Talk:Refal

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Refal article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Untitled[edit]

Note on a recent edit: I removed the statement "[in Russia,] where it has been widely used ever since" from the introduction. Refal web presence does not seem to support the "widely used" qualification. The Refal diaspora section of refal.net does not either. (Not to mention this author's personal experience 20 years ago). Such a statement, if added back, should be supported by a reference.

Vassili Bykov (talk) 00:38, 2 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This passage from the introduction:

Unlike Lisp, Refal is based on pattern matching. Due to that, a typical program in Refal is on average two or three times shorter and more readable than a Lisp analog. Compared to Prolog, Refal is conceptually simpler. Its pattern matching works in the forward direction rather than backwards (starting from the goal) as in Prolog. This is a more natural approach to writing algorithms which also makes them easier to test and debug.

seems to be very far from exhibiting NPOV. While the statement that programs are 'two [to] three times shorter' may be objectively factual, it seems to me that

readability,
conceptual simplicity,
naturality, and
ease of testing and debugging

are all highly subjective. JadeNB (talk) 20:27, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Two of the 3 links given in "References" do not work any more. Everything starting with "www.supercompilers.com" talks about Java, only.
--H.Marxen (talk) 21:29, 2 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Notability[edit]

Is Refal notable?

The only references for this article are the refal.net website and one paper by its main (only?) author Valentin Turchin. Is there any evidence that Refal ever had any significant usage or was subject to significant interest outside Turchin's entourage? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.114.88.72 (talk) 15:45, 4 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]