Scott Schwartz <schwartz@galapagos.cse.psu.edu.NO-SPAM> wrote in article
<8glo6zqzg8.fsf@galapagos.cse.psu.edu>...
>
> Maybe that's just shallow and unhelpful, and if so I apologise for
> wasting your time, but when tcl has been the basis of a whole bunch of
> really cool stuff, and a number of people post articles to the effect
> that Ousterhout's ideas are all wrong, it makes me want to defend his
> design and his quality of implementation, because I think those sort
> of practicalities make a difference. Before putting tcl down, take a
> hard look at how much more successful than scheme it is, and notice
> that this isn't by accident.
>
At least in my case, I think you misinterpret the point -- Tcl can be as
neat as sliced bread, but the views expressed in the article I read were
myopic. His division of languages into "system" and "scripting" is
arbitrary at best, and he ignores the fact that many other popular
languages were achieving a great deal with the features being touted, and
doing it before Tcl. For example, in its heyday, there were some 10
million Xbase users, of which perhaps 2 million were programmers. And of
course, Lisp has been around for some time.
FWIW, on the WinTel platform (which has the largest installed base I know
of), I've never seen a Tcl program. You can knock WinTel, but you can't
deny that most computers are WinTel computers. Will we see Tcl become even
as popular as Lisp is on WinTel? Somehow, I doubt it. Of course, if VB
hadn't been drug into the fray, I suppose WinTel wouldn't have mattered
much, but if you're going to use WinTel languages for a comparison, well,
don't be suprized if more WinTel comparisons are made. <g>
Also, I think his comments re: OOP are simply wrong. Naturally, reasonable
people are allowed to disagree on these things, but my experiences with OOP
have been very positive.
Bill House
bhouse@dazsi.com
http://www.dazsi.com
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