Customer Reviews

REBOL: The Official Guide (Book/CD Package)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I think those that gave this book a 5-star rating were rating the Rebol language, which I agree is unique and a force that could change modern computing entirely. However, I haven't used the book while programming as much as I've used the free manual from Rebol. The material jumps to complex applications much too rapidly. I prefer the style of books like the original C manual by K & R. I.E. Instead of showing the final, elaborate, coding product when a new concept is introduced, start with a simplistic approach to solving a problem and then cycically refine it. For example, the parse function, which is unbelievably powerful (you could probably duplicate lexx/yacc in a very small program), is illustrated by using it to create a script that validates Rebol scripts. Since one is trying to learn the language, and Rebol's structure is so dynamic, it's like *teaching* C by writing a C compiler in C, only worse. It's a nifty way to show Rebol's introspection capability, but it would have been much more helpful if it was used to parse something people are already used to (and would be using it for), like HTML or other domain-specific data. There's lots of information here, but I was disappointed. I apologize for being critical, Elan, your posts on the Rebol lists are great.

Let me first say that I am a huge fan of Rebol as a language - haven't seen such semantic richness since SmallTalk. It's GREAT as a replacement for shell-programming or perl. Not to mention that no one has even scratched the potential networking killer applications that could be created with Rebol.

Having said all that, the book is a disappointment - it is difficult to find the basics of what I am looking for. When I find myself trying to figure out how to do something in Rebol, the first place I look is in The Official Guide, but inevitably, I go back to Rebol's Core User's Guide on the Web. The Core User's Guide deserves 4 stars, but it's still missing some critical examples, like how do I insert and read from a hash?!? It took some time of pouring over the online documentation to find that one should use the block series functions, select and append, in combination with make hash!. I realize that from a programmer's point of view, it would be redundant to copy-and-paste the documentation on blocks, but it doesn't take many lines to show how to USE a hash without having to do a massive search - not having to look all over the place would make the language more user-friendly for new users and more experienced programmers.

Bottom line - learn through the documentation and examples at www.rebol.com, until something better comes along.

REBOL could be a fantastic language. It could be the answer to all of my programming headaches and prayers. Or maybe REBOL doesn't offer me anything new to learn. It's just not possible to tell from this book because it so poorly written and completely disorganized. Most of the time my nose was in this book, I felt like I was being told how great rebol is instead of learning how to use rebol creatively.

All langauge advocacy issues aside, this best example I can find of a technical reference that actually tries to use foreshadowing as a learning tool. "Don't worry about what this means now, but ..." "We'll have to save that important discussion for another chapter because we haven't discussed topic X." etc, etc, etc. Unless you read the book cover-to-cover, you end up with a collection of vague notions and incorrect definitions of the language's syntax elements and logical structure, making it difficult to sit down and solve problems with the language.

I love learning new programming languages, and rebol is certainly on my list. But in my opinion this book isn't the way to go. I opted for a two-star rating because at least the book contains some task-specific examples you can work from.

"The Official Guide" is a peculiar tag for this text. It doesn't teach the language nearly as comprehensively as the REBOL manual does. And for a language pegged as being for Internet messaging, it is odd to see the network aspects of REBOL shoved near the back of the book. What this book does is teach REBOL by a rather large example. While the example is a good one, and there is lots of good information throughout the book, I still find myself preferring the REBOL/Core manual.

I did several working CGI scripts in less than a week after reading this book. If your server supports REBOL I bet you'll be switching from Perl to REBOL. The use of 'slashes' (or.../\/\/\/\/...abuse?) in the Perl language was giving me a headache even for simple tasks.

Im also a fan of Carl Sassenrath's work, this guy wrote a TRULY multitasking operating system back in the 1984, that runs smoothly in a 7 mhz, 256k machine! (Amiga 1000). If this guy was able to accomplish that, Im very enthusiastic about what this revolutionary language can do for me! Im amazed by the way I can now manipulate my mail using easy, single line commands.

And last, the engine takes around 300k and runs on more operating systems than you may be able to mention (including Linux and Windows of course)

This book illustrates the power of REBOL and puts it to the test. The online db is a fine example of what can be achieved and along the way you learn what is needed to achieve this.

Although it attempts to teach everything as it goes, the pace will be too steep for many who are new to the language. For newbies I would recommend "REBOL for Dummies"

For the technically minded professional programmer this book makes a great case study, teaches advanced topics & techniques, provides useful debugging tools. This book will lift the skill base and understanding of serious REBOLs.

I got this book for about two weeks now and I skimmed through the whole book in a two day period. To summarize how I feel: I still love Rebol, I am still eager to read more, but just do not want to read this one. I do not want to say that this is not well written, I just feel that it is not for me. I think it spend WAY TOO much on the example online database application (and not a single word about possible use of other DBMS!). I think Rebol User Guide is a better reading than this. Chapter 4 - Chapter 6 is a nice introduction section for beginner though.

I discovered REBOL a few months ago, and I think it's a great language. It's mind-expanding in much the same way that Lisp and Haskell are, but is much easier to learn. Unfortunately, REBOL is not open source, though the core language and the GUI system are free for personal use.

I will admit I prefer books with lots of short, simple examples. This "official" guide is organized as a 700-page explanation of the Online Video Store that the authors developed. For example, Chapter 8, "REBOL's User Interface Functions," is not about REBOL functions, but is about the nine functions written for the Video Store. It seems to me (as a REBOL neophyte), if the authors didn't need some feature for their program, it gets omitted or barely mentioned. Hash tables get half a page. Also, the book was written before the GUI system became available.

"Rebol: A Programmer's Guide" by Auverlot and Wood is newer, shorter, and more readable. It's a good basic introduction, but only an introduction. It lacks an index. If you want a physical book, get this one.

The online REBOL tutorials and documentation are excellent--better than either book, though you have to sort through them to find what you want. For GUIs, there is a tutorial, but no reference anywhere yet.

No, it isn't perfect ... but try to find better hardcopy documentation for this less-than-mainstream language.

Sure it's all about command-line application development, but it works, and the examples are sound.

If you dig deep enough online you can find other tutorials/examples for REBOL that you can probably live without this book -- but why should you? It's cheap enough in the new/used category (I got my copy for under USD 3!). Don't pay full price.

It won't teach you all the visual stuff (command line, remember?), but it will teach you enough to get going.

There are worse manuals out there.

It's unfortunate that one of the first printed books on Rebol isn't a better introduction to the language. The organization is very strange -- I found myself well into a chapter wondering why I was where I was -- it seemed that the authors only wanted to show some very interesting features of the language with convoluted examples. I wish the examples were more "universal" or "routine" rather than building a whole system with Rebol.

I would seriously consider waiting for another book to come along. It's too bad that this book weren't more like other introductory books, like Learning Perl (O'Reilly) or Programming Ruby (AW), both of which are excellent first-texts for learning a language.