Compared to other scripting languages
Why Tea
and arcane. I remember reading a report a while ago stating that the
number of Perl and Python programmers (in US) are running neck in neck,
while Tcl was a poor third. What's your opinion?
Mark Janssen
You ask this on comp.lang.tcl? Well I certainly don't feel arcane.
Anyway some of the reason I love Tcl:
* Unicode support
* Interactive development (there are plenty of possibilities to
interact with your app)
* Deployment, starkits are a godsend.
* Simplicity (see man tcl and compare with man perl)
* Very simple C-API
* Last but not least, the community: c.l.t., the wiki, Tcl chat.
For more reasons see for instance http://wiki.tcl.tk/540.
How this compares to Perl or Python? I don't really know, best way to
find out is to try all. I tried Perl but never could get in sync with
it. Python is nice, I really like Ruby, but it is missing some of the
better parts of Tcl. For me Tcl just gets my job done.
Mark
Alan Anderson
> With comparison to Perl and Python, Tcl is always considered to be old
> and arcane.
Tcl *is* old. That's not a bad thing -- consider Unix, for instance.
Tcl is mature. It is neither decrepit nor obsolete. It and its users
have definitely maintained Tcl as a vigorous and powerful language.
I don't agree with "arcane", though I can see why some people might
apply that word.
> I remember reading a report a while ago stating that the
> number of Perl and Python programmers (in US) are running neck in neck,
> while Tcl was a poor third. What's your opinion?
A language's popularity is not a measure of its success, unless you
choose to measure success that way. I choose to measure differently: a
programming language succeeds by being useful in solving problems and
producing applications. Tcl succeeds in a wide variety of problem
domains.
Michael A. Cleverly
At one of the Tcl conferences a couple of years back I recall Jeff Hobbs
mentioning during his ActiveState of Tcl talk the ratio of downloads for
the various ActiveState language distributions (ActiveTcl, ActivePerl,
ActivePython).
It's been long enough I'm sure I wouldn't remember the ratios correctly,
but I do recall being pleasantly surprised at how ActiveTcl outpaced
ActivePython. :)
Michael
Eckhard Lehmann
Michael A. Cleverly schrieb:
> It's been long enough I'm sure I wouldn't remember the ratios correctly,
> but I do recall being pleasantly surprised at how ActiveTcl outpaced
> ActivePython. :)
Well, this is probably not representative for the Tcl usage... Python
comes itself with a standard library and very good support for Windows.
So there is no real need for ActivePython to get started.
ActiveTcl in contrast is *the* batteries included distribution for Tcl,
for Windows and other systems. If anyone wants to develop Tcl, the best
thing (s)he can do is to install ActiveTcl.
For a representative statistics, it would be necessary to include
download statistics from www.python.org & co., tcl.sf.net & co.,
cpan.perl.com & co., etc. And even this is not really representative,
since many people just use what they get with their OS distribution and
never download them separately.
Eckhard
Uwe Klein
> I don't agree with "arcane", though I can see why some people might
> apply that word.
Well if some entity is used to complicated incantations of magic
to lighten a dark room it may find a wallswitch mystifying ;-)
The one common error you see with crossover code ( i.e. perlites ,
pythonians,jabba(scribties) or phpiteers writing tcl code is their
embellishing the tcl elements with the "known to work" elements of
their personal magic.
It may not necessarily hinder, but it does not help.
uwe
David N. Welton
> A language's popularity is not a measure of its success, unless you
> choose to measure success that way. I choose to measure differently: a
> programming language succeeds by being useful in solving problems and
> producing applications. Tcl succeeds in a wide variety of problem
> domains.
Tcl is certainly good for many problem domains, but the reason people
care about popularity is that when they make the investment of time
necessary to learn a language (something that is perhaps not as easy for
some as for others), they want to be able to use it for their immediate
problems, and for other, future problems that may come up as well. If a
language is popular, they are not likely to be alone when they face
these problems - there may be people who have already worked in the
problem domain, libraries, even books, and so on.
--
David N. Welton
- http://www.dedasys.com/davidw/
Linux, Open Source Consulting
- http://www.dedasys.com/
Lan
David N. Welton wrote:
>
> Tcl is certainly good for many problem domains, but the reason people
> care about popularity is that when they make the investment of time
> necessary to learn a language (something that is perhaps not as easy for
> some as for others), they want to be able to use it for their immediate
> problems, and for other, future problems that may come up as well. If a
> language is popular, they are not likely to be alone when they face
> these problems - there may be people who have already worked in the
> problem domain, libraries, even books, and so on.
>
> --
> David N. Welton
> - http://www.dedasys.com/davidw/
>
> Linux, Open Source Consulting
> - http://www.dedasys.com/
I completely agree with your statement, but I'm not sure what
conclusion you're leading me toward. Perhaps this is because I have a
long shelf of Tcl books, the majority quite current, and certainly more
shelf space than my extensive perl collection (by choice). And I find
this forum and the wiki, which I've barely explored, a rich community
support environment.
I blame mindspace and unintentional FUD. Well, maybe not completely
unintentional on the part of the perlies, at least before thay had to
look over their shoulders at Python.
What attracted me to Tcl was the Tk, which seemed strapped onto perl;
and the C interface pre-SWIG. I looked at perl's C interface and said
not in my lifetime ;-)
Oh, and expect, and slave interpreters (we don't need no stinkin'
threads!), and the library system (and the libraries), and the fact
that everything I write or add or bind in is in the same name space as
what comes with the distribution ...
OK, I'm an enthusiast -- I can't help myself.
~Lan
Darren New
> ActiveTcl in contrast is *the* batteries included distribution for Tcl,
I personally would love to see TLS and Trf and XML parsers and the other
bits you need to do modern interfacing programs efficiently come with
ActiveTcl. Sadly, every time I start a new project, I still have to go
track down all that sort of thing, even with the ActiveState distribution.
Unless I'm doing something wrong...
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
Scruffitarianism - Where T-shirt, jeans,
and a three-day beard are "Sunday Best."
Cameron Laird
Darren New <dn...@san.rr.com> wrote:
.
.
.
>I personally would love to see TLS and Trf and XML parsers and the other
>bits you need to do modern interfacing programs efficiently come with
>ActiveTcl. Sadly, every time I start a new project, I still have to go
>track down all that sort of thing, even with the ActiveState distribution.
>
>Unless I'm doing something wrong...
.
.
? TclXML, TclDOM, and TclSOAP have been in ActiveTcl for
'bout as long as there has been an ActiveTcl. I can under-
stand the frustration in regard to TLS and Trf; I assume
those involve licensing issues ...
<URL: http://www.activestate.com/Products/ActiveTcl/more_information.plex >
Donal K. Fellows
> ? TclXML, TclDOM, and TclSOAP have been in ActiveTcl for
> 'bout as long as there has been an ActiveTcl. I can under-
> stand the frustration in regard to TLS and Trf; I assume
> those involve licensing issues ...
I think TLS might actually be an "export license" issue at heart. It's
all a stupid thing - the cat is thoroughly out of the bag in respect of
decent crypto and undesirable regimes - but that's the way things are.
Donal.
Darren New
> I think TLS might actually be an "export license" issue at heart.
Except those restrictions got canceled a long time ago, didn't they?
And ... it looks like the 8.5's don't yet come with the working XML
parsers and such. I think that's why I thought it didn't come with. I
didn't need XML during the 8.4 timeframe. :-)
Jeff Hobbs
> Donal K. Fellows wrote:
>> I think TLS might actually be an "export license" issue at heart.
>
> Except those restrictions got canceled a long time ago, didn't they?
Yes and no. It still requires companies to jump through hoops to ship
anything with crypto - it is just what is allowed to ship became more
reasonable.
> And ... it looks like the 8.5's don't yet come with the working XML
> parsers and such. I think that's why I thought it didn't come with. I
> didn't need XML during the 8.4 timeframe. :-)
ActiveTcl 8.5 comes with nothing but the teacup at the moment.
--
Jeff Hobbs, The Tcl Guy, http://www.activestate.com/
Cameron Laird
Donal K. Fellows <donal.k...@man.ac.uk> wrote:
.
.
.
>I think TLS might actually be an "export license" issue at heart. It's
>all a stupid thing - the cat is thoroughly out of the bag in respect of
>decent crypto and undesirable regimes - but that's the way things are.
.
.
Whiner. Why, here in the States we've learned to
give thanks when the government merely acts stupidly,
as opposed to the days when it's actively malevolent.
Building TLS by oneself is a minor tax.
marc spitzer
> Whiner. Why, here in the States we've learned to
> give thanks when the government merely acts stupidly,
> as opposed to the days when it's actively malevolent.
> Building TLS by oneself is a minor tax.
Well then there is the horror of government, they decide to be
*shudder* helpful.
marc
--
ms4...@sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org
Gerald W. Lester
> On 2006-12-04, Cameron Laird <cla...@lairds.us> wrote:
>> Whiner. Why, here in the States we've learned to
>> give thanks when the government merely acts stupidly,
>> as opposed to the days when it's actively malevolent.
>> Building TLS by oneself is a minor tax.
>
> Well then there is the horror of government, they decide to be
> *shudder* helpful.
Yes, like the federal government building levees to protect cities fro=rm
flooding -- then "assisting" the victims of the failed levees afterwards
(reminds me to call in again and see what is now holding up my flood claim
from 8/29/2005).
--
+--------------------------------+---------------------------------------+
| Gerald W. Lester |
|"The man who fights for his ideals is the man who is alive." - Cervantes|
+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
marc spitzer
> marc spitzer wrote:
>> On 2006-12-04, Cameron Laird <cla...@lairds.us> wrote:
>>> Whiner. Why, here in the States we've learned to
>>> give thanks when the government merely acts stupidly,
>>> as opposed to the days when it's actively malevolent.
>>> Building TLS by oneself is a minor tax.
>>
>> Well then there is the horror of government, they decide to be
>> *shudder* helpful.
>
> Yes, like the federal government building levees to protect cities fro=rm
> flooding -- then "assisting" the victims of the failed levees afterwards
> (reminds me to call in again and see what is now holding up my flood claim
> from 8/29/2005).
>
Nope that is just old fashiond pork, I am talking about things like the
gov pushing ridilan on children. From what I have read/heard it has the
same down side as cristal meth with none of the fun. And this is all
because teachers can not control their classrooms. And there is the
ever popular bit of evil of underfunding the local CPS and depending on
federal matching funds that are doled out on a schedual, do this and we
give you this much money. So go do some good or there will be layoffs.
I could go on and on but it is off topic. Now if only people would
realize that all governments are evil so they need to be watched and
pruned.
David N. Welton
> I completely agree with your statement, but I'm not sure what
> conclusion you're leading me toward.
Simply that popularity matters. Obviously, there are other things that
are as or more important, or else we'd all be using whatever was the
most popular thing, but the people who say it has no bearing are wrong.