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To: "Joel N. Weber II" <devnull@gnu.ai.mit.edu>
cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: TCL 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Mon, 16 Jun 1997 01:44:41 EDT."
             <199706160544.BAA16861@ethanol.gnu.ai.mit.edu> 
Date: Sun, 15 Jun 1997 23:55:55 -0700
Message-ID: <17921.866444155@time.cdrom.com>
From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com>
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> Does anyone want to offer any specific details about why they disagree
> with RMS about TCL, or does everyone want to just say `RMS is a moron'
> without providing any specific comments?

Easy: RMS does not see the value of a hybrid approach to scripting
languages - he wants a general purpose mousetrap which allows you to
code your entire application, not just the "user mutable" parts, in
the scripting language and he's pushing another scheme variant as the
solution.

I and many others disagree with his argument that the hybrid approach
is fundamentally flawed and wrong, and we DO see value in this
approach which TCL has taken.  All of RMS's general criticisms of TCL
fall under the "it's not good as a general implementation language"
category, e.g. he notes things like the parsing overhead or TCL's lack
of generalized data types, and all that shows is that he's pursuing
different goals and is incorrectly lambasting TCL's "failure" to
achieve those goals.  TCL is intended for a different purpose, a
purpose which RMS does not consider valuable, and it's therefore
rather hard to argue with him on this topic when one side is
yelling "Apples!" and the other "Oranges!"

					Jordan