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Red could potentially become a really good platform for popularizing lisp since it's cross-platform, have a logo-like syntax and is compiled fully to machine co

Red could potentially become a really good platform for popularizing lisp since it's cross-platform, have a logo-like syntax and is compiled fully to machine code. Someone should write a Go to Red transpiler as it would be a really a good way to increase the amount of libraries Red currently has since Go seems to be a really good language to target due to its consistency and simplicity. My only gripe with it is that it feels too "big".

jlarocco 11y ago
I'm not sure I understand your comment. Specifically, Red is a dialect of Rebol, not Lisp. And after a quick glance through the docs (or I guess the Rebol docs they recommend using), and the Wikipedia pages for Red and Rebol, it doesn't seem any more Lispy than Ruby or Python. Also, the easiest way to get a lot of libraries would be to have easy C interop. At this point there are far more C libraries available than Go libraries.
- klibertp 11y ago
  > it doesn't seem any more Lispy than Ruby or Python Homoiconic syntax is one of the features of Lisp that people know the best. REBOL and Red are homoiconic, while Ruby and Python are not. This means that syntactic extension, which is impossible in Python and Ruby without modification of the parser, is easy to do in those languages. The other similar language (besides Lisp and REBOL/Red, excluding Forth and some more esoteric langs) is Tcl: it's also homoiconic and enables easy syntactic extension.
- greggirwin 11y ago
  Red isn't a dialect of Lisp, nor exactly of Rebol. Red is descended from Rebol, and the two are very compatible. Rebol, in turn, has its heritage in Lisp, Forth, and Logo, with prototype objects as in Self. Both the Red and R3 teams see compatibility as a good thing going forward. And you have C interop today, though it will get easier in the future.
  - jlarocco 11y ago
    TBH, Lisp is far more popular than Red and/or Rebol. I think most programmers who pay any attention to C++, Java, Scala, Clojure, Python, Ruby, Perl, or any other modern language can tell you a little bit about Lisp, because their language of choice has probably recently borrowed some Lisp features. The same thing can't really be said for Red/Rebol.
    - greggirwin 11y ago
      I didn't say anything about popularity. Scheme is arguably more popular than Lisp, and Clojure and other Lisp derivatives are currently on more radars as well. But Red/Rebol are different, more Logo-like at the user level, but quite different even than that. For me, it's about what I can do best with each tool. Success is largely perception. Logo is Lisp (see Brian Harvey's works), and yet most people only think of it as turtle graphics for kids.
    - iceflow19 11y ago
      The irony is that some core concepts in Rebol have been borrowed into the mainstream, the trouble being that people just don't realize it. Rebol was a major influence on JSON. Crockford used to be active in the community, and had really hoped for an opensource Rebol. Carl, who created the language didn't want that, so Douglas created JSON instead, as a way of bringing some of the concepts of Rebol's Data Exchange Dialect to the opensource masses. One regrettable thing is that the there was a definite loss in the syntax and semantics by making what would become JSON intelligible to Javascript.

jlarocco 11y ago

I'm not sure I understand your comment. Specifically, Red is a dialect of Rebol, not Lisp. And after a quick glance through the docs (or I guess the Rebol docs they recommend using), and the Wikipedia pages for Red and Rebol, it doesn't seem any more Lispy than Ruby or Python. Also, the easiest way to get a lot of libraries would be to have easy C interop. At this point there are far more C libraries available than Go libraries.

klibertp 11y ago
> it doesn't seem any more Lispy than Ruby or Python Homoiconic syntax is one of the features of Lisp that people know the best. REBOL and Red are homoiconic, while Ruby and Python are not. This means that syntactic extension, which is impossible in Python and Ruby without modification of the parser, is easy to do in those languages. The other similar language (besides Lisp and REBOL/Red, excluding Forth and some more esoteric langs) is Tcl: it's also homoiconic and enables easy syntactic extension.
greggirwin 11y ago
Red isn't a dialect of Lisp, nor exactly of Rebol. Red is descended from Rebol, and the two are very compatible. Rebol, in turn, has its heritage in Lisp, Forth, and Logo, with prototype objects as in Self. Both the Red and R3 teams see compatibility as a good thing going forward. And you have C interop today, though it will get easier in the future.
- jlarocco 11y ago
  TBH, Lisp is far more popular than Red and/or Rebol. I think most programmers who pay any attention to C++, Java, Scala, Clojure, Python, Ruby, Perl, or any other modern language can tell you a little bit about Lisp, because their language of choice has probably recently borrowed some Lisp features. The same thing can't really be said for Red/Rebol.
  - greggirwin 11y ago
    I didn't say anything about popularity. Scheme is arguably more popular than Lisp, and Clojure and other Lisp derivatives are currently on more radars as well. But Red/Rebol are different, more Logo-like at the user level, but quite different even than that. For me, it's about what I can do best with each tool. Success is largely perception. Logo is Lisp (see Brian Harvey's works), and yet most people only think of it as turtle graphics for kids.
  - iceflow19 11y ago
    The irony is that some core concepts in Rebol have been borrowed into the mainstream, the trouble being that people just don't realize it. Rebol was a major influence on JSON. Crockford used to be active in the community, and had really hoped for an opensource Rebol. Carl, who created the language didn't want that, so Douglas created JSON instead, as a way of bringing some of the concepts of Rebol's Data Exchange Dialect to the opensource masses. One regrettable thing is that the there was a definite loss in the syntax and semantics by making what would become JSON intelligible to Javascript.