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Comment by throwaway7645 | Hacker News Reader

I'm always excited for a new Red release. I'm glad they're taking time to get the GUI DSL right for 10 platforms, but I hope it doesn't come at the detriment of enhancements to Red/System, Multi-Core, Concurrency, and all the other promised goodies. The thing badly needed at this point I think is better doc. I know it is ~95% compatible with REBOL, but honestly the REBOL doc is very basic. It shows you how to do a lot of neat things with the built in DSLs, but nowhere and i mean anywhere does it show you in any detail how to implement your own DSL, while you frequently hear about how powerful the dialects are. I'm still super pumped about this language and am thrilled for each new release.

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I also tried to learn the "PARSE dialect" (the DSL coding mechanism of REBOL/Red), as this is what's often claimed to be the crucial differentiating factor (the "main idea") of REBOL/Red - but I failed, because of what OP mentions. The REBOL docs feel to me more like an example-based guide, than a solid RTFM-grade manual. I find such a guide OK and valuable as a tutorial, a starting point, and to teach idioms and mindset; but then I need a reference manual to clarify all details and fully explore the topic. Also read some third-party articles on PARSE, but none of them were comprehensive enough (AFAIR, mostly being tutorial-like too). Lua and Go do it well in my opinion - they both provide a solid tutorial-like experience, but then a full-blown, well written reference manual too.

There are two third-party reference-like (but non-authoritative) documentations that I know of [0][1]. A Red reference documentation for Parse will be available later this year.

[0] https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/REBOL_Programming/Language_Fea...

[1] https://github.com/gchiu/rebol.net/blob/master/wikipedia/Par...

Thanks Nenad! :) The links indeed look interesting, at least at a first glance, though it seems not quite clear to me which keywords are R2 vs. R3 (proposals?) vs. Red, especially in the link marked as [1]. Still, at least that's something, will certainly be very useful if I try to understand PARSE again at some point in future. And I'm very happy to hear you're planning some more comprehensive docs for Red!

Good to see I'm not the only one that has trouble transitioning from playing with Rebol to actually using it in non-trivial programs. Sure they have a form of OO, but I'm not sure if it is really idiomatic to use it a bunch or if coding should be more like C. I'm prepared for Red zealotry though if they can provide the experience that they're aiming for along with good doc.

If there's any issue in particular you're having with Rebol then do pop by to either...

* chat - https://chat.stackoverflow.com/rooms/291/rebol

* forum - https://forum.rebol.info/

... and we'll do our best to help.

Thank you for all the help and kindness.

Red is not dogmatic about objects, but there is certainly a clear line between idiomatic Red and other code, in a more general sense. That is, you can use objects, or not, and write idiomatic Red. It's all in how you use them. They are most useful in terms of creating namespaces (contexts). When you don't need that, blocks are the more common type to use. There is also a `map!` type, which is a useful type because it has a literal form, like blocks. Of the 3 (block, object, map), only blocks are directly parseable, but objects and maps support reflection.

Thanks again. As a beginner in this language family it would be helpful to see the doc go over this with some examples clarifying your points at some point when y'all are closer to 1.0. I'm probably not the only one who wouldn't know how to architect their code without overusing classes.

Have a look at "Rebol - A Progammer's Guide" by Olivier Auverlot & Peter Wood, which an e-book version (PDF) is downloadable for free: http://www.lulu.com/gb/en/shop/olivier-auverlot-and-peter-wi...

In the book it covers creating a FTP dialect. Also there's a brief bit on creating a terminal cursor dialect.

NB. Book is for Rebol 2. There are improvements to parse in Rebol 3 & Red but the books dialects examples should still work as-is.

Not a full blown reference, by any means, but http://www.red-lang.org/2013/11/041-introducing-parse.html does contain a lot of Red's `parse` details in a short space, which may be helpful.

Yes there does need to be more Rebol docs about building dialects. There have been some in the past and here's what I've been able to find:

* Designing Dialects for Control and Communication - http://www.kealist.com/

* A little logo interpreter - http://ceronio.net/2015/02/having-fun-with-rebol-parse/

* TUI dialect - https://web.archive.org/web/20070829095319/http://rebolplane...

I'll check these out, but why doesn't Carl have something like this on the official site in a prominent place? You can't spend 5 minutes on a lisp forum without hearing of and seeing macros everywhere. Why not Rebol & Red? I'm getting a little off topic, but hope Red doesn't make this same mistake.

Making it prominent will appeal to a different target audience. Rebol is beginner friendly, but dialects (as easy as it makes them) are an advanced topic. We'll try to provide good docs and examples for Red, though, because it is a key feature that sets it apart.

Never thought Carl might have done that for marketing reasons. Thanks for the insight. I look forward to a write-up on Red dialects :) than. Hopefully, I can start contributing to the project some once I get a better grasp.

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