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Not so.

Tcl's strongest redeeming features are its consistency and its sensibility. Tcl very strongly has a principle of least surprise, thanks to these. That alone makes programming in Tcl a joy compared with many, many other things. You'll spend a lot less time wondering how your code will work on a foreign platform, which flags a given widget expects, and so on.

Tcl of 2007 is also not Ousterhout's Tcl of 1987. A lot has happened in the last 20 years, including totally pervasive unicode support (the [msgcat] library makes internationalization such a breeze, there's absolutely no reason not to make all your programs localizable from the start), some very healthy namespace functionality, an excellent networking library, and of course the relatively recent Tile toolkit.

There are also new projects being developed with Tcl all the time.

Far from being an outdated or dying language, Tcl today is just a well-kept secret, sitting out in plain sight.

It's worth noting that ejabberd is written in Erlang.

For those who haven't heard about it, it's an open source, distributed, fault-tolerant instant messaging server (Jabber/XMPP), modular and very configurable and is readily available in most Linux distributions' repositories.

It's one of the most promiment erlang-based projects.

One of the first alternatives as for the 'normal' jabber server implementation was written in erlang. Resulting in ejabberd people care :)

The problem with GAIM and its encryption plug-ins are that they pretty-much only work with GAIM, and then only if you're using the same plug-in.

While the GAIM developers indicated a desire to work with Trillian when it was the only major encrypted-im game in town, I don't know why "they" don't implement a standard now, either de jure (JEP-0116, which admittedly isn't finalized) or more realistically at this point in time, de facto (as referenced in this message and used by several Jabber clients--e.g. Psi, Tkabber; even multi-protocol centericq and Kopete).

I haven't been following Pidgin development, so I don't know how easy it is to have a plug-in work for just one protocol, but the GAIM-only encryption methods seem counter-productive.

I recently set up ejabberd and JWChat (AJAX-based web client) at my office. ejabberd authenticates against our Windows domain using LDAP, and using JWChat means there's no client to install. I tried a couple of other jabber servers, but ejabberd was the easiest to integrate with JWChat.

I haven't had much buy-in yet, but that's another story.

Very interesting post!
I haven't touched eiffel since early 90s so I can't give a fair comparison. In regards to my wide-ranging research on choosing a programming language for my current work, I didn't consider eiffel too strongly as I am drawn more to dynamic typing or at least strong type inference (see scala, http://scala.epfl.ch/ ). I realize that dynamic typing generally makes it more not less difficult to deliver a provably correct system. erlang takes a unique approach to this by the way it handles errors. The programmer is encouraged to not program defensively and to let the erlang system handle errors for anything the programmer did not explicitely expect. This is a unique approach and when tied to a dynamic language seems to work well.
I find great qualities in many programming languages. Ruby, Python, Java, Smalltalk, C++, Haskell, OCaml all have their place from a language perspective.
However, I wanted more than a language but a complete system with distribution, database, web server, fault-tolerance all built in.

So far as langugage design goes, I am very found of scala. The team behind scala created a syntax that melds pure objects, pure functions and type inferencing without clutter. A remarkable acheivement. However, scala is so new that it has few of its own libraries. I was tempted to embark on creating the frameworks/libraries I needed for scala, but I wanted out of the framework business. Erlang has an evolved syntax and is not without its quirks and inconsistencies. I have been able to put my purist attitude aside by being grateful for the comprehensive system it provides.

I can tell you this: What initially attracted me to erlang was the ejabberd project http://ejabberd.jabber.ru./ ejabberd has most of the qualities of the type of software I expect to build. This includes massive concurrency, security (in the form of process isolation and shared nothing data structures), fail-over/distribution, multi-database support, html templating for the web ui. ejabberd accomplishes this with a much smaller code base than comparable Java solutions. After studying the ejabberd product, I started to take erlang more seriously...the rest is history.
I recently completed my first large project for a customer using erlang (including the latest ajax stuff) and have received most of the benefits I thought I would receive.

BTW, I have been living in Shanghai since 2000 and have found the pimsleur madarin tapes to be the best. Yes, a different approach can mean so much more than just more content.

good luck...

aristus,
I started looking at erlang in Fall 2004. Its my first serious try at functional programing so I consider my a newbie in functional idioms. However, erlang is not purely functional and is accessible to people with OO experience.
I was a lurker on the erlang-questions maillist for 6 months before making a final decision to start building my apps with erlang. The maillist community is very solid and should be considered a base for your ongoing adoption of erlang.
Here is the maillist and faq link:
http://www.erlang.org/faq.html
If you download any erlang install http://www.erlang.org/download.html, lots of docs are included. There are also some docs not included:
http://www.erlang.org/doc.html
I consider this doc a must read for anyone starting erlang:
http://www.erlang.org/download/erlang-book-part1.p df
The http://www.trapexit.org/ site is a very good portal for docs and the forums are a bi-directional link to the erlang-questions maillist.
The howtos are good to start with:
http://www.trapexit.org/docs/howto/
If you will develop anything requiring a web server, go directly to http://yaws.hyber.org./ Mostly good docs here. Yaws is the most excellent web server written in erlang.
jungerl is a repository of mostly small erlang libraries. Lots of good tools and example code in here:
http://jungerl.sourceforge.net/
ejabberd http://ejabberd.jabber.ru/, a jabber server in erlang, is an excellent example of how to put together a large distributed web based system in erlang.

nothing is perfect, but erlang's benefits to me far outway its rough edges...hopefully, you will experience the same.
good luck...

JabberD is a bitch to setup but I just installed ejabberd and had it up and running as a test server in less than five minutes. It's much easier to setup and I'll be migrating the hcoop.net server from jabberd to ejabberd over spring break. It even has a nice web interface.

It's nice having a single config file and not having to deal with configuring stuff. It can use ldap for auth if you want too (among other things). In the default config enabling most gateways is a matter of uncommenting the relevant lines and reloading the config.

Well, there used to be jabberd quickstart. But it's now a few versions behind. Really though, jabberd is very well documented and not that difficult to set up. I know several people who have done it. Also ejabberd is becoming quite popular, but I haven't installed it yet, so I don't know how easy or difficult it might be. The hardest part is the transports, but core jabber functionality works by basically changing all the instances of localhost to your server name in the config file. And besides, users of AIM mostly aren't interested in running their own server, but they can definitely go ahead and download a client and start using one of the public servers. Many of them even offer the transports to legacy IM services.

YXA is another open source sip server. This one's written in Erlang which strikes me as a very good fit for this purpose (Erlang was originally developed by Ericsson for the specific purpose of developing high availability telephony applications). There are I believe some plans to integrate this with ejabberd.

Try ejabberd. As easy to install as 'apt-get install ejabberd' on Debian sid.

It includes Jabber server with database store configured, multiconference service, JUD, IRC-t and web administration.

There is a Java IM client, called Colibry IM, that supports most major networks, IIRC AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, and Jabber. It should work on most phones with Java and GPRS.

Gaim-like programs such as Miranda are overloaded with features, buggy and eat more memory than a standalone Jabber-client, i.e. tkabber.

Some Jabber clients are capable of end-to-end encryption, but aren't. However, client-to-server encryption through SSL is quite common.

So, this would work very well in a corporate environment (except for your GNU/Linux users, happily chatting away using Tkabber and GnuPG), but don't trust plain-old Jabber for your personal, confidential communications! You could be snooped on by the admin!

It seems you missed the point of Jabber.

Jabber is (for now) an instant messaging protocol that provides so many features that you would be amazed. Most of them are not present nowadays on propietary IM, but maybe they'll copy them from Jabber later. Some are 'server temporal storage of messages if contact is unavailable' or 'server based filter rules' and a lot more.

Perhaps you can't find their utility now, as you have been induced to think propietary IM has everything you would ever need. Just wait.

Reading your comments about some client with so many strange options, it seems you are talking about JAJC client. Please try the other three main Jabber clients (all of them GPL'ed) and you will see that every person-requirement has a client ;)
Psi (multiplatform),
Tkabber (Tcl/Tk) and
Exodus (Borland Delphi).

More clients on jabber.org

Some clients' screen captures

Well, some Jabber clients (such as Tkabber and gabber) will integrate with GPG, and the messages do balloon up.

At work I use Exodus to connect to jabber.org using SSL, which ensures that my messages aren't being read by my boss/the IT department/the organization's ISP. Once they hit jabber.org, however, anyone can read them. Still, it's better than nothing, and it works for any legacy IM system that I connect to (ICQ, AIM, Yahoo!).