I would like to hear opinions or peoples experiences regarding Rel. Is it destined for the dustbin, or is it the next big thing in programming? I haven’t tried doing anything with it yet (and it looks like you really can’t at this point), but I’m intrigued by a few of the concepts discussed in it. Notably:
- Removal of nulls completely from the data handling part of the language.
- No need for mapping types between the language and the data storage.
- Nesting tables
- Complete separation of design and implementation.
Thoughts?
Right, I agree with you Tony. The interesting thing for me, though, is that Rel is a somewhat working implementation with the understanding that it is essentially a working version of Tutorial D. The thought being that some well funded enterprise takes the research and decides that something like an Industrial D might be worthwhile.
Maybe I’m wrong here, but I get the impression that while Tutorial D is primarily a data language, it has the potential to move into the application space as well. That seems pretty ground-breaking to me. Of course, after reading some of the stuff from Date, Darwen, Pascal, and others, it seems like the language may have the goal of supplanting object oriented programming in general. Right now, OO appears to rule the world of programming. Rel would make available an alternative view on programming in general.
So I guess what I’m curious about is whether this project has legs that leads to other products or if people think it’s going to be just a historical curiosity.