From: Martin DeMello <martindemello@...>
Date: 2008-01-03T05:28:39+09:00
Subject: Re: Zed Shaw - Ruby has dodged a bullet

On Jan 2, 2008 8:10 PM, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky <znmeb@cesmail.net> wrote:
> Martin DeMello wrote:
> > On Jan 1, 2008 11:59 PM, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky <znmeb@cesmail.net> wrote:
> >> 1. Rebol is slow. It was pretty much the slowest thing in the Alioth
> >> shootout the last time I ran the analysis.
> >
> > This from a rubyist? :)
>
> I guess you haven't seen my RubyConf 2007 paper. Rebol is slower than
> Ruby ... a *lot* slower.

I know :) I meant that Ruby is the other language about which we say
"look everyone! cool language! programmer productivity! fun!" and they
turn up their noses and say "omg slow".

> Yeah ... I buzzed by the Factor web site again. Slava has attempted to
> merge Forth and Lisp concepts into a new language, even though it looks
> more like Forth on paper. The one thing that struck me about that
> concept is that the "native" programming language of the Hewlett-Packard
> HP-28, HP-48 and HP-49 is something called RPL, which stands for Reverse
> Polish Lisp.
>
> RPL looks much like Forth, but I think it's a much more elegant language
> than Forth. Built in data types, in addition to real and complex
> numbers, include strings, algebraic expressions, binary constants,
> matrices and "programs". IIRC it is recursive as well; it definitely has
> a functionality equivalent to "lambda". But HP has always considered it
> a dialect of Lisp, not a dialect of Forth.

Interesting! Rebol is in many ways a Forth/Lisp cross too, and of
course there's Joy, but that never seemed like a 'real world' language
somehow.

martin