Collecting my attempts to improve at tech, art, and life
I don’t use it these days, but REBOL remains one of my favorite little languages. I wrote this tutorial series during the peak of my enthusiasm.
Much of REBOL’s fun lives on in the Red programming language, if you’re curious.
Dec 25, 2004 (Updated Jul 11, 2009)
Coolnamehere [REBOL Babysteps] · rebol · learn ·
REBOL Babysteps - 01 Getting Started
Dec 26, 2004 (Updated Apr 9, 2017)
Coolnamehere [REBOL Babysteps] · rebol · learn ·
REBOL is the “Relative Expression-Based Object Language”, and it was developed by Carl Sassenrath. Who is Carl Sassenrath? Why, he’s one of the people responsible for the amazing operating system which powered the Amiga computer. What’s the Amiga? Why, the Amiga was only the incredibly robust and cool computer released by the same company that brought the world’s first personal computer, Commodore. What’s Commodore? Stop bothering me, kid. Just take it from a relative old-timer: the Amiga put a whole heck of a lot of power into a consumer-affordable personal computer, and it wasn’t really matched by other computers for a good five or ten years. Nowadays, I look at REBOL and it feels like the first language I’ve come across to take lessons from past languages and apply them in a new context, rather than just reimplement them with different syntax.
REBOL Babysteps - 02 Getting Started With View
Dec 26, 2004 (Updated Jul 11, 2009)
Coolnamehere [REBOL Babysteps] · rebol · learn ·
I’m sure you thought that getting started was fun, but it really didn’t do anything to show off REBOL. I’d like to go through almost exactly the same process, but this time focussing my attention on REBOL/View. So let’s give it a try!
REBOL Babysteps - 03 Making Decisions
Feb 27, 2005 (Updated Jul 11, 2009)
Coolnamehere [REBOL Babysteps] · rebol · learn ·
In part 1 I gave you a first cautious glance at the REBOL programming language. In part 2 I extended that glance to a peek at the excellent REBOL/View GUI library. Let’s continue learning how to program with Rebol. Today I want to get you started with some structured programming by introducing you to selection structures. Selection structures make it possible to decide whether or not to do something based on a test. Here are a few uses for a simple selection structure.
REBOL Babysteps - 04 Repeating Yourself
Mar 7, 2005 (Updated Jul 11, 2009)
Coolnamehere [REBOL Babysteps] · rebol · learn ·
Now we know how to do things, and we know how to choose whether or not we will do something. We’re getting close to having some real skills. We just need to get the understanding of one more concept before we reach the first little plateau of programming knowledge. We need to learn how to do a task more than once. Well, besides just running the script again, but that doesn’t really count.