Women in Technology

Article:		Introducing REBOL with Amazingly Easy GUI Programming
Subject:		Cool Language, but ?
Date:		2003-11-01 11:07:09
From:		anonymous2
I like many aspects of this language, but why should I pay money for REBOL/Pro when I can get system access and much more in free and open languages like Ruby and Python? The business model of "charging money for bare-bones interpreters" fell out of style years ago. REBOL embodies some interesting ideas. I can certainly see why it's rebellious; it looks as though the designer looked at every popular language and decided to take the opposite approach. In some cases this formula works brilliantly, but in others it seems like folly. Best of luck to the revolutionary guard. Hopefully there's enough features and affordances in this language to attract mainstream programmers once the underground rebolution subsides.

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• Cool Language, but ?
  2003-11-01 19:17:14  gregg-irwin [View]
  
  
  If you guy View/Pro, /Command, or the SDK, you get a lot more than a "bare bones interpreter" IMO, but that is *my* opinion. I'd rather talk about software than free-versus-commercial issues though. :)
  
  I have both Ruby and Python here, and they're good languages, no doubt. But neither has an integrated system for building GUIs, and I haven't found anything that is as simple to deploy as REBOL (two of the many reasons I like it so much).
  
  I choose (and pay for) REBOL, even though there are free languages out there that I could use. And if you don't need to make system calls, you can use the free version(s) of REBOL. :)
  
  Thanks for writing!