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From: Gary Clark II <gclarkii@main.gbdata.com>
Message-Id: <199706161148.GAA00821@main.gbdata.com>
Subject: Re: TCL
To: chat@FreeBSD.ORG
Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 06:48:58 -0500 (CDT)
In-Reply-To: <17921.866444155@time.cdrom.com> from "Jordan K. Hubbard" at "Jun 15, 97 11:55:55 pm"
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Jordan K. Hubbard wrote:
> 
> 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.
If that is all people used TCL for it would be fine.  But they insist on
writing LARGE programs in it. I've got the TCL books
here and have played with it a fair amount.  It gives me hives....

Yes, I know that some of you people dislike PERL the way I dislike
TCL, but so far I've not seen any apps that TCL could do that PERL could
not. (Maybe expect, but I've seen PERL code that does the same thing).

If it comes down to it, I load the TCL module and write TCL 
inside my PERL app:)

> 
> 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.

Again Jordan, it comes back to people touting it as a "General Purpose"
language.  If we keep it as a scripting languauge for C apps (like aXe)
then all is well.

> 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!"


Gary 


-- 
Gary Clark II   (N5VMF) |    I speak only for myself and "maybe" my company 
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