I migrated the domain to here and the original contents were no longer relevant so I have a blank canvas to fill.

I really have no Idea what I’m going to end with here so I’ll probably just rant a bit from time to time.

At the moment I am searching for a new programming language.  Since mostly the  programs I write are for my own personal use and I have no intention of ever doing programming for a boss I have the luxury of using a language I like rather than one the customer or boss wants me to use.

This exploration has, over a period of several years, led me to use RapidQ, XBasic, Euphoria, Adobe Air and several Java type programs.

I can and have used C, assembler, and other assorted monsters.  I really liked using Forth but found programming Windows GUIs an absolute pain in the backside.  Actually that’s no different to most of the other languages I have used and that’s why I liked RapidQ, XBasic and Euphoria.  They all have the ability to make the GUI interface quickly and easily.

Just add the code to make the buttons do stuff etc.  Adobe Air doesn’t have that capability but because I have been building websites for years using PHP, HTML and Javascript I found AIR quite useful.

I was just settling in to creating a tool in AIR when I discovered that Adobe have made a pragmatic decision to not support AIR in old versions of Macs or any version of Linux.

I use Mint Linux so this curtailed my ability to keep my AIR platform current.  Bugger.

For a brief moment I considered moving back to the Windows world, but I got better.

Do you know how hard it is to find a genuine, easy to use, cross platform programming language?

I think I have found one that I can learn to like. REBOL.

I have only been playing with this for a short time, about a week, but it holds significant promise.

I’ll let you know how it goes.  I have a couple of programs I want to get written rather quickly.  One I have already written in RapidQ and as a web based application so I know how I want that one to work.  The other I had about 2/3s done in AIR but have abandoned that in favour of doing it with REBOL.

I’ll let you know.