Rebol Userbase

[FredAt]

Hello All. I am contemplating moving the client side of my application to Rebol. From what I have seen the language is ideally suited to the task I have in mind and quite apart from that I like it. However, before I take the plunge I would like answers to two questions

• Just how big is the installed userbase for Rebol. Never mind the 2 million downloads - I have downloaded it a few times myself but done little else. I mean who actually uses Rebol on a regular basis.
• Just how much resistance am I likely to encounter from SysAdmin types in large organizations to the download of the Rebol interpreter?

I am happy to hear partisan opinions from Carl and others but it would also help to have access to a more independent review of Rebol in the market place - never mind the technology, I am a convert there already.

[btiffin]

1) Smaller than many of us would like to admit.    REBOL has been listing in the 51-100 range on the TIOBE index if that is of any use.  I'd guess RT would have a better handle on corporate usage.  (I could guess, but that might be bad, so I won't; but the user base is smaller than many of us would like to see).  On the positive, some of the apps that are written by this small base is astounding so REBOL does come with some leverage.

2) I've had no problem from hosting services I've dealt with allowing me to plop a rebol/core into my userspace for CGI. (But I've also warned others to never ever do that on the sly...) Other company security could be different.  This is a little facetious, but any sysadmin that doesn't get REBOL is  well ... not nerdy enough.    But I could see an overly busy admin rejecting it off hand due to the simple fact of having no time to investigate and verify.  If you need a hand with that, we have a community of keeners that could send you some short blurbs to help argue the case (not spam mind, but I've read some beautiful advocacy posts from some of my REBOL heroes).

Now, I did get a tsk tsk, 7ish years ago, from an employer (a perl shop) when I showed him the Calculator Viewtop Demo code.  He thought I was trying to pull the wool over his eyes, as there was no way that 40 lines of code produced that on screen calculator.  So we kept coding in perl.    If I knew then what I know now, I would have put my career on the line in favour of REBOL instead of caving.

Cheers

[FredAt]

Hmmm... . Thanks!  I wonder why the Rebol userbase is small.  The fact that it isn't open source does not help. But then Flash/Flex are not open source either, hell to work with and still very successful - though I don't believe the Adobe garbage regarding >90% of all comuting devices.

I suppose the other issue is people hesitate to make an investment in the technology in case the company goes under. How is the company doing?  When was its last round of investment? Is it likely that someone might buy the technology should that happen?

One other question - part of what I will need to do will be porting across some Delphi code (well, actually quite a lot of it but all well written by yours truly).  Does anyone on this forum have experience of doing this and how well/fast it went?  My only Delphi ports have been to Java and that was plain sailing.

Actually, I am so sold on Rebol as a technology that I might just go ahead and use it anyway. The product in question is aimed at a niche market which might grumble but will take on the Rebol download and, I hope, my other non Rebol technologies provide some slack if the uptake is slow.

[notchent]

Hi Fred  

I don't know how well the company is doing, but it is my understanding that RT has the code in some sort of escrow account, so that if you do use it commercially, you at least get some assurance that the code base won't be lost should something happen to the company.  I don't know how all that works, but I'm sure someone on the list could tell you more. 

I can also tell you that the group is small, but very talented, and in my experience, especially friendly.  You'll definitely want to sign up for the mailing list, and even more importantly, get an altme account.  That's where most of the community activity happens.