Date: Sun, 15 Jun 1997 23:55:55 -0700 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> To: "Joel N. Weber II" <devnull@gnu.ai.mit.edu> Cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: TCL Message-ID: <17921.866444155@time.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 16 Jun 1997 01:44:41 EDT." <199706160544.BAA16861@ethanol.gnu.ai.mit.edu>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
> 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
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?17921.866444155>