Why is tcl broken?

[Paul Duffin]

John Mitchell wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 10 Jun 1999, Gordon McMillan wrote:
> 
> > Fernando Mato Mira writes:
> > > I'm trying to collect a list of all the _current_ issues making tcl
> > > a bad language choice.
> >
> > Why? Convincing your boss to use Python over TCL for your next
> > project is one thing, but in general this is a zero-sum (or worse)
> > game.
> >
> > The TCLers I know value its simplicity and accept its limitations.
> > Telling them they're wrong will only piss them off.
> >
> > - Gordon
> 
> For what it's worth, I've tried convincing a friend at AOL to start using
> Python.  They mostly use TCL with AOLServer[1] (webserver with TCL built
> in at a very low level, quite fast); with a bit of Perl.
> 

I was going to say "Sensible folk" until I read the Perl bit ;-).

> He's not a trained programmer, and really likes TCL.   Since they've more
> or less standardized on *one* language across many developers, they have a
> large library of code to steal from, which makes nearly all new projects
> trivial to whip up.  Switching to a "real" (OO, scripting) language really
> wouldnt help them out.
> 

"real", "REAL" !!!!

> Ironically, TCL *does* have some object-oriented features.  When I tried
> it out many years ago, there was a [itcl] extension to basically add
> C++-style object suppport.  But, all the TCL types I've talked to since
> have never heard of it.  Odd.
> 

Tcl has many OO features, you can have C++ like, Java like, SmallTalk
like ... it is up to you. A lot of them are implemented in pure Tcl.

> Has anyone messed with Guile, GNU's extension language?  One specific
> thing they want to do is be a "universal" back end, that is you can write
> translators from language A to Guile, and their page[2] mentions Python
> several times...
> 

Nice idea but I doubt they will even manage one language completely,
never mind 2, or 3, or 4 ...

> 
> [1] http://www.aolserver.com/
> 
> [2] http://www.gnu.org/software/guile/guile.html
> 

-- 
Paul Duffin
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