What's Cool (According to Danny)

Domains Dialects/DSLs
3

(Moving to new thread because it doesn't clearly relate to the topic of binding in strings.)

I know that you have been looking at ways of representing JavaScript-looking things (e.g. var declarations, or using [0] to index arrays) in Rebol.

And yes--those kinds of things have been considered here.

  • let var: value is a very real thing in Ren-C for making declarations inline with the stream of code (as opposed to use [var] [var: value, ...] which breaks the stream of code and introduces a new level of indentation)

  • "SCRUNCH!" was proposed as a kin to PATH! and TUPLE!, except instead of an interstitial delimiter of a dot or a slash it would use nothing at all, to enable things like array[0] being a 2-element SCRUNCH! of a WORD! and a BLOCK!.

So far be it from me to point at anything and say "that's crazy". For any number of reasons. :crazy_face:

But we have to have some compass for what the scope of the problems being solved are (and if we're solving problems at all, or just creating them.)

A warning I would give, which may apply to you is...

:duck: Avoid Duck Imprinting

There's this thing about ducks, that they follow whatever they see when they hatch:

https://animalkooky.com/why-are-ducks-following-me/

And I think some people who follow Rebol, seem to follow it a bit like those ducks... outside of the context of what it's useful for or not.

I'm not sure what your goals are. And I suspect you're not well-versed in things like lex and yacc, so the low-barrier-to-entry of Rebol may have attracted you.

But while it may be non-obvious how to get started with studying abstract syntax trees... there are things like the JavaScript AST Explorer you might find there's a world of non-Rebol things that can work pretty well for what they do.

Software artifacts are defined by the boundary of what they don't do, every much as by what they can do. I'm extremely skeptical if I approach someone who can't articulate things that what they are doing would not be useful for...because it indicates to me they don't comprehend the nature of design.

Anyway, it would be informative if you showed a contrast of things you have tried to do in other languages--and why you think Rebol is particularly suited for whatever your pursuits are.