Red programming language 0.6.2: LibRed and Macros • Hacker News Board

Re: Red programming language 0.6.2: LibRed and Macros

#21

Post by sqeaky » Mon, Mar 27, 2017, 9:49 PM UTC

transfire wrote: post #17

I think Red is a language to watch. It has a lot of potential. But my understanding is that Linux support is still immature. Currently the focus is Windows. Is that a correct assessment?

I read their about page and their newest post. It was a lot to take in. It was concerning that all the screening had that windows look and feel.

I am kind of excited to try something so large in scope and so different, but no Linux support would kill it before I even downloaded it.

Re: Red programming language 0.6.2: LibRed and Macros

#22

Post by mapcars » Mon, Mar 27, 2017, 9:50 PM UTC

transfire wrote: post #17

I think Red is a language to watch. It has a lot of potential. But my understanding is that Linux support is still immature. Currently the focus is Windows. Is that a correct assessment?

So far Linux lacking only GUI backend support, everything else should work fine. You can still play with guy crosscompiling (as easy as `red -t Windows file.red`) and running on Wine, while GTK backend is in progress

Re: Red programming language 0.6.2: LibRed and Macros

#23

Post by greggirwin » Mon, Mar 27, 2017, 9:52 PM UTC

mVChr wrote: post #4

I've never seen a language with such a variety of built-in data types (e.g. coordinates, tags, email, url, issues). There's support for IPv4 numbers as a base type (tuples) but I can't tell if there's support for IPv6, which shows the trouble with this approach for the language maintainers.

The tuple! type supports 3-12 segments, but only 0-255 in each segment, which is a byte. So it's used for colors, IPv4, and can be stretched for custom purposes. IPv6 doesn't have a literal form, though it's been discussed. One of the problems is that lexical space is tight and supporting it specifically may lead to ambiguity with time! values. Also, the colon is an important delimiting character, which makes having hex coded value ambiguous as well.

Re: Red programming language 0.6.2: LibRed and Macros

#24

Post by mapcars » Mon, Mar 27, 2017, 9:53 PM UTC

sqeaky wrote: post #21

transfire wrote: post #17

I think Red is a language to watch. It has a lot of potential. But my understanding is that Linux support is still immature. Currently the focus is Windows. Is that a correct assessment?

I read their about page and their newest post. It was a lot to take in. It was concerning that all the screening had that windows look and feel. I am kind of excited to try something so large in scope and so different, but no Linux support would kill it before I even downloaded it.

Linux support is just the beginning. Soon you'll be able to compile for iOS, Android and other platforms.

Re: Red programming language 0.6.2: LibRed and Macros

#25

Post by kome » Mon, Mar 27, 2017, 9:59 PM UTC

I can't wait for macOS GUI backend!

Re: Red programming language 0.6.2: LibRed and Macros

#26

Post by greggirwin » Mon, Mar 27, 2017, 10:09 PM UTC

abecedarius wrote: post #15

mVChr wrote: post #4

I've never seen a language with such a variety of built-in data types (e.g. coordinates, tags, email, url, issues). There's support for IPv4 numbers as a base type (tuples) but I can't tell if there's support for IPv6, which shows the trouble with this approach for the language maintainers.

What does a type being built-in do for you extra? In ES6 you can define a template string builder which you could name, for instance, ipv4, and then when you want an IPv4 address literal you say ipv4`192.168.0.1` and get your object. Are there other benefits besides a literal syntax? (Not to slag on Red. One advantage I can see is avoiding the call at runtime to the ipv4 function.)

One of the key reasons for having a lot of literal forms is because REBOL was designed as a messaging language. You can think of it as a data format as much as anything. Template literals in ES6 help with DSL support, which is fundamental in Red's design. It doesn't mean you can just include anything in Red, but the wide array of native forms lets you build a lot of embedded DSLs without resorting to string parsing. Being able to parse at the block level (i.e. datatype level) is really nice.

A couple other new features make dealing with non-loadable input easier too. You can use macros to pre-process data, trap errors that `load` triggers and still get back a block of values, or spec some simple rules in `system/lexer/pre-load`. That's another way we might deal with IPv6 values.

Re: Red programming language 0.6.2: LibRed and Macros

#27

Post by greggirwin » Mon, Mar 27, 2017, 10:12 PM UTC

mapcars wrote: post #13

taliesinb wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you see a nice list of these types?

No need to go anywhere :) >> words: keys-of system/words >> types: collect [forall words [if datatype! = type? get/any words/1 [keep words/1]]] >> probe types [datatype! unset! none! logic! block! paren! string! file! url! char! integer! float! word! set-word! lit-word! get-word! refinement! issue! native! action! op! function! path! lit-path! set-path! get-path! routine! bitset! point! object! typeset! error! vector…

Even easier:

  help datatype!

Re: Red programming language 0.6.2: LibRed and Macros

#28

Post by greggirwin » Mon, Mar 27, 2017, 10:14 PM UTC

transfire wrote: post #17

I think Red is a language to watch. It has a lot of potential. But my understanding is that Linux support is still immature. Currently the focus is Windows. Is that a correct assessment?

Windows got the GUI first, but everything else should be solid on Linux.

Re: Red programming language 0.6.2: LibRed and Macros

#29

Post by greggirwin » Mon, Mar 27, 2017, 10:16 PM UTC

sqeaky wrote: post #21

transfire wrote: post #17

I think Red is a language to watch. It has a lot of potential. But my understanding is that Linux support is still immature. Currently the focus is Windows. Is that a correct assessment?

I read their about page and their newest post. It was a lot to take in. It was concerning that all the screening had that windows look and feel. I am kind of excited to try something so large in scope and so different, but no Linux support would kill it before I even downloaded it.

GUI screenshots are more exciting than console screenshots. :) Red opted to do Windows GUI first, and also to use native widgets on all platforms. A full native GUI may come later, but that's why the current look of promo material.

Re: Red programming language 0.6.2: LibRed and Macros

#30

Post by soapdog » Mon, Mar 27, 2017, 10:17 PM UTC

sevensor wrote: post #2

I've noticed that Red shows up on HN with some regularity, and it sounds interesting. But I don't really understand where it comes from or who it's meant for. The Red / REBOL community seems more than usually self-contained, although it's possible that it's because almost everybody involved is Czech, and I am not. It seems like most of the English-language resources for Rebol were written by one guy with a thing for…

Circa 1999 REBOL was our language of choice at our tiny company. It allowed our small team to develop faster than our competitors. We still did a ton of PHP and Java because our clients required it but lots of our internal tools were REBOL based and were quite pleasant to use and extend.

I have been following Red from a distance waiting for it to be ready for the kind of usage I want to put it through (mostly small desktop apps). I think that Red / REBOL are among the most fun languages to use for personal projects.

PS: Brazilian, not Czech...