What about REBOL (www.rebol.com)

[Tim Peters]

[Jayr Magave]
> ... I would like to know if someone evaluated the new
>  script language REBOL.  It looked  very powerful and high
> level to me.  But lacks library support (specially
> database support).
>
> I am about to take my time to learn an useful multiplataform
> script language and Python looked very fine, until I took
> at look at REBOL.

I picked up REBOL when it was first released, and was semi-active on the
REBOL mailing list for about a year.  It's a seriously cool language.  So is
Python.  Neither use semicolons much, so what's to dislike about either of
'em <wink>?

Which is a backwards way of saying that, in the absence of you identifying
what's important to you, there's no way short of a large book to "compare &
contrast" the aspects of interest to you.  As you've already discovered,
REBOL (at least in part because it's much newer) has far fewer libraries
available.  What else do you care about?

One large & basic difference is that Python is primarily object-oriented,
while REBOL is primarily function-oriented.  I count REBOL as a member of
the lexically scoped branch of the Lisp tree (despite that it *looks*
nothing like Lisp, a REBOL "block" is a lexical closure, and the semantics
are virtually identical to Scheme's).  Python hangs off the OO branch of the
Algol tree.

So if you have an OO-vs-functional bias, you'll definitely feel more
comfortable at first with one of them.

But enough guessing -- learning languages is good for you.  Learn both!
Work your way thru the Python tutorial for an hour, then switch to REBOL's,
& so on.  Judge for yourself.  You wouldn't buy a car without taking it for
a test drive, right?  Picking a language is more like choosing a mate
<wink>.

bring-them-both-flowers-and-call-'em-the-morning-after-ly
    y'rs  - tim