Things I find exciting about Red:
* Small
* Lisp like
* Cross compiler "done right" [1]
* Red/System is a cool concept (a language dialect for low-level/systems programming).
Things I find discouraging:
* Bus factor = 2 (IMHO) [2]
* Apparently, it took it 8 years to get simple (in words of author) G.C. [3]
* Docs and example code are not great, lack of existing apps (chicken & egg problem).
1: https://github.com/red/red/blob/master/usage.txt#L68-L81