I've been trying to get into Rebol for a few times over the past months, but I always have to give up. Why is declaring a variable so completely different from other programming languages? Why do we have to write the things to be done right after a variable or command? It's all confusing. The built-in editor isn't helpful either. I'm missing syntax highlighting to see what words are Rebol commands and which ones are variables.
I image your confusion, for that reason I wrote a simple guide in Italian to introduce Rebol http://www.maxvessi.net/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=Main.GuidaARebol but you can also see a lot of example on youtube in English: http://www.maxvessi.net/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=Main.RebolVideoGuida The better free editors with correct syntax highlighting are: http://www.scintilla.org/SciTE.html http://www.crimsoneditor.com/ If you use console (use it), just hit TAB button to have autofill for all defined words, also defined variables! moreover just hit Code: ? myserious-command to read the help of a command. Finally, keep in mind that Rebol is very very simple and powerfull, you can write a software with graphics in minutes not in weeks. The first guides to read are: http://www.rebol.com/docs/core23/rebolcore.html and http://www.rebol.com/docs/view-guide.html and http://www.rebol.com/docs/dictionary.html I think that Rebol is one of the simplest language to do heavy software.
Bugmenot, Have you taken a look at http://re-bol.com ? To me, REBOL is more straightforward, sensible, and concise than any other language. The built in text editor is as bare bones as it gets - not meant to be an IDE. Try programmer's notepad
I think it's common for people exposed to procedural languages only to get a shock when coming across Rebol. It's a completely different way of doing things. But there are a whole bunch of functional languages that you can pickup after you learn Rebol.... it's like learning a new way to speak, and whether you use Rebol long term, learning it will make you a better programmer.
