Ivo Balbaert - Learn Red - Fundamentals of Red: Get Up and Running with the Red Language for Full-Stack Development

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When a new language is created, programmers and technology pundits are quick to ask "Why?," whether it's a programming, markup, or modeling language. Designers are often criticized, rather than praised, as if looking for new and better approaches is a bad thing. The critics couldn't be more wrong. That doesn't mean every new tool or idea will succeed, in theory or in practice. However, we must keep trying, if we hope to move forward or even keep pace. The world isn't standing still, and neither can we. As a conservative technologist (nee Luddite), I have to be reminded of this from time to time.

When an author, in this day and age, writes a book about technology, others are quick to ask "Why? Isn't everything you need to know available on the internet?." Sure, if you know where to look, are able to separate the wheat from the chaff (Luddites love time-tested idioms), and your noble goal is to work from original sources. If, however, you're a programmer in 2018, you may not have the luxury and time for pure research about every new technology that comes along, at an ever-increasing pace.

At this point, you're looking for a TL;DR ( Too Long; Didn't Read) , right? You're three paragraphs in, and already feeling pressured to move on. Your time is valuable and isn't to be wasted. I couldn't agree more. That's why you should read this book. It is a TL;DR for the Red language, and the Red language is your TL;DR for software development.

If you've never heard of Red, you don't know what makes it special, how to use it, or what it's capable of. This book will show you. It's not a primer or a technical manual; it's an introduction. It's your friend Ivo, waving you over at a cocktail party and saying "Hey, this is Red. I think you two might get along. Red is..." and runs down Red's C.V. while throwing in a few saucy details to pique your interest.

The more you talk to Red, the more it opens your mind to new ways of thinking. That's your job, remember? Thinking and solving problems. Writing code is, or should be, incidental. Sadly, the complexity of modern software development has turned things upside down, while simultaneously sucking the fun out of making software. Red wants to change that, and this book will help you get started.

Red will seem familiar, but also strange. It's approachable, but technically advanced. There's nothing quite like it (except its predecessor, Rebol, of course). One minute you're using it as a scripting language, the next it's cross-compiling your reactive GUI application, from your current environment, with C-level speed extensions, into stand-alone executables, each about 1 MB in size. You look like a superhero, but your sidekick is the one doing all the work.

Or maybe you thought we don't need any new languages.

Gregg Irwin

Red Community Manager
Head of the Operational Team of the Red Language Foundation

Ivo Balbaert is a former lecturer for (Web) programming and databases at CVO Antwerpen, a community college in Belgium. He received a PhD in applied physics from the University of Antwerp in 1986. He worked for 20 years in the software industry as a developer and consultant in several companies, and for 10 years as a project manager at the University Hospital of Antwerp. Since 2000, he has been partly teaching, developing software, and writing technical books, among others:

• Rust Essentials
• Getting Started with Julia
• The Way to Go