newLisp and Rebol

[newdep]

Hello All,



I dont want to start a "yes or no" game :-) Im just currious, I played some years ago with lisp and afterthat fanatic with Tcl and ended up with rebol the last  2 years and that brings me to a spontanious occeurance...



Some Rebol function equal NewLisp or visa versa?

Is this realy an coincidence or is there some Example-Jacking done ?

Its funny to see overlaps though...



Greetings..And ill digg into newLIsp ;-)

[Lutz]

Welcome to newLISP, I have never had any contact with rebol, but have had similar experiences with other languages. I guess people mostly just reinvent the same stuff and sometimes just copy a good idea they have seen somewhere else. Some things are also related to the architecture of a language. Many modern scripting languages (Perl, Python) are heavily influenced by LISP. Most language designers work in 'C' and have a long history of using 'C' and its libraries. What functions or functionality do you have in mind?



Lutz

[newdep]

Hello Lutz,



Thanks for your reply, i assumed something like that already and its good ;-)

Well an overlap in langugaes happens and the "good" parts are always hijacked ;-)



Well ie in rebol (which is strongly based on lisp) a lot of pre build functions

are included (im not speaking of the functional way rebol works because thats

an issue on itself ;-) but like pop:// ftp:// smnp:// http:// tcp:// udp:// for making connections on rfc based protocols is very handy indeed, no wonder

developers run into it ;-)



By the way Is the origin of NewLisp from 1991 already? or when exactly did you start with newlisp?



Regards,

Norman.

[Lutz]

HTTP, UDP and TCP/IP are also built-in to newLISP, FTP, SMTP and POP3 are supported by modules written in newLISP itself. You can find those modules and others  like MySQL, ODBC and SQLITE support in the source distribution of newLISP. Another built-in protocol is XML and the ability to transform XML into SXML.



Yes, newLISP has its origin back in 1991 and was originally developed on a SUN-4 workstation, then moved to Windows 3.0, where version 1.0 was released on COMPUSERVE. newLISP was available as graphics/GUI capable application and a DOS console application (both 16bit). In 1995 with the release of Windows 95 newLISP moved to 32 bit.



In April 1999 I started to port to LINUX and in 2000 stopped Windows development and released a Linux version. By the end of 2001 newLISP was ported back to Windows again (without graphics/GUI) and a Tcl/Tk frontend was released as newLISP-tk. Today Tcl/Tk code can be embedded in to newLISP code, when using this frontend.



I a few weeks version 8.0 will be released the first version with an array data type (since 7.5.2 available in developer versions).



newLISP in 2003/4 has moved a big step forward in features and quality. This is due to the involvement of people on this discussion board who contributed ideas, improvements and advice for code and documentation.



Lutz

[newdep]

Hello Lutz,



Thank you for th intresting reply, gives it a more insight into the world that is called "how to evolve in your own language..." intresting :-)



If your intrested in seeing the overlap that Lisp and Scheme has with rebol

look at http://www.rebol.com/docs/dictionary.html">http://www.rebol.com/docs/dictionary.html, I must say it took me some

weeks to turn around the thinking using rebol but for Lisp guru's and Scheme

lovers it would not be difficult at all, I will stop now talking about rebol..im not

here to promote it, though I see a realy intrest upcoming in the good old

laguages liek Lisp now its more getting mixed with modern interfaces like the internet etc...



Im reading your manual very close;-)



Btw.. do you have ONE good programmers 'hint on 'how to think

during programming using newLisp?



Regards,

Norman.

[nigelbrown]

Hello Norman,

Welcome to newLISP!



A word about newLISP and rebol - to me the advantage of newLISP is the GPL - I see rebol is only free for non-commercial use.

I had contact with newlisp in its early days but only shifted to it once the GPL status was established (even though the original licence was essentially free - as I remember it was just the requirement to show that newlisp was the underlying technology).



Regards

Nigel

[Lutz]

Hello Norman,



after reading your link to the Rebol function dictionary I have a better understanding of your earlier question/observation about similarities of both languages. Many things seem indeed quite similar! down to the wording of some functions. I leave it up to the historians to figure out how this is coming about, but think, that it is not too important.



Programming languages are much like human spoken languages and should learn from each other and influence each other. May be both of us, the Rebol designer and I just share similar experiences and have similar ideas. In fact I feel happy that somebody comes to the same conclusions as I did.



Software development is very much like a 'scientific' process advancing through the share of ideas and openess. Cross pollination is a good thing. This is why the Internet and the GPL is a good thing too.



I hope you have fun with newLISP and that can help you solving problems with computers,



Lutz

[newdep]

Hello NigelBrown,



Thanks...happy to be here ;-)



Well some Rebol binary's are for free and also free for commercial use (they did change the policies last year for the (/core) version )

Still im only touched NewLisp for 2 days now but im already porting by Tcl tools to newlisp...like it!



Regards, Norman.