Carl Sassenrath
Encyclopedia
Carl Sassenrath is an architect of operating systems and computer languages. He brought multitasking
to personal computers in 1985 with the creation of the Amiga Computer
operating system kernel, and he is currently the designer of the REBOL
computer language as well as the CTO of REBOL Technologies.
involved in research and development related to petroleum refining, paper production, and air pollution control systems.
In the late 1960s his family relocated from the San Francisco Bay Area
to the small town of Eureka, California
. From his early childhood Sassenrath was actively involved in electronics, amateur radio
, photography, and filmmaking. When he was 13, Sassenrath began working for KEET
a PBS
public broadcasting television station. A year later he became a cameraman for KVIQ
(American Broadcasting Company
affiliate then) and worked his way up to being technical director
and director for news, commercials, and local programming.
In 1980 Sassenrath graduated from the University of California, Davis
with a B.S. in EECS (electrical engineering
and computer science
). During his studies he became interested in operating systems, parallel processing
, programming languages, and neurophysiology
. He was a teaching assistant for graduate computer language courses and a research assistant in neuroscience
and behavioral biology. His uncle, Dr. Julius Sassenrath, headed the educational psychology department at UC Davis, and his aunt, Dr. Ethel Sassenrath, was one of the original researchers of THC
at the California National Primate Research Center
.
(MPE) file system
design group for HP3000 computers. His task was to implement a compiler
for a new type of control language called Outqueue-- a challenge because the language was both descriptive and procedural. A year later, Sassenrath became a member of the MPE-IV OS kernel team and later part of the HPE kernel group.
While at HP Sassenrath became interested in minimizing the high complexity found in most operating systems of that time and set out to formulate his own concepts of a microkernel
-based OS. He proposed them to HP, but found the large company complacent to the "smaller OS" ideas.
In late 1981 and early 1982 Sassenrath took an academic leave to do atmospheric physics research for National Science Foundation
at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station
. Upon returning, Sassenrath reached an agreement with HP to pursue independent research into new areas of computing, including graphical user interfaces and remote procedure call
methods of distributed computing.
Later in 1982, impressed by the new computing ideas being published from Xerox PARC
and the MIT Media Lab
, Sassenrath formed an HP project to develop the modern style of window-based mouse
-driven GUI
s. The project, called Probus (for professional business workstation) was created on a prototype Sun Microsystems
workstation borrowed from Andy Bechtolsheim
while he was at Stanford University
. Probus clearly demonstrated the power of graphical user interfaces, and the system also incorporated hyperlinks and early distributed computing
concepts.
At HP, Sassenrath was involved and influenced by a range of HP language projects including Ada
, Pascal
, Smalltalk
, Lisp, Forth, SPL
, and a variety of experimental languages.
, a small startup company in Silicon Valley
. As Manager of Operating Systems he was asked to design a new operating system for the Amiga
, an advanced multimedia personal computer system that later became the Commodore Amiga.
As a sophisticated computer for its day (Amiga used 25 DMA
channels and a coprocessor
), Sassenrath decided to create a preemptive multitasking operating system
within a microkernel
design. This was a novel approach for 1983 when other personal computer operating systems were single tasking such as MSDOS (1981) or were non-preemptive such as the Macintosh
(1984).
The Amiga multitasking kernel was also one of the first to implement a microkernel
OS methodology based on a real-time
message passing
(inter-process communication
) core known as Exec (for executive)
with dynamically loaded libraries and devices as optional modules around the core.
This design gave the Amiga OS a great extensibility and flexibility within the limited memory capacity of computers in the 1980s. Sassenrath later noted that the design came as a necessity of trying to integrate into ROM
dozens of internal libraries and devices including graphics, sound, graphical user interface
, floppy disc, file systems, and others. This dynamic modular method also allowed hundreds of additional modules to be added by external developers over the years.
After the release of the Amiga in 1985, Sassenrath left Commodore-Amiga to pursue new programming language design ideas that he had been contemplating since his university days.
(ATG) to invent the next generation of operating systems. He was part of the Aquarius project, a quad-core CPU project (simulated on Apple's own Cray
XMP-48) that was intended to become a 3D-based successor to the Macintosh.
During that period the C++
language had just been introduced, but Sassenrath, along with many other Apple researchers, preferred the more pure OO
implementation of the Smalltalk
language.
Working at ATG with computing legends like Alan Kay
, Larry Tessler, Dan Ingalls, Bill Atkinson
and many others provided Sassenrath a wealth of resources and knowledge that helped shape his current views of computing languages and systems.
, one of the first CD-ROM
TV set-top box
es, and wrote the OS for Viscorp Ed, one of the first Internet TV set-top boxes.
, Perl
, and Python
, Sassenrath decided to publish his own ideas within the world of computer languages. The result was REBOL
, the relative expression-based object language.
Sassenrath explains REBOL as a proper balance between the concepts of context and symbol
ism, allowing users to create new relationships between symbols and their meanings. By doing so, he claims concepts such as those of code
, data
, and metadata
merge seamlessly together. Sassenrath calls REBOL his grand experiment, because unlike most programming languages, REBOL provides greater control over context, and words can be used to form different grammars in different contexts (called dialecting). Sassenrath claims REBOL is the ultimate endpoint for the evolution of markup language
methodologies, such as XML
.
The other main idea behind REBOL is to keep computing lightweight, and more specifically to offer a more efficient method of distributed computing
. Sassenrath concludes that modern computing is much more complex than it needs to be, and that's bad for users and developers alike.
Sassenrath admits that REBOL is not for everyone. The language is advanced and different in many ways. He has suggested that some users might be better off "forgetting most of what they already know" and starting fresh to obtain a new outlook on computing.
In 1998, Sassenrath founded REBOL Technologies, a company he still runs. Since then, he has written several new versions of REBOL and produced additional products such as REBOL/View, REBOL/Command, REBOL/SDK, and REBOL/IOS. He has also written thousands of pages about REBOL, hundreds of script examples, and a dozen or more useful REBOL applications.
Sassenrath is currently in the process of implementing the next generation of REBOL, V3.0 (which was due out in 2009).
, California
. He enjoys growing grapes and making his own Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot wine. He volunteers his time to a community organization that brings free, over-the-air television broadcasts into the Ukiah area (the Television Improvement Association).
Sassenrath continues to be interested in amateur radio
, video production, quantum electrodynamics
, and boating, but finds his time limited these days.
Computer multitasking
In computing, multitasking is a method where multiple tasks, also known as processes, share common processing resources such as a CPU. In the case of a computer with a single CPU, only one task is said to be running at any point in time, meaning that the CPU is actively executing instructions for...
to personal computers in 1985 with the creation of the Amiga Computer
Amiga
The Amiga is a family of personal computers that was sold by Commodore in the 1980s and 1990s. The first model was launched in 1985 as a high-end home computer and became popular for its graphical, audio and multi-tasking abilities...
operating system kernel, and he is currently the designer of the REBOL
REBOL
REBOL is a cross-platform data exchange language and a multi-paradigm dynamic programming language originally designed by Carl Sassenrath for network communications and distributed computing. The language and its official implementation, which is a proprietary freely redistributable software are...
computer language as well as the CTO of REBOL Technologies.
Background
Carl Sassenrath was born in 1957 to Charles and Carolyn Sassenrath in California. His father was a chemical engineerChemical engineer
In the field of engineering, a chemical engineer is the profession in which one works principally in the chemical industry to convert basic raw materials into a variety of products, and deals with the design and operation of plants and equipment to perform such work...
involved in research and development related to petroleum refining, paper production, and air pollution control systems.
In the late 1960s his family relocated from the San Francisco Bay Area
San Francisco Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a populated region that surrounds the San Francisco and San Pablo estuaries in Northern California. The region encompasses metropolitan areas of San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, along with smaller urban and rural areas...
to the small town of Eureka, California
Eureka, California
Eureka is the principal city and the county seat of Humboldt County, California, United States. Its population was 27,191 at the 2010 census, up from 26,128 at the 2000 census....
. From his early childhood Sassenrath was actively involved in electronics, amateur radio
Amateur radio
Amateur radio is the use of designated radio frequency spectrum for purposes of private recreation, non-commercial exchange of messages, wireless experimentation, self-training, and emergency communication...
, photography, and filmmaking. When he was 13, Sassenrath began working for KEET
KEET
KEET is a digital-only public television station in Eureka, California, broadcasting locally on channel 11 as a PBS member station. Founded in 1969, the station is owned by Redwood Empire Public Television, Inc...
a PBS
Public Broadcasting Service
The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
public broadcasting television station. A year later he became a cameraman for KVIQ
KVIQ
KVIQ is a digital-only broadcast television station which broadcasts as a CBS affiliate on UHF channel 17 from a transmitter in Eureka, California.-History:KVIQ signed on the air on VHF channel 6 as Eureka's second television station on April 1, 1958...
(American Broadcasting Company
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
affiliate then) and worked his way up to being technical director
Technical director
The Technical Director or Technical Manager is usually a senior technical person within a software company, film studio, theatrical company or television studio...
and director for news, commercials, and local programming.
In 1980 Sassenrath graduated from the University of California, Davis
University of California, Davis
The University of California, Davis is a public teaching and research university established in 1905 and located in Davis, California, USA. Spanning over , the campus is the largest within the University of California system and third largest by enrollment...
with a B.S. in EECS (electrical engineering
Electrical engineering
Electrical engineering is a field of engineering that generally deals with the study and application of electricity, electronics and electromagnetism. The field first became an identifiable occupation in the late nineteenth century after commercialization of the electric telegraph and electrical...
and computer science
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
). During his studies he became interested in operating systems, parallel processing
Parallel processing
Parallel processing is the ability to carry out multiple operations or tasks simultaneously. The term is used in the contexts of both human cognition, particularly in the ability of the brain to simultaneously process incoming stimuli, and in parallel computing by machines.-Parallel processing by...
, programming languages, and neurophysiology
Neurophysiology
Neurophysiology is a part of physiology. Neurophysiology is the study of nervous system function...
. He was a teaching assistant for graduate computer language courses and a research assistant in neuroscience
Neuroscience
Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system. Traditionally, neuroscience has been seen as a branch of biology. However, it is currently an interdisciplinary science that collaborates with other fields such as chemistry, computer science, engineering, linguistics, mathematics,...
and behavioral biology. His uncle, Dr. Julius Sassenrath, headed the educational psychology department at UC Davis, and his aunt, Dr. Ethel Sassenrath, was one of the original researchers of THC
THC
THC commonly refers to tetrahydrocannabinol, the main active chemical compound in Cannabis.THC may also refer to:* Tan Holdings Corporation...
at the California National Primate Research Center
California National Primate Research Center
The California National Primate Research Center is a United States federal government funded biomedical research facility, dedicated to improving human and animal health, and located on the University of California, Davis, campus...
.
Hewlett-Packard
During his final year at the university, Sassenrath joined Hewlett Packard's Computer Systems Division as a member of the Multi-Programming ExecutiveMulti-Programming Executive
MPE is a business-oriented minicomputer operating system made by Hewlett-Packard.It runs the HP 3000 family of computers, which originally used HP custom 16 bit stack architecture CISC CPUs and were later migrated to PA-RISC where the operating system was called MPE/XL...
(MPE) file system
File system
A file system is a means to organize data expected to be retained after a program terminates by providing procedures to store, retrieve and update data, as well as manage the available space on the device which contain it. A file system organizes data in an efficient manner and is tuned to the...
design group for HP3000 computers. His task was to implement a compiler
Compiler
A compiler is a computer program that transforms source code written in a programming language into another computer language...
for a new type of control language called Outqueue-- a challenge because the language was both descriptive and procedural. A year later, Sassenrath became a member of the MPE-IV OS kernel team and later part of the HPE kernel group.
While at HP Sassenrath became interested in minimizing the high complexity found in most operating systems of that time and set out to formulate his own concepts of a microkernel
Microkernel
In computer science, a microkernel is the near-minimum amount of software that can provide the mechanisms needed to implement an operating system . These mechanisms include low-level address space management, thread management, and inter-process communication...
-based OS. He proposed them to HP, but found the large company complacent to the "smaller OS" ideas.
In late 1981 and early 1982 Sassenrath took an academic leave to do atmospheric physics research for National Science Foundation
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...
at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station
Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station
The Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station is the American scientific research station on the high plateau of Antarctica. This station is located at the southernmost place on the Earth, the Geographic South Pole, at an elevation of 2,835 meters above sea level.The original Amundsen-Scott Station was...
. Upon returning, Sassenrath reached an agreement with HP to pursue independent research into new areas of computing, including graphical user interfaces and remote procedure call
Remote procedure call
In computer science, a remote procedure call is an inter-process communication that allows a computer program to cause a subroutine or procedure to execute in another address space without the programmer explicitly coding the details for this remote interaction...
methods of distributed computing.
Later in 1982, impressed by the new computing ideas being published from Xerox PARC
Xerox PARC
PARC , formerly Xerox PARC, is a research and co-development company in Palo Alto, California, with a distinguished reputation for its contributions to information technology and hardware systems....
and the MIT Media Lab
MIT Media Lab
The MIT Media Lab is a laboratory of MIT School of Architecture and Planning. Devoted to research projects at the convergence of design, multimedia and technology, the Media Lab has been widely popularized since the 1990s by business and technology publications such as Wired and Red Herring for a...
, Sassenrath formed an HP project to develop the modern style of window-based mouse
Mouse
A mouse is a small mammal belonging to the order of rodents. The best known mouse species is the common house mouse . It is also a popular pet. In some places, certain kinds of field mice are also common. This rodent is eaten by large birds such as hawks and eagles...
-driven GUI
Gui
Gui or guee is a generic term to refer to grilled dishes in Korean cuisine. These most commonly have meat or fish as their primary ingredient, but may in some cases also comprise grilled vegetables or other vegetarian ingredients. The term derives from the verb, "gupda" in Korean, which literally...
s. The project, called Probus (for professional business workstation) was created on a prototype Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...
workstation borrowed from Andy Bechtolsheim
Andy Bechtolsheim
Andreas von Bechtolsheim is an electrical engineer who co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982 and was its chief hardware designer....
while he was at Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
. Probus clearly demonstrated the power of graphical user interfaces, and the system also incorporated hyperlinks and early distributed computing
Distributed computing
Distributed computing is a field of computer science that studies distributed systems. A distributed system consists of multiple autonomous computers that communicate through a computer network. The computers interact with each other in order to achieve a common goal...
concepts.
At HP, Sassenrath was involved and influenced by a range of HP language projects including Ada
Ada (programming language)
Ada is a structured, statically typed, imperative, wide-spectrum, and object-oriented high-level computer programming language, extended from Pascal and other languages...
, Pascal
Pascal (programming language)
Pascal is an influential imperative and procedural programming language, designed in 1968/9 and published in 1970 by Niklaus Wirth as a small and efficient language intended to encourage good programming practices using structured programming and data structuring.A derivative known as Object Pascal...
, Smalltalk
Smalltalk
Smalltalk is an object-oriented, dynamically typed, reflective programming language. Smalltalk was created as the language to underpin the "new world" of computing exemplified by "human–computer symbiosis." It was designed and created in part for educational use, more so for constructionist...
, Lisp, Forth, SPL
System programming language
System programming languages are programming languages that are statically typed, allow arbitrarily complex data structures, are compiled, and are meant to operate largely independently of other programs. Prototypical system programming languages are C and Modula-2...
, and a variety of experimental languages.
Amiga Computer
In 1983, Carl Sassenrath joined Amiga Computer, Inc.Amiga Corporation
Amiga Corporation was a United States computer company formed in the early 1980s as Hi-Toro. It is most famous for having developed the Amiga computer, code named Lorraine.-History:...
, a small startup company in Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is a term which refers to the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California in the United States. The region is home to many of the world's largest technology corporations...
. As Manager of Operating Systems he was asked to design a new operating system for the Amiga
Amiga
The Amiga is a family of personal computers that was sold by Commodore in the 1980s and 1990s. The first model was launched in 1985 as a high-end home computer and became popular for its graphical, audio and multi-tasking abilities...
, an advanced multimedia personal computer system that later became the Commodore Amiga.
As a sophisticated computer for its day (Amiga used 25 DMA
Direct memory access
Direct memory access is a feature of modern computers that allows certain hardware subsystems within the computer to access system memory independently of the central processing unit ....
channels and a coprocessor
Coprocessor
A coprocessor is a computer processor used to supplement the functions of the primary processor . Operations performed by the coprocessor may be floating point arithmetic, graphics, signal processing, string processing, or encryption. By offloading processor-intensive tasks from the main processor,...
), Sassenrath decided to create a preemptive multitasking operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
within a microkernel
Microkernel
In computer science, a microkernel is the near-minimum amount of software that can provide the mechanisms needed to implement an operating system . These mechanisms include low-level address space management, thread management, and inter-process communication...
design. This was a novel approach for 1983 when other personal computer operating systems were single tasking such as MSDOS (1981) or were non-preemptive such as the Macintosh
Macintosh
The Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a...
(1984).
The Amiga multitasking kernel was also one of the first to implement a microkernel
Microkernel
In computer science, a microkernel is the near-minimum amount of software that can provide the mechanisms needed to implement an operating system . These mechanisms include low-level address space management, thread management, and inter-process communication...
OS methodology based on a real-time
Real-time computing
In computer science, real-time computing , or reactive computing, is the study of hardware and software systems that are subject to a "real-time constraint"— e.g. operational deadlines from event to system response. Real-time programs must guarantee response within strict time constraints...
message passing
Message passing
Message passing in computer science is a form of communication used in parallel computing, object-oriented programming, and interprocess communication. In this model, processes or objects can send and receive messages to other processes...
(inter-process communication
Inter-process communication
In computing, Inter-process communication is a set of methods for the exchange of data among multiple threads in one or more processes. Processes may be running on one or more computers connected by a network. IPC methods are divided into methods for message passing, synchronization, shared...
) core known as Exec (for executive)
Exec (Amiga)
Exec is the object-oriented multi-tasking kernel of AmigaOS. It enabled pre-emptive multitasking in as little as 256k of memory ....
with dynamically loaded libraries and devices as optional modules around the core.
This design gave the Amiga OS a great extensibility and flexibility within the limited memory capacity of computers in the 1980s. Sassenrath later noted that the design came as a necessity of trying to integrate into ROM
Read-only memory
Read-only memory is a class of storage medium used in computers and other electronic devices. Data stored in ROM cannot be modified, or can be modified only slowly or with difficulty, so it is mainly used to distribute firmware .In its strictest sense, ROM refers only...
dozens of internal libraries and devices including graphics, sound, graphical user interface
Graphical user interface
In computing, a graphical user interface is a type of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices with images rather than text commands. GUIs can be used in computers, hand-held devices such as MP3 players, portable media players or gaming devices, household appliances and...
, floppy disc, file systems, and others. This dynamic modular method also allowed hundreds of additional modules to be added by external developers over the years.
After the release of the Amiga in 1985, Sassenrath left Commodore-Amiga to pursue new programming language design ideas that he had been contemplating since his university days.
Apple Computer
In 1986, Carl Sassenrath was recruited to Apple Computer's highly respected Advanced Technology GroupAdvanced Technology Group
The Advanced Technology Group was a corporate research laboratory at Apple Computer from 1986 to 1997. ATG was started by Larry Tesler in October 1986 to study long term research into future technologies that were beyond the time frame or organizational scope of any individual product group. Over...
(ATG) to invent the next generation of operating systems. He was part of the Aquarius project, a quad-core CPU project (simulated on Apple's own Cray
Cray
Cray Inc. is an American supercomputer manufacturer based in Seattle, Washington. The company's predecessor, Cray Research, Inc. , was founded in 1972 by computer designer Seymour Cray. Seymour Cray went on to form the spin-off Cray Computer Corporation , in 1989, which went bankrupt in 1995,...
XMP-48) that was intended to become a 3D-based successor to the Macintosh.
During that period the C++
C++
C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...
language had just been introduced, but Sassenrath, along with many other Apple researchers, preferred the more pure OO
Object-oriented programming
Object-oriented programming is a programming paradigm using "objects" – data structures consisting of data fields and methods together with their interactions – to design applications and computer programs. Programming techniques may include features such as data abstraction,...
implementation of the Smalltalk
Smalltalk
Smalltalk is an object-oriented, dynamically typed, reflective programming language. Smalltalk was created as the language to underpin the "new world" of computing exemplified by "human–computer symbiosis." It was designed and created in part for educational use, more so for constructionist...
language.
Working at ATG with computing legends like Alan Kay
Alan Kay
Alan Curtis Kay is an American computer scientist, known for his early pioneering work on object-oriented programming and windowing graphical user interface design, and for coining the phrase, "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."He is the president of the Viewpoints Research...
, Larry Tessler, Dan Ingalls, Bill Atkinson
Bill Atkinson
Bill Atkinson is an American computer engineer and photographer. Atkinson worked at Apple Computer from 1978 to 1990. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of California, San Diego, where Apple Macintosh developer Jef Raskin was one of his professors...
and many others provided Sassenrath a wealth of resources and knowledge that helped shape his current views of computing languages and systems.
Sassenrath Research
In 1988, Sassenrath left Silicon Valley for the mountains of Ukiah valley, 2 hours north of San Francisco. From there he founded multimedia technology companies such as Pantaray, American Multimedia, and VideoStream. He also implemented the Logo programming language for the Commodore Amiga, managed the software OS development for CDTVCDTV
The CDTV was a multimedia platform developed by Commodore International and launched in 1991. On a technological level it was essentially a Commodore Amiga 500 home computer in a Hi-Fi style case with a single-speed CD-ROM drive. Commodore marketed the machine as an all-in-one home multimedia...
, one of the first CD-ROM
CD-ROM
A CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....
TV set-top box
Set-top box
A set-top box or set-top unit is an information appliance device that generally contains a tuner and connects to a television set and an external source of signal, turning the signal into content which is then displayed on the television screen or other display device.-History:Before the...
es, and wrote the OS for Viscorp Ed, one of the first Internet TV set-top boxes.
REBOL Technologies
In 1996, after watching the growth and development of programming languages like JavaJava (programming language)
Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...
, Perl
Perl
Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Perl was originally developed by Larry Wall in 1987 as a general-purpose Unix scripting language to make report processing easier. Since then, it has undergone many changes and revisions and become widely popular...
, and Python
Python (programming language)
Python is a general-purpose, high-level programming language whose design philosophy emphasizes code readability. Python claims to "[combine] remarkable power with very clear syntax", and its standard library is large and comprehensive...
, Sassenrath decided to publish his own ideas within the world of computer languages. The result was REBOL
REBOL
REBOL is a cross-platform data exchange language and a multi-paradigm dynamic programming language originally designed by Carl Sassenrath for network communications and distributed computing. The language and its official implementation, which is a proprietary freely redistributable software are...
, the relative expression-based object language.
Sassenrath explains REBOL as a proper balance between the concepts of context and symbol
Symbol
A symbol is something which represents an idea, a physical entity or a process but is distinct from it. The purpose of a symbol is to communicate meaning. For example, a red octagon may be a symbol for "STOP". On a map, a picture of a tent might represent a campsite. Numerals are symbols for...
ism, allowing users to create new relationships between symbols and their meanings. By doing so, he claims concepts such as those of code
Code
A code is a rule for converting a piece of information into another form or representation , not necessarily of the same type....
, data
Data
The term data refers to qualitative or quantitative attributes of a variable or set of variables. Data are typically the results of measurements and can be the basis of graphs, images, or observations of a set of variables. Data are often viewed as the lowest level of abstraction from which...
, and metadata
Metadata
The term metadata is an ambiguous term which is used for two fundamentally different concepts . Although the expression "data about data" is often used, it does not apply to both in the same way. Structural metadata, the design and specification of data structures, cannot be about data, because at...
merge seamlessly together. Sassenrath calls REBOL his grand experiment, because unlike most programming languages, REBOL provides greater control over context, and words can be used to form different grammars in different contexts (called dialecting). Sassenrath claims REBOL is the ultimate endpoint for the evolution of markup language
Markup language
A markup language is a modern system for annotating a text in a way that is syntactically distinguishable from that text. The idea and terminology evolved from the "marking up" of manuscripts, i.e. the revision instructions by editors, traditionally written with a blue pencil on authors' manuscripts...
methodologies, such as XML
XML
Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
.
The other main idea behind REBOL is to keep computing lightweight, and more specifically to offer a more efficient method of distributed computing
Distributed computing
Distributed computing is a field of computer science that studies distributed systems. A distributed system consists of multiple autonomous computers that communicate through a computer network. The computers interact with each other in order to achieve a common goal...
. Sassenrath concludes that modern computing is much more complex than it needs to be, and that's bad for users and developers alike.
Sassenrath admits that REBOL is not for everyone. The language is advanced and different in many ways. He has suggested that some users might be better off "forgetting most of what they already know" and starting fresh to obtain a new outlook on computing.
In 1998, Sassenrath founded REBOL Technologies, a company he still runs. Since then, he has written several new versions of REBOL and produced additional products such as REBOL/View, REBOL/Command, REBOL/SDK, and REBOL/IOS. He has also written thousands of pages about REBOL, hundreds of script examples, and a dozen or more useful REBOL applications.
Sassenrath is currently in the process of implementing the next generation of REBOL, V3.0 (which was due out in 2009).
Personal
Sassenrath lives on SassenRanch in UkiahUkiah, California
The average high temperature is 73.5 °F . Average low temperature is 46.1 °F . Temperatures reach 90 °F on an average of 65.6 days annually and 100 °F on an average of 14.4 days annually. Due to frequent low humidity, summer temperatures normally drop into the fifties at night. Freezing...
, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
. He enjoys growing grapes and making his own Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot wine. He volunteers his time to a community organization that brings free, over-the-air television broadcasts into the Ukiah area (the Television Improvement Association).
Sassenrath continues to be interested in amateur radio
Amateur radio
Amateur radio is the use of designated radio frequency spectrum for purposes of private recreation, non-commercial exchange of messages, wireless experimentation, self-training, and emergency communication...
, video production, quantum electrodynamics
Quantum electrodynamics
Quantum electrodynamics is the relativistic quantum field theory of electrodynamics. In essence, it describes how light and matter interact and is the first theory where full agreement between quantum mechanics and special relativity is achieved...
, and boating, but finds his time limited these days.
Other references
- Amiga ROM Kernel Reference Manual: Exec; Carl Sassenrath; Commodore; 1986
- Guru's Guide to the Commodore Amiga; Carl Sassenrath; 1989
- The Object Oriented Amiga Exec; Tim Holloway; Byte Magazine; 1991
- REBOL Bots; Web Techniques; 9/1999
- Inside the REBOL Scripting Language; Dr. Dobb's Journal; 6/2000
- REBOL for Dummies; Ralph Roberts; Hungry Minds; 2000
- REBOL Programming; Olivier Auverlot; Éditions Eyrolles; 2001
- Computing Encyclopedia, Vol 5: People; Smart Computing; 2002
- The REBOL IOS Distributed Filesystem; Dr. Dobb's Journal; 9/2002
- The REBOL/Core Users Guide; Carl Sassenrath; 2000–2005