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000248_icon-group-sender _Fri Dec 24 15:37:00 1999.msg
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by baskerville.CS.Arizona.EDU (8.9.1a/8.9.1) id PAA23876
for icon-group-addresses; Fri, 24 Dec 1999 15:36:03 -0700 (MST)
Message-Id: <199912242236.PAA23876@baskerville.CS.Arizona.EDU>
From: "Evans" <evans@gte.net>
To: <icon-group@optima.CS.Arizona.EDU>
Subject: REBOL
Date: Fri, 24 Dec 1999 12:40:37 -0600
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Dear Icon Group,
Dr. Dobb's just ran an article on the new REBOL language. I am curious to know
what the Icon Consortium thinks of this language in comparison to Icon.
http://www.rebol.com/inthenews.html
http://www.rebol.com/quotes.html
REBOL is an interpreted language with an English-like syntax and is geared
mostly toward Internet functionality. It also has strong data manipulation
features akin to Icon's. That is the most I can say at first glance, and leads
to my question: Where do the philosophies of REBOL and Icon diverge?
While I grasp the key underlying aspects of Icon, I can't get my head around
REBOL. It appears to me that in some vague sense the philosophies behind the
two languages have much in common.
To take one concrete example, Unicon/Icon2 claims to be a worthy replacement for
Perl for a variety of reasons. However REBOL makes exactly the same claim, and
is here now for all platforms while Unicon/Icon2 sits in perpetual beta state
and only for Unix.
The author of REBOL is a well-known character in Silicon Valley with a lot of
experience. He researched over 50 languages before starting the REBOL project.
The REBOL project has attracted venture capital, but the core version is
freeware. The commercial vision is to have REBOL running every Internet-capable
device as the core messaging engine. Your Internet Toaster will speak REBOL to
your watch.
The major claimed benefit of REBOL is "dialects" but I fail to grasp how these
work. If you can explain them to me in addition to the comparison with Icon,
double thanks are yours. The REBOL literature seems a little sparse about this
feature. Evidently it is connected with the REBOL "parse" function.
Somewhere on the REBOL pages I also read that REBOL serves as its own
meta-language, or something equally cryptic. I need a computer scientist to
hold my hand at this point because I lost my beanie cap.
An interesting aspect of REBOL as it touches on Icon is that REBOL already
incorporates the port/socket/IO features that were supposed to be the
new-and-improved aspects of Icon2/Unicon. This overlap is another area for
comparison and contrast. Internet functionality is a major theme of this
language.
In summary, my questions are
1) Do you think the driving computer-science philosophies behind REBOL and Icon
are very similar?
2) Where do they differ?
3) Is Icon's destiny pointing in the direction of REBOL?
Sincerely,
Mark Evans