Rebol Book?
I've looked through a few of Nick's sites and really appreciate the articles. I was hoping at some point he or someone in the Rebol community(maybe Carl) would write a nice book on Rebol. Not just the language, but the philosophy too. I work with a lot of programmers that use really complicated tech stacks, complain all day, and snort in derision when I point out Rebol. Sure it isn't perfect in all situations, but I bet a large portion of common business programming functions make a lot more sense in Rebol than Java. It would be great to see a book starting with the language basics and then going over the common dialects and how to build your own non trivial dialects. I hear Rebol has easy XML native types, but can also avoid it if needed as it has it's own format. That is cool and deserves to be mentioned. I wonder how much of the programming I do is done using inferior methods only because 99% of the coding world all does it that way? Something like 'Rebol: Software done right'. A community created book like that could probably be only moderately extended when Red reaches 1.0 (add support for Red/System, concurrency...etc) if that is the future direction. I know this is pretty out there, but thought I'd at least bring it up.
posted by: Newbius 12-May-2017/21:11:37-7:00
If you have some time, should look through Carl's blog. Couple of highlights:
Was XML Flawed from the Start?
http://www.rebol.com/article/0108.html
More than Just Code - A Deep Lake.
http://www.rebol.com/article/0103.html
Also Brian Dickens (aka. Hostile Fork) wrote an introduction from the philosophical point of view:
Why Rebol, Red, and the Parse dialect are Cool
http://blog.hostilefork.com/why-rebol-red-parse-cool/
posted by: Chris 12-May-2017/22:09:05-7:00
Nice articles and thanks for sending! I really just wish all this excellent information was more accessible (who knows what I'm missing :)). Even this simple blog is nice and simple (how software should be). It really is a breath of fresh air. I also see a French author has a free book available that I'll have to check out.
posted by: Newbius 13-May-2017/9:27:29-7:00
A while back I bought two printed books on Rebol from Amazon: "Rebol for Dummies" and "Rebol (the official guide)". The former is more highly rated and readable, but either might meet your needs for a gradual introduction. However, neither gets into GUI programming nor other internals to anywhere near the level which I think is needed. Hopefully books on Red will start arriving in a year or two but, until then, I think Nick's tutorials together with the non-printed books and articles will have to do.
posted by: stever 27-Jun-2017/19:40:01-7:00
I can offer no help on the philosophy of REBOL because that is the area that I also wish I understood better. However, in an effort, basically, to explain REBOL to myself, I have created a web site with some things I have been able to discover, and it includes a reverse-engineered VID reference manual. Just yesterday, I actually used that manual for a little VID issue, so it might be helpful to others. The site is here: http://www.cobolrebol.com/
posted by: Steven White 28-Jun-2017/8:51:51-7:00
There are books. I have then somewhere...Here's some.
http://www.onlineprogrammingbooks.com/rebol-essentials/
http://www.lulu.com/shop/olivier-auverlot-and-peter-william-alfred-wood/rebol-a-programmers-guide/ebook/product-17515075.html
and here, scroll down
https://libgen.pw/search.php?search_type=magic&search_text=REBOL&submit=Dig+for
posted by: Sam the Truck 9-Aug-2017/0:09:47-7:00
Steven White's site is very good. Thanks for writing it Steve.
posted by: SamTheTruck 23-Aug-2017/3:55:32-7:00
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