Heya Jamey,
JC> Again, RT has the right to do anything they want with Rebol. Unfortunately,
JC> programmers have the NEED to get their jobs done. I have already been forced
JC> to scrap one application I was writing for work in Rebol and re-do it in
JC> Tcl/Tk. Tcl allowed me to do the vital shell access I needed.
I'd just like to add here that I'm going to side with the school of
thought on Core having some sort of shell access.
I've thought a bit about why RT are doing it the current way and I can
see the benefit in having platform independence 100% with Core as it
stands. However to my mind that's just 'nice' balanced against
something which Rebol could *really* use to get a nice hook into the
hobbyist as well as the professional development sectors.
I believe there is a niche in a lovely little language like Rebol
being able to do things on the PC rather like folks used to do things
on the Amiga with Arexx. A powerful, easy to use language that
ultimately had shell access. I know how good it could be because I
have it in Rebol/Command and it's astoundingly useful.
I think there's more than enough differentiation with Rebol/Command
having direct DLL and ODBC access for the higher end developers.
Ultimately a higher user-base would benefit RT more than the
commercial exploitation of Command to those just wanting shell access.
I think we all know folks that have run off to do things in Perl or
TCL purely because they couldn't do things with Rebol. I think this is
a great shame. I've done some amazing things to make my friends and
colleagues go "Oooooo, I didn't know you were a ninja programmer". Yet
I'd have a hard time evangelising it as it currently stands.
Which is a shame. I like to evangelise things like Rebol because
they're speechlessly cool. But this is a holding it back for much
useful applications and a wider acceptance imo.
--
Mat Bettinson - EuroGamer's Gaming Evangelist with a Goatee
http://www.eurogamer.net | http://www.eurogamer-network.com
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