletter
Follow ITworld on Twitter @IT_world

I like it!
Post a comment
The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
peer-to-peer

Brian Proffitt
Microsoft/Novell: Breaking Down the Coupon Numbers

Esther Schindler
Drupal's Dries Buytaert on Building the Next Drupal

Tom Henderson
Top Ten General Operating Systems Rants

pasmith
PS3 motion controller delayed; goes up against Project Natal

sjvn
Neolithic Windows security hole alive and well in Windows 7

claird
Perl source code comparison makes for good reading

mikelgan
Cell phones don't create stress or interrupt much

Sandra Henry-Stocker
How to: The Unix Interview

 

Where Google Chrome security fails: the password
I heard mention that the Chrome OS will have some sort of encryption available a la bitlocker. If it's possible to encrypt personal data using another password or key, then it may have potential for very secure data.... And Ubuntu has an 'encrypt home directory' option, perhaps google should follow suit.
- Dann

Join the conversation here

The Daily Tip

The Daily TipQuick, practical advice for IT pros. Made fresh daily.

Hot tips:

Want to cash in on your IT savvy? Send your tip to tips@itworld.com. If we post it, we'll send you a $25 Amazon e-gift card.

Newsletters

Subscribe to ITWORLD TODAY and receive the latest IT news and analysis.

I would like to receive offers via email from ITworld partners.
By clicking submit you agree to the terms and conditions outlined in ITworld's privacy policy.
Marketplace