REBOL: The Official Guide (REBOL Press) Book

It's easy to get intimate with certain programming languages and not keep a lookout for new and powerful ones on the horizon. REBOL: The Official Guide raises awareness of this fascinating new programming language that is particularly well suited for CGI scripting on the Web. The foreword implores the reader: "If you know other languages, forget them while you learn REBOL" because REBOL breaks the rules of traditional languages, employing seamless machine independence, broad data typing, and denotational semantics--a mathematically based foundational concept. With an introduction like this, what self-respecting programmer wouldn't be intrigued and motivated enough to read on? As REBOL is introduced in the following chapters, its creator's admonition seems less like hyperbole. The concepts of vocabularies and series--which enable logical organisation of data for use in REBOL--are explained. Familiar concepts such as functions, objects, and data types are illustrated; nearly all of these inspire interesting twists when they are applied to REBOL. A video store example serves as a tutorial on the construction of a sophisticated object-oriented solution that interfaces with a back-end database. Near the end of the book, the focus turns to one of REBOL's most intriguing features--its inherent support for high-level Internet protocols such as HTTP, FTP, SMTP, POP, NNTP, and others. Here the applicability of the language to the Web becomes very obvious. A CD-ROM includes REBOL and the scripts from the book. Whether REBOL is the right language for your production-level development or not, its unique architecture and networkability warrant a serious look. It might just change the way you view programming languages in general. --Stephen W. Plain, amazon.com Topics covered: Words and data types Series Functions and program structuring Debugging Objects and contexts Database access CGI implementation Internet protocol support REBOL ports REBOL dialectingRead More