> Sure, Lisp is more than 50 years old and has been extensively used by
> millions of people all over the world. The first time I heard about NetRexx
> is in this thread.
Surely you heard about Rexx? It´s present in Mainframes, later jumped to the Amiga (ARexx - Amiga Rexx with a nice implementation that was enhanced to support 3rd party app scripting, known as "Arexx port(s)"), then became OS/2´s built-in scripting language at the time IBM parted ways with Microsoft and turned it into a 32-bit product marketed against NT (surely you heard of IBM OS/2 2.x and OS/2 Warp around 1992-96), and even a DOS version of Rexx became available -bundled with IBM´s PC-DOS).
There´s a version for Linux, which is open source (Regina Rexx), for Palm PDAs, etc
Mike F Cowlishaw is a great language designer, and he clearly knows what a programming language should or should not have, based on readability and what he calls "human-centric design".
>From the whackypedia:
---
*REXX* (*RE*structured e*X*tended e*X*ecutor) is an
interpreted<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpreted_language>
programming language <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_language>that was developed at IBM <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM>. It is a structured high-level programming language<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-level_programming_language>that was designed to be both easy to learn and easy to read. Both proprietary and open source <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source> interpreters<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpreter_(computing)> for REXX are available on a wide range of computing platforms, and compilers are available for IBM mainframes.
Rexx is widely used as a glue language<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glue_language> , macro <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macro_(computer_science)> language, and is often used for processing data and text and generating reports; these similarities with Perl <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perl>mean that Rexx works well in Common Gateway Interface<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Gateway_Interface> (CGI) programming and it is indeed used for this purpose. Rexx is the primary scripting language in some operating systems, e.g. OS/2<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS/2> , MVS <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MVS>, VM<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VM> , AmigaOS <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AmigaOS>, and is also used as an internal macro language in some other software, e.g., KEDIT<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XEDIT#PC_and_Unix_adaptations> , THE <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hessling_Editor>, the ZOC<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZOC_(software)>terminal emulator. Additionally, the Rexx language can be used for scripting and macros in any program that uses Windows Scripting Host ActiveX scripting engines languages (e.g. VBScript and JScript) if one of the Rexx engines (see below) are installed --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REXX
If you are curious, I suggest you read http://www.amazon.com/REXX-Language-Practical-Approach-Programing/dp/0137806515
And finally there´s the Rexx Language Association at www.rexxla.org.
NetRexx, is just a re-implementation of Rexx for the Java VM, so that it generates Java source code, running everywhere and doesn´t need a Rexx port for any given particular Operating System.
Oh, it has been made open source this year, too...
*advert* Why an open NetRexx means Humans can now do Java http://news.techeye.net/software/why-an-open-netrexx-means-humans-can-do-java
small quote: "Cowlishaw, in his book, calls NetRexx "a new human-oriented programming language". While discussing proposed enhancements to the language, his clarity of concepts is superb: " the asterisk character * in Rexx and NetRexx means multiply, not wild-card. Nowhere does it mean 'wildcard'" he says.
"By adding the special case you'd be adding an anomaly - and one that just adds a new meaning for an operator character and hence verbosity and complexity. "
He concludes "One *can* put together a programming language by adding snippets from other languages on a whim or any suggestion, but you'll end up with Perl. That's OK if you like that kind of thing, but it is incomprehensible to most people who are not dedicated programmers." Speaking about the virtues of NetRexx, Jerry McBride from NJ says: "The strongest point of NetRexx is that it requires perhaps one-third to one-half the keystrokes of a comparable Java program. "The second strong point is, your NetRexx is compiled to Java bytecode and reaps all the benefits of writing to the JVM spec." Jansen calls it "an undeservedly unknown programming language"
OK, enough programming discussion for LBO... ;)
FC
-- "The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers." Richard Hamming - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamming_code