I wrote a small email client in Rebol in 2001, it could download email via POP and send via SMTP directly via the protocols and a socket.

It was a TINY program and it worked cross platform due to the fact that there was a web client for Rebol. I actually used it in production just for myself. Amazingly, I just googled my name and Rebol and found the mailing list archives where I was asking about the project... ah, the power of the web's institutional memory!

Rebol (the language) took a bit of getting used to because the syntax was more functional in nature (although it is note a pure functional language). I had just come from working on some C++ and CGI/Perl programs so it was pretty different. It was a fun experiment to stretch the mind.

Honestly, I hadn't given Rebol a thought since I just saw this post... nice to know it's still alive and well.

The book (still have it on the shelf) I first used as a reference was "Rebol: The Official Guide".

Looking back I recall this article I read in 2005, it was interesting to note it had some similarities to the way data is expressed in JSON and similar ways to declare functions that we now use in javascript (myfunc = function(input) { }, etc.). JSON was released in RFC 4627 in 2006 - the timing and similarity is interesting.

http://www.rebol.com/article/0206.html

Not an accidental similarity, Douglas Crockford credits Rebol as an influence for json.

https://erikeldridge.wordpress.com/tag/crockford/

Here's Doug Crockford mentioning Rebol as an influence:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...

Douglas Crockford says JSON was influenced by REBOL.

I tried using it a couple years ago, just as a sample. It's very very unlike any other language I've ever used. Its weirdness comes from a more practical place than other weird languages, which typically have more of a mathematical or academic axe to grind (APL, *ML, Haskell). Lisp-y, and smalltalk-y with a lot of its own dialect. Lots of batteries included. Now that it's open source I'm more interested in putting the time into understanding it better.

What wikipedia descriptions of modern languages do not describe a computational utopia?

Brainfuck comes to mind, but disclaimer: I haven't looked at the wikipedia article for it in quite some time.

edit: preposition