Red Programming Language
31 comments
·May 20, 2025taylorallred
vidarh
An API is just as much a DSL.
bunderbunder
Kind of, except that a non-DSL API doesn't create any new syntax. Which means that you get to keep all sorts of quality-of-life tools like syntax highlighting and correctness checking in the editor, autoformatting, possibly some amount of linting, etc.
A few years ago I revisited Racket after a long hiatus, and that was maybe the biggest thing I noticed. I really don't like syntax macros as much as I did back in the day. Once I decide to use `define-syntax` I've then got to decide whether I also want to wade into dealing with also implementing a syntax colorer or an indenter as part of my #lang. And if I do decide to do that, then I've got a bunch more work, and am also probably committing to working in DrRacket (otherwise I'd rather stay in emacs) because that's the only editor that supports those features, and it just turns into a whole quagmire.
And it's arguably even worse outside of Racket, where I might have to implement a whole language server and editor plugin to accomplish the same.
Versus, if I can do what I need to do with a reasonably tidy API, then I can get those quality of life things without all the extra maintenance burden.
None of this was a big deal 20 years ago. My expectations were different back then, because I hadn't been spoiled by things like the language server protocol and everyone (finally) agreeing that autoformatting is a Good Thing.
90s_dev
No, an API uses existing rules, but a DSL uses its own ad hoc rules.
GP is right. Don't make DSLs, make APIs, which are:
* More composable
* More reusable
* More simple to reason about
* More natively supported
* More portable
* More readable
* More maintainable
kstrauser
This is a successor to REBOL[0], designed by Carl Sassenrath[1] who designed the Amiga kernel.
I've looked it a few times over the years. It's neat. I've never written a single line of it, though.
gt0
I wrote a small app in REBOL once, just too automate some stuff for some managers in a job about 20 years ago. It's quite nice, but I don't think I'd want to write anything significant with it.
kbelder
I used it once to build a simple web scraper and image downloader, and it worked really great for that. It was right in the wheelhouse for the language. (That was REBOL, not RED, and many years ago.) Honestly I'd just do it in Python, now, even though it's not as interesting.
dev_l1x_be
"In 1988, Sassenrath left Silicon Valley for the mountains of Ukiah valley, 2 hours north of San Francisco. From there he founded multimedia technology companies such as Pantaray, American Multimedia, and VideoStream. He also implemented the Logo programming language for the Amiga, managed the software OS development for CDTV, one of the first CD-ROM TV set-top boxes, and wrote the OS for Viscorp Ed, one of the first Internet TV set-top boxes."
What a legend!
kstrauser
Right? And I think that's what keeps bringing me back to REBOL, and thus Red. They don't appeal to me on the face of them. Like, the code examples look interesting but in a "magical" kind of way that strikes a little bit of fear into my engineering heart. But with that kind of pedigree, I can't dismiss the ideas. If Sassenrath came up with it, I bet there's a kernel of awesomeness inside.
justin66
I figured they were cooked when they started doing weird cryptocurrency-related stuff. I really hope they get to their 1.0 release someday.
7thaccount
Same. I was regularly following it until they started talking about an ICO and began focusing too much on making a dialect for block chain stuff.
The idea between having the red system language, regular scripting language, cross platform gui, and native executables was really cool though. I remember being interested back in ~2015, so my question is...what's going on as it's been a decade. I know the project is crazy ambitious of course, but how close are we to where this is at a stage where most would consider it production worthy.
troupo
IIRC think their original roadmap had 1.0 around 2020. And that was going to include everything, including async written from scratch in a language where nothing was made for async.
Then the roadmap slipped, and then never mentioned again.
But I haven't looked at the language or discussions around it for a long while now.
Edit: found some old discussion here. In 2018 they were at version 0.6.4 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18864840
In 2025 they are at version 0.6.6: https://github.com/red/red/releases
LkpPo
For me, it even went off the rails before, when Nenad went to China because he was able to raise funds for the project. But he hadn't anticipated that he would be in charge and not the other way around. The situation seems to suit him perfectly. I don't think Red has any future at this point. In any case, the roadmap has always been stratospheric.
ttoinou
This is like the only programming language I could never learn. I just don't understand anything and I can't build any mental model of what's going on behind the hood
TOGoS
I wrote a paper on REBOL back in college. It is very interesting, but the syntax is definitely weird. You might think of the function call syntax as being sort of Forth-like, but with the tokens in reverse order. So like a Lisp, but without required parentheses. e.g. in the example
send friend@rebol.com read http://www.cnn.com
(send friend@rebol.com (read http://www.cnn.com))
Weirdly, the language also has some infix operators, which seem a bit out-of-place to me. I have no idea how the 'parser'[1] works.
[1] 'parsing' happens so late that it feels funny to call it that. The thing that knows how to treat an array as a representation of an evaluatable expression and evaluate it.
null
andoando
but why, don't get this design choice at all.
dmitrygr
>This is like the only programming language I could never learn.
Wait till you hear of Urbit and see this: https://developers.urbit.org/overview/nock
pfych
I spent too long trying to learn this & hoon, not worth it ;_;
almostgotcaught
it's lisp with square braces instead of parens (and then a whole bunch of other random things like a gui library in the standard library?)
timbit42
It's actually more like Logo, which is Lisp with square brackets instead of parens and fixed arity.
Sassenrath wrote Amiga Logo before starting REBOL.
TOGoS
The square brackets aren't really analogous to Lisp's parentheses; REBOL / RED use parentheses for the same purpose, if you need them. The square brackets are more like square brackets in Factor or Joy; they are 'quotations' around a list of words (or other syntactic structures; basically they make a list that is not evaluated immediately).
bsrkf
When I look at a programming language site, especially for a "new" language, I want a quick way to navigate to a reasonably sized decent code sample, ideally documented, showing off significant language features, idiomatic syntax and usage patterns etc...
Sites which do this well (just from the top of my head):
https://odin-lang.org/
immediate code sample visible
"See the Full Demo"
"See More Examples"
https://ziglang.org/
immediate code sample
scroll down a bit, "More Code Samples"
"Getting Started" Nope
"Documentation" Nope
"Official Documentation" link to github
https://github.com/red/docs/blob/master/en/SUMMARY.adoc
"Home"
merely a chronologically sorted blog
newest entry links to 50 line "script" by chance
showing off multi-monitor support
(doesn't seem like a super helpful sample)
?croemer
The website looks like 2013 and much of the content is as well. There's a GitHub repo that I couldn't find from the website: https://github.com/red/red
worldsayshi
The repo seems to be alive and kicking.
zerealshadowban
ah, this is not about the Red Language that Intermetrics designed in 1977-79 to satisfy the Steelman requirements of the DoD's High Order Language Working Group... (the Green Language won and became known as Ada).
I thought maybe someone had put the DoD's Red language spec online.
And yes, someone has: https://iment.com/maida/computer/redref/
niek_pas
I haven’t looked at this in detail, but it seems they confuse “human-friendly syntax” with “absence of (<[{“.
fuzztester
I have tried Rebol out a little, multiple times over the years. it's a cool language. I like it.
I also got to know about Red early, followed it and tried it out for a bit.
but as others have said, that move to crypto, to fund the dev work and make the devs money, put me off for good. nothing wrong with making money, let them make plenty, I just didn't jive with crypto as a way of doing it.
sad about it going that route
ConanRus
32 bit only
null
38
red was terrible in 2018, and its terrible now - just tried to compile hello world and it takes 36 seconds
Languages that encourage making DSLs are a two-edged sword. On the one hand, you get to make a language that is more clear and fine-tuned to your use-case. On the other, you have an ad-hoc language with no support that you have to maintain along with the documentation (considering that you can't expect anyone else to know the DSL ahead of time). As I've gotten older, I've determined that well-designed APIs in a well-known language are a better alternative to DSLs.