By Jerry Tsai
About 25 years ago, I wrote my first computer program. Back then, BASIC was my language, and APPLE II was my platform. Since then, I’ve been studying computer programming on and off. I used dBase III+ and Clipper a lot when I was in high school.
After entering college, my major was computer science, which was fun for me. I learned C, x86 assembly language, C++, and Java.
When I was in the graduate school, we developed a Multimedia-on-Demand System in Java and won the Taiwan Java Cup Award, which made my life very different. I started teaching Java programming, giving speeches in Java conferences, and writing Java columns for IT magazines. Those jobs made me anxious for more information. I kept learning new technologies. "Saving for a rainy day," I called it.
One day when I was in a local bookstore, a book caught my eyes. "REBOL: An Official Guide". I had the cash in my pocket, so I bought it. This book was not an easy read for me, so I surfed on REBOL.com, and found the User’s Guide. After reading the User’s Guide, I kind of knew what REBOL was, but I didn’t have any chance to use it.
After a few years, I finally got a chance to use REBOL. One day in the morning, my ex-boss asked me to do something in one day. I decided not to do it in Java, since Java might take me a couple of days to do the job (even though I was good at Java). I used REBOL instead.
Guess what? I made it!
That's amazing, considering I’d never used REBOL to do anything serious before and I didn’t know much about REBOL.
The experience was so good, that I bought a commercial copy of REBOL. I joined the AltME REBOL 3 world. I recommended REBOL to everyone I know. I taught REBOL in my Web Programming class in a college. I even put REBOL in my Java book (Well, I’d gone too far this time, since some readers didn’t understand why there was a REBOL section in a Java book).
But without supporting Unicode, REBOL was hardly useful in East Asia. I waited for REBOL Technologies (RT) to fix that. Finally, I decided to do it myself.
With the help of people from the AltME REBOL 3 World, I made it. Now I can render CJK characters in REBOL, but my solution is not good. Fortunately, RT is going to support Unicode in REBOL 3.0.
With Unicode, REBOL/services, dialecting, tasks, and all the good stuff, I have to keep myself calm, or I might have a stroke.
Complaining and waiting is over. REBOL 3.0 is here. Let's code.
