God! Enough! At this point any announcement with "blockchain" should turn any informed person off of the whole project. Checking out Red was on my roadmap and now it's firmly not.
Buzzwords and cryptocurrencies speculations aside, Red is really worth checking, at least if you're a language enthusiast and is interested in Forth and Lisp family.
And here blockchain is nothing more than an innovative (yet rather controversial, I agree, since I'm skeptical too) model to sustain programming language community and gain a solid ground for core developing team.
Red has potential, but certainly has had slow progress; shifting focus to blockchain may increase total resources but even if it does it mostly likely means slowing down progress outside of the new focal domain.
So, I can see it legitimately killing interest at the margins for those not specifically not interested in blockchain-focussed programming.
As I understood from my discussion with Nenad (lead developer), making such move was a hard decision to make. On the one hand, it MAY actually pay-off in a long term for whole language ecosystem overall, but on the other hand, for that we need to pay the price of slower development and releases delays.
To answer another point (if I understand it correctly) - you don't really need to be interested in blockchains and stuff (personally I don't) to participate in community and programming with Red, there's lots of other things to play with (metaprogramming, language-oriented programming, reactive programming, data-driven programming, parsing, DSL and eDSLs, baking cross-platform GUIs, system programming with Red/System).
> "IIRC, at the end of last year they promised 1.0 by the end of this year."
To be honest, I don't think that was ever a realistic goal, even when it was set. The only benefit of setting such a goal ahead of when a clear release date can be determined is in keeping up momentum during the awkward middle phase of language maturity, when key functionality is clearly missing but you want to maintain interest. This isn't just a Red thing, it's fairly common.
If I had to guess, even by the end of next year, it's much more likely we'll be looking at a 0.7.x release (or, best case, 0.8.x) rather than 1.0. The good news is that the language is likely to be generally useful around 0.7.x (assuming the roadmap is stuck to), as that's the point when the network I/O features are being implemented.
Its Red/System DSL [1] is also something that could be easily used or improved by folks like you that build OS's on calculators and such. More talent can only help. ;) I've been eyeballing it for a concept of high-level systems programming that extracts to multiple targets to leverage their static/dynamic analysis, testing, and compilers. Keep feeding any improvements detected by each into original code until result is pretty solid. Additionally, a language with features close to C that's easy to macro can by itself be advantageous as a C replacement. Double true if the initial interpreter for that language is easy to implement in C or assembly.
So, try it out. Just ignore the blockchain BS if you don't like that. Worst case in event you really like Red, but not what's on the submission, is that you fork or partly clone the prior work to leverage its benefits minus the bullshit. :)
Note: This is true for any great language or other tooling that's malleable. Easier to escape lock-in to specific paths the maintainers take. Not necessarily easy but easier.
I’m with you about blockchain announcements, but this looks like it’s actually appropriate.
From the linked page: “Such dialect will compile to the Ethereum VM (EVM) bytecode directly as first target, and more backends will be added later to support other chains, like NEO. ”
You certainly should check Red anyway. It is still the same language as yesterday, before any "blockchain" announcement. No buzzword can change the great design.
I wish I knew how to fight this idea that a project is its code, and not its community and values and expected future. GNOME 2 is certainly not the same GNOME 2 as it was 10 years ago, despite the code not having gone everywhere. Something like MATE might be, but its difference from GNOME 2 lies precisely in its existence as a community with values separate from the GNOME community and values.
> "Checking out Red was on my roadmap and now it's firmly not."
What I'd suggest is that this DSL for blockchain contracts is not really part of the core Red language. It's worth being aware that Red does not have a module system yet, but there are plans for one before version 1.0. I'd fully expect work like this contract DSL to be spun off into a module once the module functionality is in place.
Agreed. Blockchains have yet to power anything of practical value. They're arguably technically interesting, and may be useful in the long term, but the hype is pathetic and embarrassing.
I don't get why this comment is being downvoted? There's nothing that suggests that blockchain is seeing mass adoption other than the people pushing it.
So far it has proved to be a fantastic vehicle for transferring wealth from unsuspecting investors in the hands of the few who promises the world but will not actually deliver because you know, regulation is a thing of the past.
Yeah I actually couldn't believe what I was seeing when the other day I was actually thinking this about Red Lang, 'this actually could be onto something'...
It completely erodes trust and confidence when a project just bolts on a blockchain...it makes me question if they are in this for the long haul or just want to cash out.
Please don't name-call in comments. Apart from breaking the site rules (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), it discredits your point. That's particularly bad when your point is good.
Buzzwords and cryptocurrencies speculations aside, Red is really worth checking, at least if you're a language enthusiast and is interested in Forth and Lisp family.
And here blockchain is nothing more than an innovative (yet rather controversial, I agree, since I'm skeptical too) model to sustain programming language community and gain a solid ground for core developing team.