I also subscribe to the Icon list, and just received this message that I thought the Rebol list might be interested in. (COPY) 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 (END COPY) -- Richard Laing Vancouver, CANADA [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://members.tripod.com/rlaing/index.htm ********************************************************* "Much may be made of a Scotchman if he be caught young." Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) *********************************************************
