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The Birth of Tcl

tcl.tk

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Re: The Birth of Tcl

#91

Post by [deleted] »

chakkepolja wrote: post #90
radarsat1 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When anti-semites or alt-right people or other hate groups decide to adopt an arbitrary, commonly used sign (like, the "ok" symbol [1]), is the correct reaction to stop using that sign, basically giving it to them, or is the correct reaction to use it as much as possible in non-racist/x-ist contexts, to dilute the intended co-option? Honestly I don't really know the answer. I completely understand avoiding it to not…

I am curious as to what most westerners react when they see a Hindu swastika? Is it common knowledge that there's a Hindu/Buddhist swastika or is it percieved as Nazi swastika?

[deleted]

Re: The Birth of Tcl

#92

Post by adunsmoor »

I'm a long time user of Tcl. For me, the biggest strength of Tcl is it's C API. It's quite straightforward to implement extensions. That, and the people that were involved in the language early on are incredibly smart and creative.

I had the good fortune of working with Michael McLennan and George Howlett for a while (both mentioned in the referenced history).

Michael's "Effective Tcl/Tk Programming" is a fantastically written programming reference. He was a prolific creator of interesting applications and toolkits. I recall him creating a GUI for our boring corporate bug database where he added a points system to make fixing bugs "more fun".

George managed to avoid incrementing the version number on his BLT toolkit by appending letters of the alphabet to releases. I never did learn why. I just checked and I see he made it all the way to 2.4z!

Re: The Birth of Tcl

#93

Post by cafard »

chakkepolja wrote: post #90
radarsat1 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When anti-semites or alt-right people or other hate groups decide to adopt an arbitrary, commonly used sign (like, the "ok" symbol [1]), is the correct reaction to stop using that sign, basically giving it to them, or is the correct reaction to use it as much as possible in non-racist/x-ist contexts, to dilute the intended co-option? Honestly I don't really know the answer. I completely understand avoiding it to not…

I am curious as to what most westerners react when they see a Hindu swastika? Is it common knowledge that there's a Hindu/Buddhist swastika or is it percieved as Nazi swastika?

It was a Native American symbol also. It was on the insignia of the 45th Division, a National Guard unit from the American southwest; but as WW II approached, it was swapped for a thunderbird.

Kipling used a Hindu swastika on his books. He also, I believe, discontinued this with the rise of the Nazis. Don't those arms point counter-clockwise, though?

Re: The Birth of Tcl

#94

Post by bitwize »

rudasn wrote: post #77
bitwize wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eggdrop!

Yes! Haha completely forgot about that. And the hosting provider was called Dungeons something.. Very dodgy looking website, dad needed a little convincing to give them his CC info

They let you run IRC bots, of course they were dodgy!

Re: The Birth of Tcl

#95

Post by sedatk »

RHSeeger wrote: post #72
sedatk wrote: post #2

I 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 adore Tcl, and always have. Funny that you mention Lisp, because I've always considered Tcl a kind of "close cousin" of Lisp; both in it's code structure and the ability to build new control structures and the like. It feels more Lisp-y to me than it does C-y.

You're absolutely right. But I have bad memories of dealing with parentheses in AutoLISP from the 90's. The trauma remains :)

Re: The Birth of Tcl

#96

Post by sedatk »

andrepd wrote: post #10
sedatk wrote: post #2

I 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)

Huh, I had no idea. HN won't let me edit it either. Thanks for letting me know.

Re: The Birth of Tcl

#97

Post by jecel »

shaunxcode wrote: post #76
jecel wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only watched this from the outside, but my impression was that it was an overreaction. Sun had a nice research operating system based on Java called SpringOS, but when clients heard about that they revolted. The transition from SunOS to Solaris had been traumatic and they threatened to jump ship if there would be any more changes ahead. Sun's reaction was to adopt "only Sparc, only Solaris, only Java forever and ev…

to be fair to sun and Self at least a lot of the research was rolled into the hotspot stuff!

They didn't do it in a smart way. Part of the Self group joined forces with some other researchers to create a company called Animorphic which would build the world's "fastest Smalltalk" using the Self technology. It was called StrongTalk and had other interesting features like optional type declaration and extensive use of traits and mixins.

Given the buzz around Java they did a quick demo showing that language running on top of their technology, and in 1997 Sun bought them to use that HotSpot technology in their main Java implementation. So they paid a lot for what they previously already had but ignored.

Re: The Birth of Tcl

#98

Post by kwk1 »

lizknope wrote: post #61

A lot of semiconductor EDA / CAD tools use Tcl as the built in scripting language. Our CAD flows are thousands of lines of Tcl code that are both wrappers around the tools and scripts for the tools to execute that set options and run various commands generate reports

OpenCASCADE, the C++ CAD library used by FreeCAD and others, has official bindings available in Tcl. (Bindings, for example, in Python, are available from 3rd parties.)

Re: The Birth of Tcl

#99

Post by johnisgood »

johnisgood wrote: post #57
jrapdx3 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, didn't know about the Rebol3 version in the link. I'll have to look into it. AFAIK the Red developers goal is to extend the Rebol philosophy to a modern, open source tool that can serve a number of high and low level purposes. Red is coming along but slowly. Not surprising given the lofty ambitions of the project. I too hope they succeed.

You should definitely give it a go! This is the SO post I mentioned, for what it is worth: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/31510930/rebol3-what-is-... It was very easy to get Oldes' Rebol 3 up and running. It works. There are many extensions as well. My only problem is the lack of GUI (a huge problem, to be honest, because I want to contrast it to Tcl/Tk which I love as well), or at least I have not found the way…

Ah, Oldes' Rebol 3 does not come with a graphics system. You need https://www.atronixengineering.com/downloads for that.

Re: The Birth of Tcl

#100

Post by chakkepolja »

cafard wrote: post #93
chakkepolja wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am curious as to what most westerners react when they see a Hindu swastika? Is it common knowledge that there's a Hindu/Buddhist swastika or is it percieved as Nazi swastika?

It was a Native American symbol also. It was on the insignia of the 45th Division, a National Guard unit from the American southwest; but as WW II approached, it was swapped for a thunderbird. Kipling used a Hindu swastika on his books. He also, I believe, discontinued this with the rise of the Nazis. Don't those arms point counter-clockwise, though?

Buddhist swastika is counterclockwise. Hindu Swastika is clockwise. None of them are tilted like Nazi swastika, though.
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