Commercial Success of Rebol (An open Letter to Carl)

[bmoore]

I've been using Rebol for about 4 months very casually, and I am amazed at the genius of this little piece of code. I used to use Perl, but gave it up in favour of Rebol. If people knew that it existed and understood it, it should be used for many of the millions of small admin jobs and tiny "need it yesterday" applets that are created by both individuals and enterprises. 

I can understand enterprises not being willing to commit the future of a large project to a language owned/controlled by a small company, but I think Rebol would find excellent application for setup programs used by hardware. Example HP did an huge abortion in Java (client server type of application that required firewall rule mods) to run their consumer Multi function printer/scanner/fax/copier (HP3330 or a number close to that) on a windows machine .  It was such a big bloated piece of junk I returned the product.  That App would have been much cheaper/quicker to write in Rebol (and more importantly would have produced a good product that didn't bog down the user's machine or require firewall changes.)

Rebol would also be an excellent language to use for programming classes for "an introduction to computers"... I believe a lot of these classes are using Java now, which is widely used, but Java takes a ton of code to do anything useful.  Get lot's of people who know about Rebol/understand it-get it in the schools and it will eventually filter into enterprise.

I believe the marketing challenge is made worse by poor documentation (or maybe i should linking/indexing/organization of documentation since there is a lot of stuff written.) 

I've managed to learn alot from the Online Reference, but the challenge is that some of the important basic concepts are not illustrated or referenced.  I think adding a few more "non trivial examples" to this reference (and/or links to the cookbook in some cases) would go a long way.

For example.... Request - how do you use multiple refinements /offset /type /timeout on the same statement?  (still can't figure that one out)

The concept must be word on refinement /type means that 'alert not alert is also something that is easy to miss by a beginner.

Adding more robust (and real world) examples to the function dictionary (possibly with links (or insertions from the cookbook) would be a good start.

Parse is another example - about 2 days of wading though a lot of irrelevant stuff to figure out how to do:

parse datastring [thru "(" copy sender-info to ")" skip to end]

see this post for background:
http://www.reboltalk.com/forum/index.php/topic,372.msg1343.html#msg1343
I'm still searching for how to do "multiple instances".  See: http://www.reboltalk.com/forum/index.php/topic,371.msg1324.html#msg1324

A good "C" programmer, would just say "chuck it" and write it in "C" - a PERL programmer would use RegEx and be lost to Rebol as a user out of frustration over something very simple. 

(Might I suggest you add that example to the "parse" documentation since it is a very common real world problem - and also a "multiple instances" example that is non-trivial enough.)  Making the jump from the Tag example to string is not easy for a beginner since there are some subtle, but impotant differences.

IMHO your competitive marketing advantage is SPEED of development and LEAN size.  The current documentation takes away from that major advantage. Rebol would be very well suited to just-in-time learning if there was well written/indexed documentation to support that.

I hope this comes across as a constructive suggestion rather than a rant.  (If it would be helpful, I'm happy to make suggestions and write the odd documentation fragment here and there and/or continue the discusson.) I really want to see you and this wonder language do well.  You are truly a genius and have created something wonderful--now you need a bit more on the documentation and especially MARKETING!

Thanks again for this wonderful language.

Regards... Barry

[tangram]

Spot on.

I only discovered Rebol a few days ago but can already see it's a work of genius even though I don't fully understand most of it yet.

Lack of good documentation aimed at the newbie must surely weigh heavily on the side of why the language has failed to 'take off' in the way that, say, Perl or Python have. (and of course, the lacklustre marketing doesn't help)

So far it's been quite frustrating trying to learn the language (but I'm going to persevere).

Rebol needs something concise and powerful like K & R's "The C programming language" (Rebol is not a big language, and it is not served well by a big book... :mellow:)

And this a real book where you can turn the pages over - reading from a screen just doesn't cut it.

Surely this would have a huge impact on take up - I don't believe it's a coincidence that Rebol is popular in France and the (apparently) best book is written in French.

[bmoore]

Nicely said, and excellent amplification tangram.  So far I've written some scripts to download Podcasts, interrogate a router, track the IP of a remote computer (interrogate a dyndns.org url).  Very very easy and small. 

These little Rebol scripts could very easily be made into a commercal grade product it there was the need.  A Little bit of work making the GUI pretty (and not a ton), buy the compiler, and you're done.

I had written a couple of scripts in Perl to do these things, but they were ugly console scripts that could never be made into practical applications.  Perl is a huge package, and changes upstream broke the CPAN library manager so I couldn't get updated packages, so I gave up on running Perl. 

I'm thinking of writing some CGI scripts with Rebol now.  Given how small and tight Rebol is, I'll bet it would load the sever much less than an equivalent PHP task. 

When I found Rebol I said WOW!  I was able to do something useful with very little learning, (read a web page and pull some data out of it) and it didn't bog down my computer with a ton of junk.

[Graham]

by hardware. Example HP did an huge abortion in Java (client server type of application that required firewall rule mods) to run their consumer Multi function printer/scanner/fax/copier (HP3330 or a number close to that) on a windows machine .  It was such a big bloated piece of junk I returned the product.  That App would have been much cheaper/quicker to write in Rebol (and more importantly would have produced a good product that didn't bog down the user's machine or require firewall changes.)

I just bought a HP3015 fax/scanner/printer and noticed that they use the tomcat web server to control the printer.  I was just thinking today of using ethereal on it to see whether this could be written in Rebol !

[henrikmk]

REBOL has incredible potential in embedded hardware. I know this myself, when I made some small tools to communicate with my Linksys access point: Instead of reading signal strength through the webbrowser with cumbersome and slow reloading of the administration webpage, getting signal strength directly through telnet is much faster, allowing me to render a realtime graph of the signal strength.

If the access point ran a REBOL/Core directly, you could do even more.

[Goldevil]

I have the feeling that rebol is "between two chairs", a French expression that means "You have two good solutions but you don't get any of them".

To be more popular, Rebol needs developer's stuffs. Better documentation as discussed but also usual tools for developers :

• Integrated Development Interface
• GUI Builder (Somebody tried to build a complex interface with many windows with VID)
• Powerfull debugger (step by step execution, memory inspector,...)
• Trainings, exams, certifications,...
• Free and powerfull libraries (XML manipulation, up-to-date database drivers, Ajax toolkit,...)
• ...

I think that these cool stuffs can bring a critical mass of enthusiasts to Rebol. But Rebol doesn't have the critical mass of enthusiasts people that can produce these tools. To create a good IDE (not a proof of concept), you need a lot of people : good coders, but also project manager, graphists, testers,...
But with a cool IDE, a lot of enthusiasts will join us (I'm already in the enthusiast group  ).


The solution can only be made by Rebol Technologies. I think there are two main ways :

1)
Rebol becomes Open-Source (at least rebol/view). Open-Source is popular. "If you make open-source software you are a cool guy and everybody want to help a cool guy" said to me a friend some times ago. I think that a much bigger community will join us. Marketing investments becomes less important because we reach the critical mass. Cool developer stuffs can be made by this big community.

2)
Rebol Technologies focus on these cool stuffs and on marketing. Yes it means big developer's team, and it means a lot of investments. This way, RT will create the rebol biosphere itself.
I never said that RT must propose all these for free. If these stuffs help me to learn easier and faster, to create my software easier and faster, I will earn money. Then I agree to pay for these good tools and trainings.

I understand perfectly that RT will not give for free the source code of Rebol. There are so many work inside it. But maybe a just a part of it (rebol/code ?)

I understand perfectly that RT has not the budget to create all these cool stuffs. But maybe, RT can focus on some of them. RT can also do more coordination the current communities projects. Integrating some useful libs into a free "rebol developper package" (MySQL driver, include.r, anamonitor,...).




Maybe my analysis is wrong or imperfect. I just write my current feeling about my favorite language.

[notchent]

I've seen too many times in various online postings that Rebol is desirable (my favorite tool too), but that it's dismissed as a viable solution because it's not open source and not interoperable with other mainstream tools.  Too bad   Hopefully some changes in Rebol3 will eliminate these problems (if I understand correctly, some portions of R3 will be open source...).

I wrote the following documentation to help get new users doing lots of practical things with Rebol, quickly (~100 pages):

http://musiclessonz.com/rebol.html

Maybe it can help a bit with the problem of getting started...

[popper]

REBOL has incredible potential in embedded hardware. I know this myself, when I made some small tools to communicate with my Linksys access point: Instead of reading signal strength through the webbrowser with cumbersome and slow reloading of the administration webpage, getting signal strength directly through telnet is much faster, allowing me to render a realtime graph of the signal strength.

If the access point ran a REBOL/Core directly, you could do even more.

id given up on advocating REBOL view to new users ,or so i thought but i cant seem to stop looking for those elusive GUI scripts that might turn the corner and your casual through in of 'some small tools once agin prompted my post.

first of all were is your GUI front end for the linksys ?, its no good if you write a cool useful gui but no one cant see it and perhaps copy its basic layout, if you see what i mean.

for many years iv asked and asked the people writing scripts to produce what many of them seem to thik are simple and so it NEVER gets written by them and spread around, so instead of increasing the public view/awareness by being able to point new end-users to these cool things that ARE USEFUL to your average person thats never once thought about writing their own script it sits there being use by you and your close friends etc instead of doing its part to bring in new blood and scriptors that might one day produce your next used app.


first thing you do with your script is comment it, then get it out there so the like of interested end-users can point totally new users at that script and say 'ohhh you need that rebol GUI script by henrikmk ,get it here and do this'

thats the one and only way your ever going to make people sit up and say 'wow' that rebol view is so cool, and guess what, i can take that script and learn from it , look what i added, it now does this and that and iv uploaded it back to werever so others can see it,try it,use it and add even more plug-in options (thats for R3 when it arrives).

now heres the thing..., iv been banging on about everything GUI front ends for a VERY LONG TIME and the reason is just becoming obvious to many people as these new streaming TV apps come to the main news pages.

no 1 being the 'venice project' renamed this week as 'Joost' in case you didnt know thay were the people that started/helped push the p2p stuff , These are the same guys that did Kazaa , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype
but before all that there was Morpheus http://www.rebol.com/news1a31.html

to save clicking through and messing your thoughts up
"REBOL and Morpheus Join Forces
To create the largest programmable content network.

California, USA - October 31, 2001 - REBOL Technologies and StreamCast Networks (formerly MusicCity.com) today announced a partnership to create the world's largest peer-to-peer X Internet content network. StreamCast, makers of Morpheus and next generation peer-to-peer content distribution networks, will base Morpheus 2.0 on REBOL's X Internet operating system (IOS) technology to provide interactive programmable content to more than 30 million users by the end of the year."

it sad that after all this time that i still dont see any active GUI front ends out there that i can point to and say to these users that are getting exited about streaming lan/wan/web TV and the AVC/h.264 codec (joost licenced CoreAVC from beteboy owner of core http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=935202#post935202 ).

iv asked for several things such as a simple gui script for end user use that can take any of the AVC encoders ,x264,mcoder,ffmeg etc and simply use one single freeware licenced rebol view script and run it on any platform that these cli/shell encoders run.

the reason so they can very easly create content for the big plan, that being a reberth of my longtime dream of user content streaming video over UDP MULTICASTING tunnels (if needs be) , that also uses multicasting DHT to connect people as per the original unicast streams (typo 'screams' LOL)that are about to kill ISP/User upload bandwidth but far better as its multicast and its rebol doing the control/gui/serverside/clientside etc, infact all of it after the cli/gui apps have done their thing.

is anyone listening and ready to write these (apparently) simple scripts and so we all can collect together and FINALLY produce something to make the whole WORLD take notice? and perhaps give rebo l a try for themeslves and their GUI frontend needs.

if you look around iv already posted most of the core code apps that have alredy existed as regards multicasting DHT p2p etc and rebol is more than able to do it but iv made it easyer by pointing people to the java code thats outthere, if the interest is there and i see options working scripts idea's etci can probably collect them up again and repost.

take a look at the joost screen shots they have up and get and idea how everyone finally getting it and then think how view can do so much more fancy GUI wise over video perhaps once R3 arrives and somone make an easy plug-in for the purpose....

http://www.joost.com/screenshots/
theres also Tubes http://forum.tubesnow.com/forums/17/ShowForum.aspx that is getting in on the act of streaming high quality video and java Azueus 3 beta (were the devs refused to add my multicasting option to the codebase ) http://www.zudeo.com/az-web/content/FeaturedContent.html so their all at it and producing unicast streaming options options that are going to take a massive amount of bandwidth as it become popular.

so far theres only a vague mention that they (joost)will introduce Multicasting tunnels later(guess who told them we want that LOL or the existance of java MC bamboo etc) and no feedback off venace/joost,Zudeo, or any of the others as yet... (i suspect take the idea and claim it as their innovation!!!!).

so there is a window that we can fill, as time goes by it gets smaller but it all depends on people collecting up in the open here (rather than under the  atame rock) the only real place anyone can easly drop by and comment, help,give feedback etc without going through hoops.

thats whats killing rebol, death by obscurity , NOT lack of POWER,but WE NEED those gui scripts and we need them NOW to show people and get them interested and looking at the code...

 

[rebolek]

sorry popper, but what's stopping you from writing these scripts?
i've done some GUI scripts (you can check sintezar or texture-lab on rebol.org) and i'm still working on newer versions when i've got time, but i'm not going to do some h.whatever front-end because i even don't know what it is. if you're so interested in it, you can start right now.
i'm willing to help you with View if you run into some problems but i'm not going to write a tool that's no interest to me (i must do a lot of work that is no interest to me at my job, so at least at home i want to write software i'm interested in

i think other rebol developers feel very simmilar - they will gladly help you with your problem, but nobody's going to write it for you, because they've got they work too

[popper]

sorry popper, but what's stopping you from writing these scripts?
i've done some GUI scripts (you can check sintezar or texture-lab on rebol.org) and i'm still working on newer versions when i've got time, but i'm not going to do some h.whatever front-end because i even don't know what it is. if you're so interested in it, you can start right now.
i'm willing to help you with View if you run into some problems but i'm not going to write a tool that's no interest to me (i must do a lot of work that is no interest to me at my job, so at least at home i want to write software i'm interested in

i think other rebol developers feel very simmilar - they will gladly help you with your problem, but nobody's going to write it for you, because they've got they work too

sure i understand that totally.., if your NOT interested in whatever then thats that..., my aim with the post above is to highlight  the newest trend for user video content as it gathers momentum as it were again.

 sure its my interest and if i were good at rebol i would have already written a fully working proof-of-concept that anyone willing, able and interested, could have filled out and expanded, BUT IM NOT GOOD so i sit around the edges popping up anoying the good people like yourself, and hopeing that somewere theres a few new users interested in these things thats read my many rebol view advocacy posts over the years and comes here or werever to see for themselves....

if theres ever an expansion of carls gui builder and so on i might be able to use that as a base but thats been a very long time since i hoped that would happen...

i know it's a pain sometimes, but i do what i hope will finally bring rebol to the masses of non programmers out there that can manage scripting gui's etc and advance.

 the hope is, one day my efforts are proven right and everyone wins, its not like rebol is so popular even after SO LONG, i dont need to explain what it is ,what it does or how it MIGHT help the readers everywere, for instance rebol in the linksys/whatever routers useing 3rd party linux firmware or indeed anywere theres a PPC core or whatever CPU that rebol core can run on for far better usability.

if it was id just be able to track the fully working scripts/apps and point new users to them to use and see for themselves, as it is i cant so thats were we are currently.

thanks for pointing me to some more of your good work and ill try and find it weereever it might be (a direct url would be good) and see if i can learn something for myself or at least be in a position to point any posts i see to it if they have that need.

the whole point of this IS to try and make Rebol view known and USED everywere after all,and right now GUI tools for crossplatform AVC video Encoding, and End user content creation.streaming is the fastest growing trend that Everyone will be dev'ing/using/profiting from  in some form real soon now, those that ignore its VAST potential will loose out BIG time.

just look at what, for instance, the joost guys are using and advocating licenced the best AVC/h.264 decoder codec there is CoreAVC, and built up their new app around loads of open source code bases to fill it out and telling everyone what their using so as to get the open source devs/users massive worldwide news coverage and advertising etc, rebol Inc could have some of that but for the lack of available scripts for the purpose, seems like we need something and PDQ or be ignored forever.....

perhaps im wrong and in which case no harm done, however if im right again, this is just one more massive world wide PR option every single rebol dev could have profited from but didnt, yet again.

id like to think all you longtime devs could make a nice profitable sideline one day for all your efforts ,now that would be a very good bonus and we all profit from the growing apps that could produce, carls still got the web OS idea's and it might happen one day...

[Graham]

There's no magic to learning View .. just hard work.  And as always, every journey must start with the first step.

If you were to make that first step, maybe someone might get interested enough to help you finish it.  OTOH, I think what you're asking is too hard for me!

[notchent]

Hi Popper,

I'm interested in promoting Rebol, and I do have a personal interest in streaming media.  My coding skills in that area, and my time, however, are limited.  If there really is a potential to expose REBOL to more professional coders, I would be willing to help get a project like that started.  Maybe starting a sourceforge project would be a good first step.  Putting together a project outline and organizing a work flowchart would probably be a good initial step in making something like that happen.  I think you'd be more likely to see small code contributions from the REBOL community for specific little bits of functionality (when the project runs into snags), rather than a full donated application.  If I can help build some of the basic functionality and get things rolling, I'd be willing to help...