Talk:REBOL adoption

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Contents 1 Reboot Terminology 2 Open Source 3 Junk Web Technology 4 Using Rebol is Isolating 5 Ruby vs. Rebol 6 Documentation Problems 7 Meta

Reboot Terminology

Let's find out, where we are today, how to "reboot" our points of view, and how to get under the radar once again

I'm glad you're using the "reboot" term as applied to point of view, because I don't think technology reboot alone is going to make much of a splash at all... Fork 15:05, 4 December 2009 (EST)

Yes, I am aware of your marketing ideas, and I would like to say that I do care about them, and I respect different point of view, although sometimes I don't necessarily agree, but there would be no colorful life without the diversity in opinions.

As for R3, I used your "Reboot" term intentionally - we need to reboot in mentality too ... Pekr 5 December 2009

Open Source

This issue is very key and probably needs its own page about REBOL open source, the expanded conversation is on the talk page there.

Junk Web Technology

No matter what I think about all that junk combination of JS, HTML, XML, CSS, PHP or other stuff on the server side - the web has won.

I hope it's not the last word; I think as JSON demonstrates people are starting to grasp some simplifying and Rebolish ideas.

It probably would be best, though, to talk in specifics instead of just saying things are junk. Perhaps show the evolution of how HTML might have been done in Rebol, how CSS might have integrated better with the scripting, how the parsing would have been easier... less problems with name collisions, etc. It's worth it to work out full examples; note that Rebol doesn't have a "DOM", and missing things this big is something that has to be explained and gaps filled. Fork 15:05, 4 December 2009 (EST)

Using Rebol is Isolating

One never sees Rebol announcements that show partnership or embracing of anything that isn't Rebol-powered. Rebol has rolled its own solution to things like chat (*two* systems you have to install on your desktop!), sharing source snippets, bug tracking and ticketing. I'm rather surprised this site is run with MediaWiki! Fork 15:05, 4 December 2009 (EST)

I don't understand what you are talking about here? What two systems? But it does not matter. I just wanted to say - R3 Chat was done on purpose. It will be base for AltME 2.0. Even if not used, it might serve Carl as a new idae base. I do understand however, your argument about not necessarily reinventing the wheel

As for the need to install anything - I need to install C compilers, Firefox, Thunderbird, Tortoise SVN, Apache, PHP, MySQL - so much for free stuff I am using. There's nothing wrong with installation, although I do prefer copy & run principle anyday, and REBOL can meet that. Pekr 5 December 2009

The reinvention mentality is good in a "drink one's own wine" sense because it helps flesh out the platform to be sure it has coverage, and gives clarity to iterative design. But there is a hubris in thinking that one person coding in Rebol can *really* keep up with the full necessary feature set in these sorts of programs to sustain development (on top of developing Rebol itself). Sure, you can make something that works well enough for you, but people can hack out something in PHP fast too that kind-of-works. Is there any reason someone would use CureCode besides the fact that it is written in Rebol? If you really tried to market it on its merits could it possibly stand up to FogBugz ? Fork 15:05, 4 December 2009 (EST)

Look, CureCode is private product of French company called Softinnov. They did set-up it for us to use, there is also AltME CC channel opened, they add features we request for us. It is really simple to use, and later on, it might share some things with R3 Chat.

I have easy question for you - there is big list of programming languages. There is also rather extensive list of web forum software. Now - will you question authors of all those systems like you did it with CC? "Hey - why do you create yet-another-xyz, if there is already thing-abc, which could fit your needs"? Pekr 5 December 2009

Just imagine what it would be like if the Rebol community was applying its innovation not to try and replace all the tools developers use in one go. They could be making automations and extensions to tools other people actually use, which would get enough credibility inside organizations that maybe they'd experiment with Rebol for other things. So when I say reboot the view I mean "join the rest of the world"--bring ideas to them--show you can have a glass of Rebol wine with your meal and not have to drink a whole jug to get any impact. Seriously, how much of a difference would it make if AltME just shut down and people moved over to Freenode #rebol . Sure...some features lost, but some gained. Time could have been spent on good Rebol IRC bots and IRC clients... Fork 15:05, 4 December 2009 (EST)

Sometimes I just have a feeling, that open-source proponents have one typical problem - if the product fits their philosophy, they say - "cool, another example, how diversifying open-source world is - we just got another option to use". But - in our case, somehow magically, everything we create is put in question and aproached with different kind of mentality - "oh, why yet another product of such kind? We have software xyz for you. Ah, and I have to install your SW? (like you would not have to install SW xyz too :-)". Pekr 5 December 2009

Ruby vs. Rebol

Ruby is another programming language, which started its development 
approximately at the same time as REBOL did. Do you think it is really 
any special,

Recently I was looking through the tutorials, and I thought "hm, Rebol could do this probably".

And so I started RUBOL

I think Rebol needs more of these apples-to-apples comparisons. You can talk about for instance how great parse is as opposed to regular expressions, but where is taking a regular expression tutorial and converting every sample to Rebol parse so people can hold them up in parallel? Fork 15:05, 4 December 2009 (EST)

Documentation Problems

We should admit, that documentation was a bit of a problem too.

When people are trying to learn things they use Google. I think it would be wise to reach out to everyone who has a dated or incomplete page about Rebol and perhaps get them to take it down or offer to redirect to a wiki where it can be finished.

Maybe some old Q&A archived various places could be re-posted on Stack Overflow? Fork 15:05, 4 December 2009 (EST)

Meta

Fork, thanks for your reactions. I will add few comments to your opinions too (...) Please don't take my points as arguing. I am not arguing, I have just different opinion on some aspects. Actually I believe there is going to be some discussion and reactions, once RT publishes their Host licence. And I hope Carl has some answers prepared, especially if the licence would be very restricting, because otherwise - we could loose even more ppl. Pekr 5 December 2009

Cool. Hope you don't mind that I have threaded your comments so that the conversation is more the way things are done at Wikipedia. Otherwise I don't see how things can be tied up to any conclusion, and it will just get out of control like anywhere else people debate these things.

Here are some notes on Refactoring Talk Pages. Archives are of course preserved in the history if questions arise about whether reorganization is in good faith or not, and it's easy enough to patch up.

(Note: To easily sign your comments inline, just enter four tildes in a row and wiki will put in your username and the date) Fork 17:49, 5 December 2009 (EST)