Why is tcl broken?

[John Mitchell]

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.

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.

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.

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...


- j


[1] http://www.aolserver.com/

[2] http://www.gnu.org/software/guile/guile.html



John Mitchell        "It's not gentlemanly, but this industry lost
                     any pretense of sportsmanship long ago."
johnm at magnet.com     -- Charles Cooper, "Why it's easy to hate Microsoft"