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Does it stand a chance against a language like Python, in terms of third party libraries? Forget third party libraries. How functional is its library in general? Threading, Unicode Support, Internationalization, OS interfaces, etc?

It probably depends on what you want to do with the language, as always

So the question is: what is Rexx good at?

COBOL? Come on, no sane person would develop new apps in COBOL. That comparison is not even apples and oranges, its more like figs and pumpkins.

>This article shows you why the Rexx scripting language
>is faster than developing code in traditional languages
>like C++, Java, or COBOL.

Are we soon going to see articles like "See how you can develop applications in Perl faster than C++, Java, or COBOL"? Maybe Python? Ruby?

Rexx has been getting a good amount of press lately for not being even remotely popular. It seems like marketing is pushing it more than anything else.

It looks like this will the the ~4th comment in about 8 hours since the article post. Maybe Rexx needs to sit down. It doesn't seem to be catching on around here.

that is the question...

"If you want to learn a quick way to develop database scripts, start here."

MUMPS. :>

AmigaOS included a version of Rexx (called ARexx) in version 2 and above. What was really great is that most programs could be controlled by ARexx scripts. One script could make use of many programs easily.

I use Rexx for my daily work
I think Rexx is as powerful as Perl in string manipulation, but far simpler than Perl.
I'd used to do programming in Cobol, but I do not, and I won't do. Rexx makes a lot of things easier without pains

RExx seems easy to use and yet you never hear mention of it.

I think you might want to tell a newbie to try it out rather than c or c++.

Rexx has always been used extensively in IBM mainframe environments. With the current drive by IBM to get linux onto their mainframe servers the presence of Rexx allows IBM to show companies that their developers, who are comfortable with Rexx to be immediately productive working on Linux on a mainframe.

So it probably is marketing !!

IBM also included Rexx with OS/2 from 2.0 onwards, and I think IBM's PC-DOS 2000 also includes a Rexx interpreter.

It's a pretty neat scripting language. :-)