Python version of IQ has been updates (IQ v0.34.python)

[Timothy Rue]

On 15-Jun-01 04:34:22 Patrick Ford <padf at ihug.com.nz> wrote:
>Timothy Rue wrote:

>> http://www.mindspring.com/~timrue/python/IQ.34.py

>Python???
>
>Oh no don't go there Tim!

>Rebol rocks.

There was a recent article on slash dot about Python becomming GPL
compatiable. It's open source and has a rich pattern matching module
amoung many other note worthy things about it.

I recall someone mentioning Python to me in the past and my not looking
into it (my mistake, but now corrected). Others have suggested Rebol to me
and as anyone who's been around long enough, certainly knows I'm aware of
Rebol, though I may not keep up with it as much anymore, I can always
search it's mailing list if I have a question.

Rebol is very different, it's closed source and free only in a limited
version. It also does not have a rich pattern matching facility. Although
Rebol has some things easy to do, the overall comparison for what I need
of a programming language weighs in favor of python. This includes open
support (to give credit to those on the python IRC channel and elsewhere,
such as usenet - for help on a GPL project - if even only answering a
rookies questions about python.)

On the up side, there is nothing stopping the limited but free version of
Rebol from being used thru a pipe in order to access the easy internet
functionality of rebol, from a python program. But, even the Amiga Version
of Python has an Arexx module.

If there is any limitation about using systems that don't have something
like a user easy to use application arexx port (the doorway to controlling
an application externally and in addition to it's usual shell or GUI) it
is only thru open source and GPL sided licenses that this limitation can
more quickly, broadly and easily be overcome. And I'm sure it will once
this third primary user interface is more widely recognized.

The general difference between commercial closed source and open source on
the GPL side is a result of what is used to cause growth of the product.
The commercial side creates limitations that are only removed for a price
that inturn is used to expand the product in new limited ways. But on the
GPL side, it's the  lack of limitations and openness that causes it to
grow thru genuine interest in use.

Of course if you want to produce a version of IQ usin gthe rebol language,
you can. In fact I'd like to see how regular expression pattern matching
is emulated thru dialect parsing methods.

Today there is another article on slash dot regarding the GPL.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/06/15/003248&mode=nocomment

But ultimately it should NOT be a matter of which language is used,
because it eventually gets either compiled or interpreted down to the
language the machine understands. That's binary machine language.

Auto-coding focuses on programming concepts, from the user perspective,
rather that language specific implimentations of those concepts. Though
the genuine software engineer building the underlying auto-coding data
bases, dictionaries or vicabularies, will certainly be dealing with
language specific issues, these language specific issues are as isolated
from the user of auto coding as assembly language or machine language is
isolated from the higer level language, such as C, user. The specifics are
there if the user wants to get down into them. The auto-coding user only
needs to deal with programming concepts or even less when a combination of
concepts has already been packaged for easier use.



---
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