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Tcl Core Team Interview
Gentu writes "OSNews features a nice and long-ish interview with the Tcl core development team for just about everything. " Covers a lot of ground like what they actually use Tcl for, how they came to maintaining Tcl and so forth.
The last time I spent any time working with Tcl -- about five years ago -- I got frustrated by some of the same problems that it sounds like they're still facing (e.g. no standard methods for defining modules or objects). Based on the interviewees' responses to the "What are you working on now?" question(s), it doesn't sound like these issues are high priority, either (e.g. it sounds like most of Jeff's time at ActiveState is devoted to working on Tcl development tools).
I wonder if anyone setting out on a new software project even considers Tcl as a scripting language anymore, over (say) Ruby or Python. Has Tcl become the new COBOL, in the sense that its only relevance is for maintenance of legacy code?
Also, if you look at areas where Tcl/Tk applications compete with applications written in other toolkits (Zircon, Tkabber, etc.), the Tcl/Tk applications may be uglier, but they tend to be far more feature-complete.
Of course, Tcl/Tk has its limits, and something like iTcl/iTk is rather ugly. But overall, it looks to me Tcl/Tk must be doing something right, and it might be well worth for the developers of other GUI tools to try to figure out what that might be so that we might get the best of both worlds.
Tcl is an okay language - I have been using it for more than 10 years in some big applications. But I've been using Python for about a year now and I feel that it's much better for real programming. The data structures are much richer - not everything is a string, it's faster, more readable, and makes good programming more natural.
John was a great software guy but he wasn't a language designer and (no offense) it kind of shows up in Tcl. The way comments work, and the fact that error messages don't tell you a line number from a source file, are both side effects of Tcl's hacky implemention.
The one huge advantage that Tcl has is Tk and even though other languages have Tk bindings they all seem awkward and second-class. But is that a strong enough advantage? I guess it depends on the application.
I've racked my brain trying to figure out why Tcl is hated by so many in the "pop" geek community. The only answer that I've been able to come up with is the fact that those making the complaints are those who: a) do not actually know Tcl and haven't taken the time to understand it and b) are zealots of some other scripting language. A third possible reason that comes to mind is perhaps that some people just can't stand the idea of something that doesn't even closely resemble C-style syntax.
I started using Tcl/Tk at the suggestion of a fellow LUG member after explaining that I needed something a bit more complicated than xmessage to drive a script that I was working on. I dug in, found it strange, then found it cool, then found it fun, and finally knew enough to start doing some real work. I now use Tck/Tk on a daily basis on a wide variety of projects and have no intention of giving it up. A 5-year-old can understand the syntax, the commands are very well documented, and the community is stellar... none of the condescending holier-than-thou's that always seem to surround the hip scripting language of the month.
The Tcl'ers Wiki has quite a few pages examining why some people like Tcl and they're even keeping tabs on who says Tcl sucks and why.