Red (programming language)
Red is a programming language designed to overcome the limitations of the programming language Rebol. Red was introduced in 2011 by Nenad Rakočević, and is both an imperative and functional programming language. Its syntax and general usage overlaps that of the interpreted Rebol language. The implementation choices of Red intend to create a full stack programming language: Red can be used for extremely high-level programming (DSLs and GUIs) as well as low-level programming (operating systems and device drivers). Key to the approach is that the language has two parts: "Red/System" and "Red". Red seeks  to remain independent of any other toolchain; it does its own code generation. It is therefore possible to cross-compile Red programs from any platform it supports to any other, via a command-line switch. Both Red and Red/System are distributed as open-source software under the modified BSD license. The runtime library is distributed under the more permissive Boost Software License. As of version 0.6.4 Red includes a garbage collector "the Simple GC". Introduction. Red was introduced in the Netherlands in February 2011 at the "Rebol & Boron conference" by its author Nenad Rakočević. In September 2011, the Red  programming language was presented to a larger audience during the Software Freedom Day 2011. Rakočević is a long-time Rebol developer known as the creator of the Cheyenne HTTP server. Features. Red's syntax and semantics are very close to those of Rebol. Like Rebol, it strongly supports metaprogramming and domain-specific languages (DSLs) and is therefore a highly efficient tool for dialecting (creating embedded DSLs). Red includes a dialect called Red/System, a C-level language which provides system programming facilities. Red is easy to integrate with other tools and languages as a DLL (libRed) and very lightweight (around  1 MB). It is also able to cross-compile to various platforms (see Cross Compilation section below) and create packages for platforms that require them (e.g., .APK on Android). Red also includes a fully reactive cross-platform GUI system based on an underlying reactive dataflow engine, a 2D drawing dialect comparable to SVG, compile-time and runtime macro support, and more than 40 standard datatypes. Goals. The following is the list of Red's Goals as presented on the Software Freedom Day 2011: Development. Red's development is planned to be done in two phases: Cross compilation. Red currently supports  the following cross-compilation targets: Hello World! Red [Title: "Simple hello world script"] print "Hello World!" Factorial example. IMPORTANT: These are intended as syntax examples. Until Red has 64-bit support, the integer example will overflow a 32-bit integer very quickly. Changing that to `float!` will go farther, but these are merely to show the syntax of the language. The following is a factorial example in Red: Red [Title: "A factorial script"] ; Note: The title is optional. factorial: func [ The following is the same factorial example in Red/System (in this very simple case, the source code  is very similar to Red's version): Red/System [Title: "A factorial script"] factorial: func [