From: tony summerfelt <snowzone5@...>
Date: 2005-11-03T09:06:15+09:00
Subject: Re: [[OT] Ruby vs REBOL

Peter Carlsson wrote on 11/2/2005 2:00 AM:

> using REBOL for six years I would like to ask if anyone
> could give a brief summary of what's the difference
> between Ruby and REBOL.

i think rebol has quirky syntax. you can't pick it up as quickly as
you can ruby. anybody who's been exposed to perl or python (or maybe
even java) will find ruby 'similar' eg:

either none? system/script/args [
       print ""
       print "usage: <path/to/binkd.log> <days>"
       print ""
       ask "hit enter:"
       quit
][

the [] brackets are not generally used for blocks. the refinements
designated by '/' are interesting, but i don't know what the
ubiquitous '.' couldn't be used.


any quirky syntax can endear you to the language.... :)

i think the main difference you're going to find is the abundance of
documentation for ruby.

the docs for rebol are few and horrendous. the above example i wrote
when i first got into rebol but  "system/script/args" took me four
hours to find. i had to comb through the rebol script library. before
i found the example. i've owned the official rebol guide for a few
years, but other than simple documentation lookups, the guide is
pretty much useless. 'ruby in a nutshell' holds more ruby information
in a 200 pages than the rebol guide does for rebol in 700+ pages.

if it weren't for the rebol mailing list and script library i would
have probably given up on rebol a long time ago...

i actually came to rebol via beos. i needed a biff program for beos,
and sockets were broken for both the perl and tcl beos versions (at
the time). rebol filled the gap, and when view came out it trumped
both tk which as far as i know is STILL not available for beos.

-- 
http://home.cogeco.ca/~tsummerfelt1