TCL and Scotty there was an awesome nms/SNMP combo
The Birth of Tcl
31–40 of 105 posts
Re: The Birth of Tcl
#32I like Tcl a lot. The design is simple, extremely easy to learn, and yet the code is still maintainable (((looking at you LISP))). Among the scripting languages I've used, I probably liked Tcl the most. I wish it didn't fall out of favor.
I've been evaluating different languages for writing plugins and TCL really seems tempting. Unfortunately, I've been leaning towards Lua just due to its pervasiveness (today). I also vaguely remember one of the top contenders having some more esoteric parts that concerned me. I can't remember how much of that was TCL, Lua, or both.
Both are good with that kind of usage. It will really end up being your preference.
Re: The Birth of Tcl
#33Tcl is insane. The language is straight out of The Book (Anathem). By that I mean, the semantics are not just wrong, they're so wrong they risk warping your brain. But the language somehow remains useful, powerful, and flexible. And there is still no faster way to get from zero to working GUI in the 2020s on a conventional computing environment (Windows or some Unix). So it's fantastic for prototyping at the very lea…
What drives you the most nuts about the syntax?
Line comments since the "#" isn't a comment character unless it's following a statement or such nonsense
puts "for real" ;# orly?
and there's some weird business about backslashes in comment characters, which IIRC "modern" tcl-ists use for ployglot launch scripts
#!/bin/sh
# this hides *both* lines from tclsh \
exec "tclsh" "$0" "$@"
puts "and now, moar tcl"Re: The Birth of Tcl
#34I love Tcl. I haven't used it in a while as my job scope has changed. I used to write all sort of utilities and throw a little UI on top with Tk. I still keep watch on what happens in that space.
Re: The Birth of Tcl
#35I like Tcl a lot. The design is simple, extremely easy to learn, and yet the code is still maintainable (((looking at you LISP))). Among the scripting languages I've used, I probably liked Tcl the most. I wish it didn't fall out of favor.
I've used Tcl extensively over many years. It's a tremendously flexible tool that can be shaped to accomplish many tasks. Tcl was never the most widely used scripting language but it's alive and well, and its development continues with new versions on the horizon. There still is a lot to like about Tcl.
Re: The Birth of Tcl
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
What drives you the most nuts about the syntax?
Line comments since the "#" isn't a comment character unless it's following a statement or such nonsense puts "for real" ;# orly? https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/comment and there's some weird business about backslashes in comment characters, which IIRC "modern" tcl-ists use for ployglot launch scripts #!/bin/sh # this hides *both* lines from tclsh \ exec "tclsh" "$0" "$@" puts "and now, moar tcl"
Wow, I comment on that page way back in 2006! I suggested a multi-line comment. lol
I don't use end of line comments myself so that never bugged me.
Re: The Birth of Tcl
#37Tcl and Rebol are great. The code is compact, very easy to understand and quick to write, especially Rebol. You can do GUI in both Tcl/Tk and Rebol as well. You might want to check Rebol out as well: http://www.rebol.com/docs/expert-intro.html (or http://www.rebol.com/docs/design-objectives.html ).
You probably already are aware of it but there's an effort to create an open source successor to Rebol. See the Red Programming Language site [0].
I've played around with Red and it's pretty interesting. Though rather different from Tcl. Red compiles to native code out of the box which is an advantage. Currently Red is limited to 32-bit output. When they get 64-bit working along with self-hosting compiler I think the language could become a major success.
Re: The Birth of Tcl
#38I like Tcl a lot. The design is simple, extremely easy to learn, and yet the code is still maintainable (((looking at you LISP))). Among the scripting languages I've used, I probably liked Tcl the most. I wish it didn't fall out of favor.
Indeed as sibling comment mentions there are Tcl fans out there. The guy who created redis has good things to say[0]. With a little evangelism it could maybe stage a comeback. [0] http://antirez.com/articoli/tclmisunderstood.html
Dr. Hipp of SQLite fame likes Tcl. The ginormous test suite is in Tcl.
Re: The Birth of Tcl
#39The article doesn't discuss how Sun turned away from Tcl and embraced Java instead (understandable since it focuses on Tcl). It's interesting because Sun had the same goals for Tcl as they did for Java (or vice-versa!): " evolve Tcl into a universal scripting language for the Internet ", " allows untrusted scripts to be evaluated safely ", " Tcl plugin, so that Tcl scripts can be evaluated in a Web browser ". Ousterh…
I was at Sun Labs at that time - Ousterhout's group was internally regarded as one of the top groups there. I was in a different group.
My recollection is that the concerns were not around technical merit: a. Tcl and Java were positioned as competitors, b. Sun saw Java as a critical weapon in its fight against Microsoft, c. Java won the internal battle, which led to Tcl/Scriptics spin out.
Re: The Birth of Tcl
#40I like Tcl a lot. The design is simple, extremely easy to learn, and yet the code is still maintainable (((looking at you LISP))). Among the scripting languages I've used, I probably liked Tcl the most. I wish it didn't fall out of favor.
Off-topic, but you should be aware that the (((triple parentheses))) are apparently an anti-semitic thing. Just so you know it can be misinterpreted in some contexts x)
I've never heard of this perhaps because HN is about the only social media I use. However, there is an ADL page on this. See https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/echo