Why is tcl broken?

Fernando Mato Mira matomira at iname.com
Sat Jun 12 12:45:51 EDT 1999


Cameron Laird wrote:

> www.sunworld.com/swol-11-1998/swol-11-regex.html>.  I
> wish the Guile folk well, and certainly RSM and others
> continue to invest energy in it.  From my distant ob-
> servation post, it doesn't feel as though it has the
> critical mass of resources necessary to "take off".

Maybe I'm dreaming, but I have the impression we've just passed the global
minimum in the Lisp usage history. With guile as a unification theme, suddenly
it becomes
very interesting to learn scheme, as a lot of folks end up using one or another
GNU tool. As a side effect, some newcomers to Tk that would have normally used
tcl could end up going  the STk way
(unfortunately, STk is not publicized enough). Things like Kawa also increase
the feel of security regarding code reusability.
And some of those people will end up wanting to write full-fledged applications
"with parenthesis".
But it's probably more the fact that Java hype has quieted down, which make me
hopeful sooner than expected (although not in the same league, the fact that
surprises
_can_ happen, like the Linux/NT "battle for the enterprise" arriving so fast, is
reassuring).

> OK, that's too coy.  I recognize that *I* wanted him
> to have asked that, but he definitely didn't do so.

Well, a hot headline in a classic press trick to attract readers.
Also, the premise was that _I_ believe that it's philosophically broken,
and I wanted to find out whether the disgust for tcl I've seen many people
express had some basis on some generally accepted principles.
[For example, I can think the Eiffel syntax is `philosophically' broken, but
as `infix' syntaxes go, it is not. And it's a good language (I programmed
in it for 2 years  (years ago).. But just because I didn't have a CL compiler
then, and I wanted to do OO :-> )].







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