CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rebolred-lang
user310291
user310291

Reputation: 38228

What's the difference between Rebol3 and Rebol2 and Red-Lang

Is Rebol 3 really different from Rebol 2 and Red-Lang. Is it finished ?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1657

Answers (2)

Geeky I
Geeky I

Reputation: 751

I was in the same boat as you before, hopefully, things are much clearer now. (Can't add to that one as it is closed)

As for finished (usable in production), only Rebol 2 is stable and mature (I myself use it, having only started a few months ago)

In order of easiest to hardest to get started:

Rebol 2:

Pros:

  • easy to get started (single binary)
  • stable, mature, full featured
  • has view (GUI)
  • lots of documentation
  • examples at rebol.net
  • lots of compatible libraries at rebol.org
  • has a large user base (still!)

Cons:

  • no active development (version I use is from 2011)
  • deployment is harder (need commercial SDK for native binaries, but can work around)
  • no native gui (might not be a problem)

Red:

(based on Rebol 2) (community on gitter.im)

Pros:

  • easy to get started (single binary)
  • dead simple deployment (native binaries)
  • has native GUI (view and draw, still in development)
  • active development
  • Red/System (low level actual alternative to C, it is written in itself/self-hosted)

Cons:

  • documentation work in progress
  • not everything is working
  • small chance of breaking (due to being in alpha)

Ren-C:

(based on Rebol 3) (community here on stackoverflow chat) There are many branches of rebol 3: This question gives a better overview. I chose "Ren-C" because it seems the most actively developed

Note: I haven't actually used "Ren-C", but only other rebol 3 binaries, so refer to the other questions and take this with a grain of salt, but it should be pretty similar to Red in terms of development and community

Pros:

  • more experimental than red?
  • active development
  • written in c/c++
  • other Rebol 3 (GUI) branches use it as upstream
  • these GUI versions are used commercially and in production

Cons:

  • more experimental than red?
  • harder to get started (compile from source)
  • written in c/c++
  • documentation?
  • based on rebol 3 so less compatible with rebol 2(?) (actually, there seems to be a porting guide)
  • would probably be eventually merged into red(?)

Upvotes: 2

Darek Nędza
Darek Nędza

Reputation: 1420

As far I know, R3 isn't finished & has bugs. I don't think anyone works on Rebol 3 using that name.

HostileFork & other people are working on C implementations, named Ren/C as far I remember.

Ren/C & Red is work in progress - anything can change.

All 4 languages are very similar but you will find some differences from time to time.
For example:

  • in Rebol 3 request-file returns file not block of files as in Rebol 2
  • you can make "a function, making all words found in body local" (I think Rebol 3 and Ren/c has something like this too)
  • they are working on parse, so you can expect something "better"

Upvotes: 1

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