Why is tcl broken?
Paul Duffin
pduffin at mailserver.hursley.ibm.com
Thu Jun 10 11:41:27 EDT 1999
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
DT/6000 Development Email: pduffin at hursley.ibm.com
IBM UK Laboratories Ltd., Hursley Park nr. Winchester
Internal: 7-246880 International: +44 1962-816880
More information about the Python-list
mailing list