Perhaps a word or two ought to be said about the history and evolution of Rapture. In the beginning code was written using primitive tools and programming languages. It was horrible, lacking pretty much all of the features of modern programming languages (every variable was a global one!). However, code was written, and projects begun and thrived. Then, the next stage of evolution began, and as a result, a semi-workable language called Vortex came to be.
Vortex was magnitudes more helpful the tools being used previously, and even came with a conversion script that would retro-fit most existing source code to use the new language. It provided many more features and programmers rejoiced. Soon though, it was clear that Vortex as it existed could no longer meet the requirements of the ever changing environments created with it. Vortex V5 was born, and with it came many new features which facilitated progress and user maximums increased.
All this time, the language existed and evolved outside the influence of Iron Realms. However, Achaea -- the flagship project that used the Vortex engine -- continued to grow and it was soon apparent that Vortex would not meet its needs. This need sparked the decision to begin work on Rapture, and Iron Realms started it in earnest. The primary goal was to provide a system which was 100% source compatible with Vortex V5 (as Achaea was now many many lines of code) while providing a robust, scalable, and above all else, FAST replacement for Vortex V5.
Rapture was engineered from scratch, allowing the development team to concentrate on using the most efficient algorithms and data structures while still maintaining source compatibility. The result is Rapture as you know it today: robust, polished, featureful, and magnitudes faster than any previous environment.